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"Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

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Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#31

Post by vpShane »

jasonthorsness wrote: post #8

> Don’t use: > AI auto-complete in your editor > Agent mode or agentic tools for your educational projects While I am not learning "coding" as a beginner anymore, I am constantly learning new frameworks, language features, algorithms etc. as is the norm in the industry, and I disagree it's bad to use AI auto-complete. Pre-AI IntelliSense-style autocomplete from Visual Studio or ReSharper makes learning new libraries…

100%. I enjoy AI Agentic programming because I make new things to tinker with and/or try out ideas. I'm not trying to code to push to some production, and I'm not worried about what others think of my code.

I want to be able to say I've tried and done things when speaking with highly technical people. I've been a 'programmer' since I was 10, I'm 35 now but never joined the work force as a programmer; I don't know why, but now that AI is here, the love for coding, tinkering, making system level things, trying things like WASM which may be the future of our www; these all give me that joy. I found my limitations as a programmer and excelled because I have different skillsets.

I love learning that doing something MY way is a good idea, but has been thought of and some amazing programmer already built the ground-work for it.

My Cursor AI agent even setup git for me for my projects so I can easily push with my SSH keys: do I know I can do that myself? Yes. Do I want to? no.

> ReSharper for example will suggest taking advantage of new language features when you write something an older way, and many times this was my introduction to that new feature.

That's actually news to me and sounds amazing. I started coding with C syntax when I was young. You learn habits then, it sticks with you.

I'm since enjoying python for backend things, flask for little webserver stuff and javascript for front-end things.

WASM Python ain't there yet, but I _love_ tinkering. I _love_ finding bugs. I _love_ poking and prodding at how things work. I'm almost always re-inventing the wheel with concepts but you know what? At least it's mine and I can tinker and learn.

Some of us enjoy the craft as a hobby and learning. Even within my teams some are more sophisticated tech wise than I am; to get on their level remotely requires me to tinker.

Often times, I find a solution for my problems that were the most simple; engineering minds like to overcomplicate things.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#32

Post by stavros »

jasonthorsness wrote: post #8

> Don’t use: > AI auto-complete in your editor > Agent mode or agentic tools for your educational projects While I am not learning "coding" as a beginner anymore, I am constantly learning new frameworks, language features, algorithms etc. as is the norm in the industry, and I disagree it's bad to use AI auto-complete. Pre-AI IntelliSense-style autocomplete from Visual Studio or ReSharper makes learning new libraries…

Very much agree. AI autocomplete is the best thing ever, because it spares you from having to read the docs but it's few enough lines that you can review and make sure it does what you intended.

It won't write big chunks, so it won't hinder your learning.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#34

Post by Eisenstein »

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #22
adlpz wrote: post #5

I thought this was going to be yet another post about how AI is ruining Junior devs so we'll have a Senior replacement crysis in a few years. It sort of is, indirectly, and I agree with pretty much everything. But the bit about sycophancy was particularly enlightening. I actually thought "plain" ChatGPT-like interfaces could be good for learning. But the Youtube ROAS example is really powerful. If the student can ske…

I think I agree. From personal experience, even when I ask for scathing critique, the need to placate and make me feel better seems to bleed through ( both on 4o and 5 as far as I could tell ). I am not sure what to make of it. We go back to this original prediction that the tool will help those, who both want help and are painfully aware of LLMs peculiar issues.

The incentives align: when the success metric is engagement, it will be optimized for engagement. It makes perfect sense that it is going to agree with you.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#35

Post by ori_b »

crazygringo wrote: post #25
whatever1 wrote: post #16

Organizations now generate 10x the amount of code, because everyone can do it. But we have exactly the same number of reviewers. How the heck are we gonna deal with it when we cannot use LLMs for sanity checking LLM code? Like literally yesterday I had a not-technical person who used codex to build an optimization algorithm, and due to the momentum it gained I was asked to “fix the rough edges and help with scaling”.…

> How the heck are we gonna deal with it when we cannot use LLMs for sanity checking LLM code? Unit testing. LLM's are very good at writing tests and writing code that is testable (as long as you ask it), and if you just check that the tests are actually calling the code and doing so with all the obvious edge cases and that the results are correct, that's actually quite fast to review -- faster than reviewing the cod…

> Unit testing. LLM's are very good at writing tests and writing code that is testable (as long as you ask it)

The unit tests LLMs generate are also often crap, testing tautologies, making sure that your dependencies act as specified without testing the actual code, etc.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#36

Post by travisgriggs »

Disclaimer: I use Zed Pro and GPT daily to code. I have been coding for money since 1989.

I view the rise of these tools and particularly efficacy in programming as an indictment against modern programming. The modern web is both amazing and horrific. If bureaucratic is "using or connected with many complicated rules and ways of doing things" (Britannica), then modern programming may be the ultimate poster child. Sure, we love to slap this on "civil institutions", but the fact that I need an automaton, answers based on probability, to guide me in how to navigate doing some of the simplest things, is pretty sad (IMO).

I used to counsel aspiring new programmers, "It's not about knowing a certain language or framework. Your single most important asset will be an aptitude to constantly keep relearning. Some trends will stand out along the way, but you'll never quit learning new tools and languages".

Maybe it's just my age, but it feels like we've overflowed at some point.

Early programming was too electrical, too mathematical, so pioneers sought to close the gap between coding and human think. And yet, after years of speculative funding, what we're left with, is a whole different set of problems.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#38

Post by gota »

Minor part of the article, but the thing about "tutorial Hell" is very true:

> Students would watch (or fall asleep to) 6-hour videos, code along in their own editors, feel like they got it, and then freeze up the moment they had to write anything from scratch. Classic tutorial hell.

This is why, across history, the tried and true method of learning a craft is an apprenticeship. You, the junior, tag along a senior. You work under a shop that is led by a senior-senior that is called a master. Apprentices become craftsmen, craftsmen become masters. AFAIK, the master does not 'offload' project guidance into non-craftsmen, it is an expected part of the craftsmen role to be project/product managers/owners.

I've said this a million times to close friends and at this point I'm only half joking. We, and I'm including myself in the 'developer' crowd although I may not deserve it, have really dropped the ball in not being a 'guild' since way back when. At least since the late 1980's; and certainly since before the Original Boom of software dev as a profession (I'm assuming it was late 90's? I know not)

(Although I suspect that if that were the case we'd have fewer developers throughout the 00s and 10s, which may have impacted the development of the field itself in unexpected, but likely negative, ways)

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#39

Post by rhetocj23 »

gota wrote: post #38

Minor part of the article, but the thing about "tutorial Hell" is very true: > Students would watch (or fall asleep to) 6-hour videos, code along in their own editors, feel like they got it, and then freeze up the moment they had to write anything from scratch. Classic tutorial hell. This is why, across history, the tried and true method of learning a craft is an apprenticeship . You, the junior, tag along a senior.…

You learn by doing and thinking.

Not reading and watching.

Pure and simple.

Re: "Vibe code hell" has replaced "tutorial hell" in coding education

#40

Post by whatever1 »

LPisGood wrote: post #20
whatever1 wrote: post #16

Organizations now generate 10x the amount of code, because everyone can do it. But we have exactly the same number of reviewers. How the heck are we gonna deal with it when we cannot use LLMs for sanity checking LLM code? Like literally yesterday I had a not-technical person who used codex to build an optimization algorithm, and due to the momentum it gained I was asked to “fix the rough edges and help with scaling”.…

The problem can probably almost certainly be solved to provable optimality using HiGHS or even CBC - the open source Python package PuLP comes with CBC. If you want to be seen as the hero who solves things instead of the realist who says why other solutions won’t work, this could be worth exploring.

Of course it can be solved using the proper tools by a domain expert/practitioner (even with chatGPT since the expert will know what to ask).

But why didn't the AI expert solve it using chatGPT? If it has to land to an expert for reimplementation from scratch after wasting a day on reviewing slop, did we gain productivity?

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