Looks like a bad fit to me, it's very freeform and genAI does really badly with consistency and coherence
C is actually pretty good, if you can manage to architect your project cohesively
If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?
341–350 of 626 posts
Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
If AI doesn't make you more productive you're using it wrong, end of story. Even if you don't let it author or write a single line of code, from collecting information, inspecting code, reviewing requirements, reviewing PRs, finding bugs, hell even researching information online, there's so many things it does well and fast that if you're not leveraging it, you're either in denial or have ai skill issues period.
Not to refute your point but I’ve met overly confident people with “AI skills” who are “extremely productive” with it, while producing garbage without knowing, or not being able to tell the difference.
I've not really seen this outside of extremely junior engineers. On the flip side I've seen plenty of seniors who can't manage to understand how to interact with AI tools come away thinking they are useless when just watching them for a bit it's really clear the issue is the engineer.
Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the first part which is basically 'being able to do a software engineers full job' is basically ASI/AGI complete. But I think it is certainly possible that we reach a point/plateau where everything is just 'english -> code' compilation but that 'vibe coding' compilation step is really really good.
It's possible , but I don't see any reason to assume that it's more likely that machines will be able to code as well as working programmers yet not be able to come up with requirements or even ideas as well as working PMs. In fact, why not the opposite? I think that currently LLMs are better at writing general prose, offering advice etc.., than they are at writing code. They are better at knowing what people general…
> It's possible, but I don't see any reason to assume that it's more likely that machines will be able to code as well as working programmers yet not be able to come up with requirements or even ideas as well as working PMs.
Ideation at the working PM level, sure. I meant more hard technical ideation - ie. what gets us from 'not working humanoid robot' to 'humanoid robot' or 'what do we need to do to get a detection of a higgs boson', etc. etc. I think it is possible to imagine a world where 'english -> code' (for reasonably specific english) is solved but not that level of ideation. If that level of ideation is solved, then we have ASI.
Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?
#344No need for using assembler, LLMs should be writing machine bits directly into executables. It is also fairly simple to teach them how to do it. Provided we have some executable that was written in some human-readable computer language. We can read through the bits of the executable, and describe each portion using English, based on the description of what the original human-readable language is doing. This new model will only learn the English representation of chunks of bits and how they go together into an executable. After learning several billion such narrated executables it will be excellent at writing machine code.
Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?
#345> But if you look carefully, you will notice that it doesn’t struggle with undefined behavior in C. Or with making sure that all memory is properly freed. Or with off-by-one errors. Doubt. These things have been trained to emulate humans, why wouldn't they make the same mistakes that humans do? (Yes, they don't make spelling errors, but most published essays etc. don't have spelling errors, whereas most published C c…
Don't train them to emulate humans. Train them to emulate compilers instead.
Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The agent forgets to free memory latter just like a human would and has to go back and fix it later. I highly recommend people learn how to write their own agents. Its really not that hard. You can do it with any llm model, even ones that run locally. I.e you can automate things like checking for memory freeing.
I use rust. The compiler is my agent. Or to quote Rick and Morty, “that’s just rust with extra steps!”
Replace memory with one of the dozen common issues the Rust compiler does nothing for like deadlocks.
Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Software development jobs must be very diverse if even this anti-vibe-coding guy thinks AI coding definitely makes developers more productive. As a Professor of English who teaches programming to humanities students, the writer has had an extremely interesting and unusual academic career [1]. He sounds awesome, but I think it's fair to suggest he may not have much experience of large scale commercial software devel…
That was such a strange aspect. If you will excuse my use of the tortured analogy of comparing programming to wood working, there are is a lot of talk about hand tools versus power tools, but for people who aren't in a production capacity--not making cabinets for a living, not making furniture for a living--you see people choosing to exclusively use hand tools because they just enjoy it more. There isn't pressure abo…
Nicely put. The wood working analogy does work.
Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?
#348> if vibe coding is the future of software development (and it is), then why bother with languages that were designed for people who are not vibe coding? Shouldn’t there be such a thing as a “vibe-oriented programming language?” VOP. A language designed for vibe coding could certainly be useful, but what that means is the opposite of what the author thinks that means. The author thinks that such a language wouldn't n…
I don't think there is a need for an output language here at all, the LLM can read and write bits into executables directly to flip transistors on and off. The real question is how the input language (i.e. prompts) look like. There is still a need for humans to describe concepts for the machine to code into the executable, because humans are the consumers of these systems.
Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?
#349I really tried to get into the vibe coding thing - just describe the thing I need in human language and let the agent figure it out. It was incredible at first. Then I realized that I am spending a lot of time writing clarifications because the agent either forgot or misinterpreted something. Then I realized that I am waiting an awful long time for each agent step to complete just to write another correction or clari…
> Then I realized that this constant start-stop process is literally melting my brain and making me unable to do any real work myself. It's basically having the same effect as scrolling any other algorithmic feed Yes, it’s extremely soul sucking. With the added disadvantage of not teaching me anything.
I felt this way too until I decided that my goal isn't to know things, it's to ship things.
Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
But am I wrong? I am joking, but good jokes have an element of truth...
Depends what you mean by "old". If you mean elderly then obviously you're not. If you mean "past it" then it might reassure you to know the average expecting mother is in her 30s now (in the UK). Even if you just mean "grown up", recent research [1] on brain development identifies adolescence as typically extending into the early thirties, with (brain) adulthood running from there to the mid sixties before even then…
FWIW I doubt I'd consider you old were I to know your actual age. I still think I'm quite young