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After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

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Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#351
post #288
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give Cluade Code a go. It still makes a lot stupid mistakes, but its a vastly different experience from pasting back and forth with chat gpt.

There's no free trial or anything?

You can play with the model for free in chat... but if $20 for a coding agent isn't effectively free for use case it might not be the right tool for you.

ETA: I've probably gotten 10k worth of junior dev time out of it this month.

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#353
post #204

AI is incredibly dangerous because it can do the simple things very well, which prevents new programmers from learning the simple things ("Oh, I'll just have AI generate it") which then prevents them from learning the middlin' and harder and meta things at a visceral level. I'm a CS teacher, so this is where I see a huge danger right now and I'm explicit with my students about it: you HAVE to write the code. You CAN'…

Lots of interesting ways to spin this. I was in a computer science course in the late 90s and we were not allowed to use the C++ standard library because it made you a "lazy programmer" according to the instructor. I'm not sure if I agree with that, but the way that I look at it is that computer science all about abstraction, and it seems to me that AI, generative pair programming, vibe coding or what ever you want t…

The counterargument here is that there is a distinction between an arbitrary line in the sand (C++ stdlb is bad) and using a text-generating machine to perform work for you, beginning to end. You are correct that as a responsibly used tool, LLMs offer exceptional utility and value. Though keep in sight the laziness of humans who focus on the immediate end result over the long-term consequences.

It's the difference between the employee who copy-pastes all of their email bodies from ChatGPT versus the one who writes a full draft themselves and then asks an LLM for constructive feedback. One develops skills while the other atrophies.

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#354
> In retrospect, it made sense. Agents write units of changes that look good in isolation. They are consistent with themselves and your prompt. But respect for the whole, there is not. Respect for structural integrity there is not. Respect even for neighboring patterns there was not.

That's exactly why this whole (nowadays popular) notion of AI replacing senior devs who are capable of understanding large codebases is nonsense and will never become reality.

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#355
post #351
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no free trial or anything?

You can play with the model for free in chat... but if $20 for a coding agent isn't effectively free for use case it might not be the right tool for you. ETA: I've probably gotten 10k worth of junior dev time out of it this month.

The chat is limited and doesn't let you use the latest model. if that's representative of the answers I would get by paying, it doesn't seem worth it.

Im not crazy about signing up for a subscription service, it depends on you remembering to cancel and not have a headache when you do cancel.

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#356

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. The article starts with: > you give it a simple task. You’re impressed. So you give it a large task. You’re even more impressed. That has _never_ been the story for me. I've tried, and I've got some good pointers and hints where to go and what to try, a result of LLM's extensive if shallow reading, but in the sense of concrete problem solving or code/script writing, I'm _always_ di…

It still amazes me that so many people can see LLMs writing code as anything less than a miracle in computing...

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#358

AI is incredibly dangerous because it can do the simple things very well, which prevents new programmers from learning the simple things ("Oh, I'll just have AI generate it") which then prevents them from learning the middlin' and harder and meta things at a visceral level. I'm a CS teacher, so this is where I see a huge danger right now and I'm explicit with my students about it: you HAVE to write the code. You CAN'…

Yea, I doubt I could learn to program today if I started today.

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#359
post #95

AI is incredibly dangerous because it can do the simple things very well, which prevents new programmers from learning the simple things ("Oh, I'll just have AI generate it") which then prevents them from learning the middlin' and harder and meta things at a visceral level. I'm a CS teacher, so this is where I see a huge danger right now and I'm explicit with my students about it: you HAVE to write the code. You CAN'…

As a teacher, do you have any techniques to make sure students learn to write the code?

In-person analog checkpoints seem to be the most effective method. Think internet-disabled PCs managed by the school, written exams, oral exams, and so forth.

Making students fix LLM-generated code until they're at their wits' end is a fun idea. Though it likely carries too high of an opportunity cost education-wise.

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#360

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. The article starts with: > you give it a simple task. You’re impressed. So you give it a large task. You’re even more impressed. That has _never_ been the story for me. I've tried, and I've got some good pointers and hints where to go and what to try, a result of LLM's extensive if shallow reading, but in the sense of concrete problem solving or code/script writing, I'm _always_ di…

I think it’s usage patterns. It is you in a sense. You can’t deny the fact that someone like Ryan dhal creator of nodejs declared that he no longer writes code is objectively contrary to your own experience. Something is different. I think you and other deniers try one prompt and then they see the issues and stop. Programming with AI is like tutoring a child. You teach the child, tell it where it made mistakes and yo…

> Programming with AI is like tutoring a child. You teach the child, tell it where it made mistakes and you keep iterating and monitoring the child until it makes what you want.

Who are you people who spend so much time writing code that this is a significant productivity boost?

I'm imagining doing this with an actual child and how long it would take for me to get a real return on investment at my job. Nevermind that the limited amount of time I get to spend writing code is probably the highlight of my job and I'd be effectively replacing that with more code reviews.

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