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

atmoio.substack.com

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

#361

Post by byronic »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #8

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'…

I was so lucky to land in a CS class where we were writing C++ by hand. I don't think that exists anymore, but it is where I would go in terms of teaching CS from first principles

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

#362

Post by GorbachevyChase »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #337
GolDDranks wrote: post #219

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…

My personal suspicion is that the detractors value process and implementation details much more highly than results. That would not surprise me if you come from a business that is paid for its labor inputs and is focused on keeping a large team billable for as long as possible. But I think hackers and garage coders see the value of “vibing” as they are more likely to be the type of people who just want results and view all effort as margin erosion rather than the goal unto itself.

The only thing I would change about what you said is, I don’t see it as a child that needs tutoring. It feels like I’m outsourcing development to an offshore consultancy where we have no common understanding, except the literal meaning of words. I find that there are very, very many problems that are suited well enough to this arrangement.

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

#363

Post by AlexandrB »

burkaman wrote: post #88
hyperpape wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How seriously do you mean the analogy? I think forklifts probably carry more weight over longer distances than people do (though I could be wrong, 8 billion humans carrying small weights might add up). Certainly forklifts have more weight * distance when you restrict to objects that are over 100 pounds, and that seems like a good decision.

I think it's a good analogy. A forklift is a useful tool and objectively better than humans for some tasks, but if you've never developed your muscles because you use the forklift every time you go to the gym, then when you need to carry a couch up the stairs you'll find that you can't do it and the forklift can't either. So the idea is that you should learn to do things by hand first, and then use the powerful tools…

Yeah, it's a great analogy. Pushing it even further: a forklift is superhuman, but only in specific environments that are designed for it. As soon as you're off of pavement a forklift can't do much. As soon as an object doesn't have somewhere to stick the forks you need to get a bunch of other equipment to get the forklift to lift it.

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

#364

Post by 0xffff2 »

maurits wrote: post #137

I tell my students that they can watch sports on tv, but it will not make them fit. On a personal note, vibe coding leaves me with that same empty hollow sort of tiredness, as a day filled with meetings.

I work in an environment where access to LLMs is still quite restricted, so I write most of my code by hand at work. Conversely, after work I still have ideas for personal projects but mostly didn't have the energy to write them by hand. The ability to throw a half-baked idea at the LLM and get back half-baked code that runs and does most of what I asked for gives me the energy to work through refactoring and improving the code to make it do what I actually envisioned.

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

#365

Post by throwawayffffas »

You'll never find a programming language that frees you from the burden of clarifying your ideas.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/568/

Even if we reach the point where it's as good as a good senior dev. We will still have to explain what we want it to do.

That's how I find it most helpful too. I give it a task and work out the spec based on the bad assumptions it makes and manually fix it.

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

#366

Post by kaydub »

Mashimo wrote: post #326
kaydub wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Copilot sucks. Copilot is like a barely better intellisense/auto-complete, especially when it came out. It was novel and cool back then but it has been vastly surpassed by other tools.

> Copilot is like a barely better intellisense/auto-complete As I have never tried Claude Code, I can't say how much better it is. But Copilot is definitely more then auto-complete. Like I already wrote, it can do Planning mode, edit mode, mcp, tool calling, web searches.

I just feel like using Copilot would be like early car designers trying to steer their new car with reins.

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

#367

Post by Geste »

bovermyer wrote: post #332

Interacting with LLMs like Copilot has been most interesting for me when I treat it like a rubber duck. I will have a conversation with the agent. I will present it with a context, an observed behavior, and a question... often tinged with frustration. What I get out of this interaction at the end of it is usually a revised context that leads me figure out a better outcome. The AI doesn't give me the outcome. It gives…

It takes some skill (that you seem to have) to learn to use those LLM. Sad that not everyone see it that way...

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

#368

Post by amunozo »

GoatInGrey wrote: post #353
ray_v wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

That's why it's so important to teach how to use them properly instead of demonizing them. Let's be realistic, they are not going to disappear and students and workers are not stopping using them.

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

#370

Post by port11 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #148
frankc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a pretty solid analogy but I look at the metaphor this way - people used to get strong naturally because they had to do physical labor. Because we invented things like the forklift we had to invent things like weightlifting to get strong instead. You can still get strong, you just need to be more deliberate about it. It doesn't mean shouldn't also use a forklift, which is its own distinct skill you al…

> people used to get strong naturally because they had to do physical labor I think that's a bit of a myth. The Greeks and Romans had weightlifting and boxing gyms, but no forklifts. Many of the most renowned Romans in the original form of the Olympics and in Boxing were Roman Senators with the wealth and free time to lift weights and box and wrestle. One of the things that we know about the famous philosopher Plato…

I can’t attest to the entire past, but my ancestors on both sides were farmers or construction workers. They were fit. Heck, my dad has a beer gut at 65 but still has arm muscles that’ll put me to shame — someone lifting weights once a week. I’ve had to do construction for a summer and everyone there was in good shape.

They don’t go to the gym, they don’t have the energy; the job shapes you. More or less the same for the farmers in the family.

Perhaps this was less so in the industrial era because of poor nutrition (source: Bill Bryson, hopefully well researched). Hunter gatherer cultures that we still study today have tremendous fitness (Daniel Lieberman).

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