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Fuck it, make it anyway

joelotter.com

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Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#381

Post by Chris2048 »

Zizizizz wrote: post #347
alchemism wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any organization that vibecodes a significant amount of software in-house instead of buying it will not be reducing developer headcount. I'd bet on it. The CTO or EngDir will not be able to run 10x10 agent-cli sessions, or review 50 vibe coded PRs per week, no matter how capably autonomous the agents become.

Sounds like a failure of imagination to me (I hope you're right). It doesn't have to be the CTO, it can be anyone who will sit there for the cheapest cost to read output while assuming the risk of it all working until they retire. Sounds glorious

> assuming the risk of it all

scapegoating isn't really legally viable. corps who outsource their development haven't outsourced their liability.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#382

Post by properbrew »

acedTrex wrote: post #369
59percentmore wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why can't that apply to people who use generative AI? Expression isn't about seeking recognition, in the sense of clout or popularity, it's simply a matter of " I want other people to be able to see what I see. " If I compare what I'm able to produce by hand, and what I'm able to get the computer to spit out, it's pretty clear to me which is closest to what's in my head. So why do I have to be ashamed of that?

> And why can't that apply to people who use generative AI? Because they did not do anything? Theres nothing to celebrate, no skill to honor, no sweat and tears to salute. It just exists

Is that because they didn't type code on the keyboard? They still had to think of an idea, conceptualise it, work and prompt AI, test the results, alter things, work through problems, stick to a direction and bring about something from nothing.

Sure your one shot generic websites don't really have any "skill" or "honour", I may as well just read a text file of what you wanted to say (and I'd prefer that), but to say there is no sweat, tears or skill to using _any_ generative AI is a little bit narrow minded.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#383

Post by chasd00 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #221
cmiles74 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure there is some of that, people looking back at years of learning a skill, maybe even turning it into a productive career, and being upset that anyone can pay for an LLM tool and get output they believe is comparable. In my opinion, that’s not the whole thing and the article and the parent post touch on this. The part about the process of struggling to get your mind to understand new ideas and new ways of doin…

Everyone addresses this differently, but for me, I always grated at people whose knowledge of esoteric patterns and language features was their whole identity. It feels to me like suffering through programming built that knowledge, and so that knowledge was an indicator of taste and experience and persistence, but then it became cosplayed as people sought the knowledge itself in "patterns", or "features" rather than…

What a great comment, I wanted to quote my favorite parts but would just have to quote the whole thing. The “I suffered so you must too otherwise you’re unworthy” is so on point. The people whose identity is tied to gatekeeping programming are the worst and now those gates are crumbling and they can’t stand it.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#384

Post by djha-skin »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #368
user43928 wrote: post #4

I liked building apps and helpful tools before AI came around. I've been doing so for 15 years, 10 of them professionally. Today, I like it even better. It's never been so fun. What would have taken days of work, if it was feasible at all, I can have implemented in half an hour now and iterate on the result to make it work the way I want. I stopped reviewing the code at all. People on here are often saying how that's…

I find that it falls apart after the first 1000 or so lines.

I used to think this but then improved and found that it was a matter of tooling. Using beads[1] and getting the AI to write its own tickets and wiki articles using GitHub's wiki feature on repos, it can keep track of long horizon projects pretty easily. Then you curate some of the tickets or read through them and have them update the beads or adjust them as they work them. When they want to retain some important piece of knowledge you have them add it to the GitHub repo wiki.

Modern AI programming looks an awful lot like traditional product owner or product management roles.

1: https://beads.gascity.com/

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#385

Post by 01100011 »

tjeerdnet wrote: post #358
01100011 wrote: post #137

I've had some form of this conversation several times in the past few months: Me: "Holy cow, LLMs are getting good. You should take another look at how good recent tools are because without them we're going to get left behind." Them: "But I like writing code!" Which is cool, but completely irrelevant in the context of a career. Write all the software you want. Paint all the pictures you want. Carve wood. Build a boat…

I have been developing software professionally for about 25 years now and worked on different code bases and for different companies. I was relatively enthousiastic when I started programming, but looking back I had my ups and downs when working as a software engineer. Things became repetitive and it is often mostly about shuffling data around. And especially the last few years I was wondering if I wanted to do this…

It's scary how much your comment aligns with my thinking. Yes to all of that.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#386

Post by alkz »

I for one always found coding tedious and repetitive in general, it is fun at the beginning when you manage to validate an idea or produce an MVP, but then the chores begin and I have never enjoyed those. So in my view LLMs empower creativity by letting me focus on the stuff that's more interesting

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#387

Post by michaelt »

hax0ron3 wrote: post #354
pastel8739 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people who are happy about this change, are those who would answer a programmer's job is to produce value. This is sort of meaningless; the purpose of _every_ job is to produce value. The reason I chose to be a software engineer is because I enjoy solving the kinds of problems that it involved, not because it would allow me to deliver value to companies. Changing what a programmer does is _changing the job_, an…

If I could get paid a Bay Area software engineering salary to clean the bathroom instead, I think I would actually prefer to clean the bathroom. Software engineering requires me to actually use a large part of my mind. Cleaning the bathroom, on the other hand, would leave my mind largely free to think whatever I feel like. The physical movement is probably better for the body, too.

I think the secondary fear is that the big salaries and great working conditions are a result of a scarcity that may be on its way out.

Paying me $150k to do work that produces $1.5M for your business is great value - but getting the same work done for $15k is even better value.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#388

Post by someguynamedq »

WD-42 wrote: post #311
pastel8739 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people who are happy about this change, are those who would answer a programmer's job is to produce value. This is sort of meaningless; the purpose of _every_ job is to produce value. The reason I chose to be a software engineer is because I enjoy solving the kinds of problems that it involved, not because it would allow me to deliver value to companies. Changing what a programmer does is _changing the job_, an…

Yea this whole “your job is to create value” argument is always really shaky. Add “with computers and stuff” to the end and it becomes more plausible. Nobody gets a degree is “providing value”.

Nobody is hired for a job if the person hiring does not think they will produce value

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#389

Post by 59percentmore »

MachineMan wrote: post #42
dist-epoch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an old saying in creative fields, long before AI: you can make art, or you can make money. It's rare that you can combine the two.

Not to derail the conversation, but the concept of money itself is on loose screws. One might argue that compute and energy (dare I say expressed in BTC?) is arguably the (world reserve) currency of the future. The current system discounts the value of the hours of the artist based on where that artist was born, rather than on merit, and is the source of a lot of problems including trade wars, extreme globalization,…

The petrodollar is already value expressed in energy. It's not as pure as BTC, because of geopolitical pressures and since it's sovereign fiat that can be (and has been) printed into nigh-unrecognizability... But BTC is itself warped by derivatives markets, grossly unequal distribution leading to market manipulation, etc.

We're not so different, he and me.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#390

Post by RedCinnabar »

Palomides wrote: post #143
user43928 wrote: post #4

I liked building apps and helpful tools before AI came around. I've been doing so for 15 years, 10 of them professionally. Today, I like it even better. It's never been so fun. What would have taken days of work, if it was feasible at all, I can have implemented in half an hour now and iterate on the result to make it work the way I want. I stopped reviewing the code at all. People on here are often saying how that's…

AI has really revealed the programmers who were temporarily inconvenienced idea guys

I mean, wasn’t that the case for most of them? Im not a developer anymore, but to me programming was always a means to an end. Sure you can have preferences (static vs dynamic typing, functional vs OOP, etc.), but in the end they should only be relevant if they make you more productive, makes the codebase more readable and so on.

Since these nuances are progressively getting less and less important, why would you care about the process?

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