Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Eulogy for Vim

drewdevault.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 151 posts

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#41

Post by scrollaway »

endemic wrote: post #21
scrollaway wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because vibe coding makes computer programming accessible to the masses I've been coding for 24 years and vibe coding has made computer programming accessible to me . I've burned out on my work several times, to the point that a few years ago I became unable to open my IDE without getting headaches and nausea. This has killed one of the startups where I was fractional CTO and it's debilitating as an engineer to fee…

I'm debating using LLMs for my side projects. Does using one remove the "soul" of my project? On the other hand, a friend is actually making progress with his side app _because_ he's able to lean on the LLM after a full day's worth of working the day job. I might be able to actually do some of the things I've dreamed of and never had the capacity for. First world problems, I guess.

I think it depends on what you are doing the side project for.

Are you doing it to learn engineering? The learning potential of a back & forth with LLMs is wasted on people who don't have serious know-how.

Are you doing it to create a product, or learn how to do that? Then no, the LLM is helping you get over the hump of writing slow code.

I think we'll eventually drop the "vibe coding" and retronym coding to "slow coding" or something similar. There's advantages to slow coding in a world of AI coding, just like today there are advantages to dropping other types of abstraction layers (from writing direct code when using a WYSIWYG editor, to dropping into assembly code in a performance-critical branch of a game engine written in C++...).

But spending more time on writing code is not useful if you don't get something out of that additional time.

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#43

Post by e3bc54b2 »

sourcegrift wrote: post #14

Drew is genius but a toxic genius, I've been using vim for 23 years and I'd rather not use vim than use his version of that's my only choice of vim

I've been reading and reading about DeVault for more than a decade now. If I can point to one person on the internet and definitively say that their today's version is better than a decade ago, it would be him. (Yes, I can say that he appears to have improved better in this time than I myself have, which can be interpreted in a more than one way).

In fact, Andrew Kelley, whom I respect fair bit, also chose to stand behind redict, Drew's fork of redis with similar observation.

People change over time, some of them for the better, and I personally like to give them a chance. Some of Drew's opinions and expressions are still a bit much for me, but that is just us both being human.

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#44

Post by freedomben »

endemic wrote: post #21
scrollaway wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because vibe coding makes computer programming accessible to the masses I've been coding for 24 years and vibe coding has made computer programming accessible to me . I've burned out on my work several times, to the point that a few years ago I became unable to open my IDE without getting headaches and nausea. This has killed one of the startups where I was fractional CTO and it's debilitating as an engineer to fee…

I'm debating using LLMs for my side projects. Does using one remove the "soul" of my project? On the other hand, a friend is actually making progress with his side app _because_ he's able to lean on the LLM after a full day's worth of working the day job. I might be able to actually do some of the things I've dreamed of and never had the capacity for. First world problems, I guess.

I've been doing exactly this now for a little while, and it breathed new life into my projects. It's been amazing, honestly. I was worried about the "soul" as well, especially for some projects where I got intimately deep in bit shifting and things, but realistically that project is now 100x more useful to me because it has a ton of features and even bug fixes that I never would have spent the time on before. I highly recommend it.

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#45

Post by embedding-shape »

dpatterbee wrote: post #37
embedding-shape wrote: post #22

> I think it’s more important that we stop collectively pretending that we don’t understand how awful all of this is Lord forbid if people disagree with you. I know Drew's vibe is always "I'm right because I'm the only one with the correct opinions", but it does get tiring after a while. Not to say AI isn't having huge drawbacks being introduced, and aren't exactly worry-free, but why not change your frame of mind fr…

I think the point is that regardless of what benefits LLMs are bringing to the table, there are a list of downsides that Drew views as non-negotiables. It doesn't matter what other people are seeing, because he sees a fundamental issue underlying the entire premise. It does seem like most people completely ignore the obvious harms caused by AI when talking about using LLMs for programming, as though somehow it is dis…

> there are a list of downsides that Drew views as non-negotiables

Which is all fine and dandy. But why play the "You simply don't understand it as well as I do" rather than something more investigative and curious? Just fuels the whole "holier than thou" vibe Drew been trying to increase seemingly every day.

It's a disagreement of opinion, not some "I'm the only smart person who can realize this", which is why it kind of sours the entire piece.

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#46

Post by linkregister »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #24
herodoturtle wrote: post #15

> And at a moment when the climate demands immediate action to reduce our footprint on this planet, the AI boom is driving data centers to consume a full 1.5% of the world’s total energy production in order to eliminate the jobs of the poor and replace them with a robot that lies. That sentence jumped out at me.

It's a little wrong. It's probably going to replace middle class jobs more than the jobs of the poor.

For an environmentmaxxer, eliminating upper-middle class jobs is extremely effective, as this group consumes the lion's share of resources and bears the greatest impact on carbon emissions. Remember that the majority of industry is upstream of consumption.

Not endorsing this world view, just noting that the wealthiest 1% of people in the world (encompasses most US citizens) have an enormously outsized impact on climate.

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#48

Post by embedding-shape »

sarchertech wrote: post #28
embedding-shape wrote: post #22

> I think it’s more important that we stop collectively pretending that we don’t understand how awful all of this is Lord forbid if people disagree with you. I know Drew's vibe is always "I'm right because I'm the only one with the correct opinions", but it does get tiring after a while. Not to say AI isn't having huge drawbacks being introduced, and aren't exactly worry-free, but why not change your frame of mind fr…

Well I think he’s taken a moral stance against AI, so it doesn’t matter to him if other people find it useful.

Right, a difference of opinion, which is fine, OK and even good. But why paint it as "Obviously the rest of you aren't smart enough to understand" instead of "Other's disagree", seems really strange (although in-character).

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#49

Post by embedding-shape »

ChrisLTD wrote: post #34
embedding-shape wrote: post #22

> I think it’s more important that we stop collectively pretending that we don’t understand how awful all of this is Lord forbid if people disagree with you. I know Drew's vibe is always "I'm right because I'm the only one with the correct opinions", but it does get tiring after a while. Not to say AI isn't having huge drawbacks being introduced, and aren't exactly worry-free, but why not change your frame of mind fr…

Why should he should say something he doesn't believe? We don't have to agree with him.

> I think it’s more important that we stop collectively pretending that we don’t understand how awful all of this is

Would be very different from say:

> I'd like to understand people who don't see it the same way as me, that it's mostly awful and not good.

Or similar, rather than "I'm right, everyone else don't understand it properly". Very HN-esque, but oh so tiring after 100s of articles in the exactly same vein from the same author.

Post reply on HN