I am leaving the AI party after one drink

I've found two personal use cases for LLM generated code:

(1) I have an idea for some app, but either I feel it won't be useful enough/save me enough time to justify developing it, or I simply don't feel the problem is interesting enough to be motivated by it. In that case, a vibe coded tool is perfect. It generally does one simple thing, and I don't care about long term maintenance, because it just needs to keep doing that thing.

(2) Adding a feature to an open source project. Again, it's a case of "I want this feature, but am not willing to spend the time needed to implement it." Even a relatively simple open source project can take a day or two just to get a basic understanding of the code and where I need to make the changes. Now I can often just get a functioning vibe-coded implementation within a few hours.

(2) leaves me with some unsettling feelings about how this will affect the future of open source software. Some of the features I've implemented this way may very well be useful to other users, but I can't in good conscience just dump a vibe coded pull request on a project and except them to do the work of vetting it. But if I didn't have the energy to implement the change myself, I'm definitely not going to bother doing the work of going through all the LLM generated code, cleaning it up to the standards of the project, etc. Whereas before I didn't have a choice, and the idea of getting the change ready for a PR was much less daunting since I understood the problem space and solution well.

So at least for myself, I can see a future where many of the apps I use are bespoke forks of popular applications. Extrapolate that to many, many people and an interesting landscape emerges.

A lot of this is just wrong. AI can now see the output.

It's interesting that highly flawed opinion pieces like this are so popular.

I had a significant other 20 years ago that would not use a GPS. This resulted in constant fights whenever she travelled. If she got off her route, I got a phone call. I lacked the skills to divine her exact location and what direction she needs to go based on vague descriptions of being on “some highway” for “some amount of time” and she is near mile marker “I don’t know.” After hanging up on me she would eventually stop somewhere or ask someone or figure something out or maybe never come home.

Then one day, She was on the way to an OB appointment she almost plowed into a car in front of her while she was looking at her Mapquest pages. Risking our unborn child.

Even after pointing out the danger she claimed the guy in front… He did no such thing, I saw everything from my position in the parking lot.

I bought a GPS unit “for me” and put it into my car. I just used it. If we travelled in my car she still insisted on her printed maps. I ignored them. (This was very intense.)

Then one day we took her car for a trip and I brought my GPS. And “forgot it” in her car. I claimed I would remove it “later”.

About two weeks later she gave me the look and said not to laugh. Dead serious. She then said “the GPS is ok “ and can stay in her car.

Hallelujah! The life expectancy of my wife and child just went up exponentially.

This day, I have no idea what her hangup was. The best I could come up with was she was bad with directions. Was probably taught how to read a map. And her father probably instilled her sense of pride for the ability to read a map. And choosing to use a GPS was retroactively wasting her time learning how to use maps. And devaluing a skill she worked hard to learn.

I don’t care. I just wanted my family to live.

If I'm not mistaken, this was Socrates' exact perspective on writing.

The point of civilisation, however loose that idea may be, if it’s anything at all, is determined by people.

Technology exists today in a way that feels like it could be defining its own path in a sense, but much like oral tradition, neither are large enough concepts to describe civilisation.