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Why I don’t vibe code

jacobharr.is

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Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#41

Post by Aurornis »

extr wrote: post #16

This is like reading an article "I Don't Drive Cars" that goes on like - They're too expensive - My buddy's 1995 Accord breaks down a lot - Walking is healthier, plus you can stop and smell the roses - I enjoy caring for my horse - Sometimes you can get stuck in traffic Fine if that's the way you want and can afford to live your life. But it is an exotic luxury belief. For those of us who are participating in the eco…

You're going to get picked apart by people who live within walking distance or public transport distance of their office and don't understand why everyone else uses cars.

If you can walk to your office and the temperature is always between 50 and 70 degrees F you would probably think cars are crazy, too.

Which, funnily enough, proves the point even further. Some people get so comfortable in their bubble that they become unable to even comprehend why other people make other choices in other situations.

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#42

Post by wvenable »

ge96 wrote: post #33
wvenable wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Github copilot and I ran out of requests before the end of the month; this happens from time to time. But last month was the first time I decided to try the cheap models that were still accessible to me just to see what they were capable of. They're dumb as rocks. I just don't know how many people have an overly negative opinion on AI assisted coding because they've just used the poor versions of these prod…

Get your company to pay for it (points to head)

Oh they do. And I could get them to pay even more but with the changes to copilot licensing, I'm not sure we will continue with it.

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#43

Post by suddenlybananas »

aogaili wrote: post #8
TheCleric wrote: post #2

This is so good and almost exactly expresses my own thoughts. There's a narrow window where it's capable and fits a need of tedious work (mostly around automating tasks it would take me a bit to remember all the arguments and commands I'd have to chain together to do it). But a lot of it is the stuff I actually WANT to be doing. And solving the hard problems makes me a better developer just as training in the gym mak…

Developers were not solving hard problems. The last decade was brutal—mainly frameworks, libraries, configurations, etc. The hard problems were in research. And regarding the gym, sure, you might enjoy lifting dumbbells and solving puzzles to sharpen your brain. But that is not what engineers are hired for; they are hired to deliver a system using the best tools available. You can choose to farm by hand while the ind…

Some developers solve hard problems and some don't. It depends entirely on your specific work.

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#44

Post by saltcured »

quentindanjou wrote: post #19
analogpixel wrote: post #15

programming is just procrastination that gets in the way of implementing your ideas.

"painting is just procrastination that gets in the way of implementing your ideas." "woodwork is just procrastination that gets in the way of implementing your ideas." We can find plenty of others, but my main point is that industrializing a process doesn't make it "procrastinating". There are plenty of jobs that are done by machines but are still practiced by humans for multiple reasons. If we think of coding as a m…

Where does this evolution really lead?

"Thinking is just procrastination that gets in the way of your opinions"? ;-)

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#45

Post by ge96 »

wvenable wrote: post #42
ge96 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get your company to pay for it (points to head)

Oh they do. And I could get them to pay even more but with the changes to copilot licensing, I'm not sure we will continue with it.

Is claude code any better for the value

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#46

Post by sergeym »

Aurornis wrote: post #3

I thought this was going to be an article about intelligent use of LLM tools without vibecoding, but it's actually entirely against LLMs altogether. The person who wrote it used a free trial of some tool (most likely not a frontier model) and then gave up forever when the trial ran out. > I then tried using one of the AI tools to analyze my code in a project and a few other small tasks before it all came to an awkwar…

Regardless of the minimal time with LLMs, I think he hit major points on importance of clarity of abstractions, unreliability, shipping more features and working harder than even and losing touch with the underlying implementation.

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#47

Post by thangalin »

f311a wrote: post #26
thangalin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite experience: * https://repo.autonoma.ca/repo/treetrek/tree/HEAD/render/rule... - syntax highlighting for 40 languages and file formats in ~10 minutes * https://shufflenblues.com/expenses/ - real-time expenses progress updates with payment vendor API in ~30 minutes * https://repo.autonoma.ca/repo/treetrek/tree/HEAD/git - real-time, cache-free raw Git reader implementation with cloning in ~5 days * h…

Why reinvent the wheel? Syntax highlighting, git. I'm pretty sure there are PHP libraries to do that. Your syntax highlighting is very basic as well. Just ask LLMs to provide tests where it would fail to render correctly. The first thing that comes to mind after looking at it: print("# not a comment")

> Why reinvent the wheel?

Dependency-free, performance, FORTRAN, and it would take me more than ten minutes to find and integrate a highlighter that works across all of my code bases.

I searched for PHP-based Git libraries. All of them either invoked "git" using a system call or offered write abilities to the repo. I wanted a pure PHP solution that did not write to any files or invoke executable files (for security purposes). Maybe I didn't search long enough; at some point it becomes faster to tell the LLM what's wanted than to find a solution that fits.

> print("# not a comment")

Works correctly?

https://i.ibb.co/chgVkTz4/not-a-comment.png

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#48

Post by jmcodes »

retinaros wrote: post #29

To experienced devs. Why are you enjoying vibecoding? It is soulless and the job is really becoming unbearable having to discuss with an agent that alternates between “good at” and totally consensual and low iq.it feels miserable to have a few turns then seeing the tool Became so bad and so low iq that you stuck in doing things garder than if you did it by yourself I get the conversational aspect and value of it I ju…

I was already spending a lot of time reviewing other people's code. It makes no difference to me if it's coming from an agent or a person.

I can pick and choose which parts of the problem deserve my attention and which can be done by the LLM with me just keeping an eye on it while I mostly work on something else. I don't have metrics but I feel like I am doing higher leverage work with less friction.

Setting up the systems around the LLM itself is fun too. Hacking on harnesses and trying to improve the UX or the metrics is fun. Playing with different workflow topologies across agents is fun. Diving deep into context strategies, memory systems, prompting is fun. Trying to marry ideas from the past with what LLMs enable now is fun.

I don't see how this is soulless or unbearable but granted I'm not at a place that is demanding I maximize throughput. That would suck.

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#49

Post by threethirtytwo »

leptons wrote: post #35
Aurornis wrote: post #3

I thought this was going to be an article about intelligent use of LLM tools without vibecoding, but it's actually entirely against LLMs altogether. The person who wrote it used a free trial of some tool (most likely not a frontier model) and then gave up forever when the trial ran out. > I then tried using one of the AI tools to analyze my code in a project and a few other small tasks before it all came to an awkwar…

I'm doing agentic coding with Claude Max, and it's like giving methamphetamine to a software developer. When I run out of tokens, I pay for extra. It doesn't feel good, but I do it because I didn't write the codebase - the drug dealer did. Just one more "fix" and the code should be good to ship. Oh no, out of tokens again? Just one more "fix", and another. And the code that the AI writes is sprawling and almost incom…

The future is local LLMs. So still methamphetamines but open source, free and an unlimited supply.

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#50

Post by somewhereoutth »

extr wrote: post #16

This is like reading an article "I Don't Drive Cars" that goes on like - They're too expensive - My buddy's 1995 Accord breaks down a lot - Walking is healthier, plus you can stop and smell the roses - I enjoy caring for my horse - Sometimes you can get stuck in traffic Fine if that's the way you want and can afford to live your life. But it is an exotic luxury belief. For those of us who are participating in the eco…

But it is not a real economy is it? Vast sums of money are being spent subsidizing token processing with little to no tangible business benefit for the end user.

For those of us lucky enough to have the choice, the best bet is to sit it out for a year or so until it all comes crashing down, then re-engage with what's left of the software industry.

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