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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

#481

Post by Obscurity4340 »

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…

It helps to write out the prompt in a seperate text editor so you can edit it and try to desribe what the input is, and what output you want as well as try to describe and catch likely or iteratively observed issues.

You try a gamut of sample inputs and observe where its going awry? Describe the error to it and see what it does

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

#482

Post by MarsIronPI »

antonvs wrote: post #282
yomismoaqui wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This the kind of interaction that makes be think that there are only 2 possible futures: Star Trek or Idiocracy.

Star Trek illustrated the issue nicely in the scene where Scotty, who we should remember is an engineer, tries to talk to a computer mouse in the 20th century: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hShY6xZWVGE

Except that falls apart 2 seconds later when Scotty shocks the 20th-century engineers by being blazing fast with a keyboard.

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

#483

Post by MarsIronPI »

WalterBright wrote: post #200
WalterBright wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading about a metal shop class, where the instructor started out by giving each student a block of metal, and a file. The student had to file an end wrench out of the block. Upon successful completion, then the student would move on to learning about the machine tools. The idea was to develop a feel for cutting metal, and to better understand what the machine tools were doing. -- My wood shop teacher tau…

Also, in college, I'd follow the derivation that the prof did on the chalkboard, and think I understood it. Then, doing the homework, I'd realize I didn't understand it at all. Doing the homework myself was where the real learning occurred.

I guess there's a reason why you don't spend most of your time at school in class with a professor.

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

#484

Post by MarsIronPI »

logicprog wrote: post #466
varispeed wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good start. I write prompts as if I was instructing junior developer to do stuff I need. I make it as detailed and clear as I can. I actually don't like _writing_ code, but enjoy reading it. So sessions with LLM are very entertaining, especially when I want to push boundaries (I am not liking this, the code seems a little bit bloated. I am sure you could simplify X and Y. Also think of any alternative way t…

> I actually don't like _writing_ code, but enjoy reading it. I think this is one of the divides between people who like AI and people who don't. I don't mind writing code per se , but I really don't like text editing — and I've used Vim (Evil mode) and then Emacs (vanilla keybindings) for years, so it's not like I'm using bad tools; it's just too fiddly. I don't like moving text around; munging control structures fr…

I don't want to be "that guy", but I'll indulge myself.

> I think this is one of the divides between people who like AI and people who don't. I don't mind writing code per se, but I really don't like text editing — and I've used Vim (Evil mode) and then Emacs (vanilla keybindings) for years, so it's not like I'm using bad tools; it's just too fiddly.

I feel the same way (to at least some extent) about every language I've used other than Lisp. Lisp + Paredit in Emacs is the most pleasant code-wrangling experience I've ever had, because rather having to think in terms of characters or words, I'm able to think in terms of expressions. This is possible with other languages thanks to technologies like Tree-sitter, but I've found that it's only possible to do reliably in Lisp. When I do it in any other language I don't have an unshakable confidence that the wrangling commands will do exactly what I intend.

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

#485

Post by ModernMech »

jasondigitized wrote: post #473
ModernMech wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It shouldn't be even a little surprising that your impression of the result is that the code is much better looking than the impression of a more experienced developer. This really is it: AI produces bad to mediocre code. To someone who produces terrible code mediocre is an upgrade, but to someone who produces good to excellent code, mediocre is a downgrade.

Today. It produces mediocre code today. That is really it. What is the quality of that code compared to 1 year ago. What will it be in 1 year? Opus 6.5 is inevitable.

That's what they've been saying for years now. Seems like the same FSD marketing. Any day now it'll be driving across the country! Just you wait! -> Any day now it'll be replacing software developers! Just you wait! Frankly, the same people who fell for the former are falling for the latter.

Rather, to me it looks like all we're getting with additional time is marginal returns. What'll it be in 1 year? Marginally better than today, just like today is marginally better compared to a year ago. The exponential gains in performance are already over. What we're looking at now is exponentially more work for linear gains in performance.

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

#487

Post by ericbarrett »

andai wrote: post #123
reedf1 wrote: post #74

Karpathy coined the term vibecoding 11 months ago ( https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383 ). It caused quite a stir - because not only was it was a radically new concept, but fully agentic coding had only become recently possible. You've been vibe coding for two years ??

I had GPT-4 design and build a GPT-4 powered Python programmer in 2023. It was capable of self-modification and built itself out after the bootstrapping phase (where I copy pasted chunks or code based on GPT-4's instructions). It wasn't fully autonomous (the reliability was a bit low -- e.g. had to get the code out of code fences programmatically), and it wasn't fully original (I stole most of it from Auto-GPT, excep…

> GPT-4 now considers self modifying AI code to be extremely dangerous and doesn't like talking about it. Claude's safety filters began shutting down similar conversations a few months ago, suggesting the user switch to a dumber model.

I speculate that this has more to do with recent high-profile cases of self harm related to "AI psychosis" than any AGI-adjacent danger. I've read a few of the chat transcripts that have been made public in related lawsuits, and there seems to be a recurring theme of recursive or self-modifying enlightenment role-played by the LLM. Discouraging exploration of these themes would be a logical change by the vendors.

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

#488

Post by foobarchu »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #458
port11 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My dad was a machinist, apprenticed in Germany after WW2. Always somewhat overweight (5'9", 225 lbs during his "peak" years), but he could lift guys up by their belt with one arm, and pick up and move 200+ lb metal billets when he got too impatient to wheel the crane over. Even at 85 now, he's probably stronger in his arms than most 60 year olds. But I'm also not saying ALL of his co-workers were that strong, either.

Takes mass to move mass. Most of the strongest people in the world look "fat" and usually have a hefty gut. Strong and jacked are orthogonal characteristics.

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

#489

Post by smj-edison »

dfxm12 wrote: post #95
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'…

As a teacher, do you have any techniques to make sure students learn to write the code?

I'm taking CS in college right now, and when we do our projects we're required to have a editor plugin that records every change made. That way when they grade it, they see how the code evolved over time, and not just the final product. Copying and posting has very distinct editor patterns, where organically developed code tends to morph over time.

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

#490

Post by bdangubic »

smj-edison wrote: post #489
dfxm12 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a teacher, do you have any techniques to make sure students learn to write the code?

I'm taking CS in college right now, and when we do our projects we're required to have a editor plugin that records every change made. That way when they grade it, they see how the code evolved over time, and not just the final product. Copying and posting has very distinct editor patterns, where organically developed code tends to morph over time.

which editor plugin are you using?
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