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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

#521

Post by smj-edison »

bdangubic wrote: post #490
smj-edison wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I looked to see if BYU had made the source code available, but it doesn't look like they've published it. It's called code recorder, and before we do an assignment we have to enable recording. It generates a .json file that lists every single edit made in terms of a textual diff. They must have some sort of tool that reconstructs it when they grade. Sorry I don't know more!

Edit: I expect it wouldn't be super hard to create though, you'd just have to hook into the editor's change event, probably compute the diff to make sure you don't lose anything, and then append it to the end of the json.

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

#522

Post by kcexn »

As people get more comfortable with AI. I think what everyone is noticing is that AI is terrible at solving problems that don't have large amounts of readily available training data. So, basically if there isn't already an open-source solution available online, it can't do it.

If what you're doing is proprietary, or even a little bit novel. There is a really good chance that AI will screw it up. After all, how can it possibly know how to solve a problem it has never seen before?

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

#523

Post by TuringNYC »

orev wrote: post #27
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'…

It’s like weightlifting: sure you can use a forklift to do it, but if the goal is to build up your own strength, using the forklift isn’t going to get you there. This is the ultimate problem with AI in academia. We all inherently know that “no pain no gain” is true for physical tasks, but the same is true for learning. Struggling through the new concepts is essentially the point of it, not just the end result. Of cou…

> This is the ultimate problem with AI in academia. We all inherently know that “no pain no gain” is true for physical tasks, but the same is true for learning. Struggling through the new concepts is essentially the point of it, not just the end result.

OK but then why even use Python, or C, or anything but Assembly? Isn't AI just another layer of value-add?

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

#524

Post by abyesilyurt »

steviedotboston wrote: post #78
mossTechnician wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub copilot was released in 2021, and Cursor was released around October 2023[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37888477

was github copilot LLM based in 2021? I thought the first version was something more rudimentary

gpt-3 afaik

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

#525

Post by permo-w »

simonw wrote: post #9

> Not only does an agent not have the ability to evolve a specification over a multi-week period as it builds out its lower components, it also makes decisions upfront that it later doesn’t deviate from. That's your job. The great thing about coding agents is that you can tell them "change of design: all API interactions need to go through a new single class that does authentication and retries and rate-limit throttl…

it's not short-sighted, it's virtue signalling

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

#526

Post by saulpw »

TuringNYC wrote: post #523
orev wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like weightlifting: sure you can use a forklift to do it, but if the goal is to build up your own strength, using the forklift isn’t going to get you there. This is the ultimate problem with AI in academia. We all inherently know that “no pain no gain” is true for physical tasks, but the same is true for learning. Struggling through the new concepts is essentially the point of it, not just the end result. Of cou…

> This is the ultimate problem with AI in academia. We all inherently know that “no pain no gain” is true for physical tasks, but the same is true for learning. Struggling through the new concepts is essentially the point of it, not just the end result. OK but then why even use Python, or C, or anything but Assembly? Isn't AI just another layer of value-add?

No, because AI is not deterministic. All those other tools are intentionally isomorphic with machine code, even if there's a lot of optimization going on under the hood. AI may generate code that's isomorphic with your prompt, but it also may not. And you have no way of telling the difference besides reading and understanding the code.

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

#529

Post by habinero »

xnx wrote: post #479
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'…

> You CAN'T let the machines write the code People said this about compilers. It depends what layer you care to learn/focus on. AI at least gives us the option to move up another level.

Compilers are deterministic and have predictable, dependable behavior. And people can and do still write lower level code when it matters, because they understand when it matters.

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

#530

Post by habinero »

bstar77 wrote: post #379
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'…

Completely disagree. It’s like telling typists that they need to hand write to truly understand their craft. Syntax is just a way of communicating a concept to the machine. We now have a new (and admitidly imperfect) way of doing that. New skills are going to be required. Computer science is going to have to adapt.

No, it's like telling typists they need to know how to read. Very different lol.
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