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Breaking the spell of vibe coding

fast.ai

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Re: Breaking the spell of vibe coding

#61

Post by CBarkleyU »

lazystar wrote: post #27

i used to lose hours each day to typos, linting issues, bracket-instead-of-curly-bracket, 'was it the first parameter or the second parameter', looking up accumulator/anonymous function callback syntax AGAIN... idk what ya'll are doing with AI, and i dont really care. i can finally - fiiinally - stay focused on the problem im trying to solve for more than 5 minutes.

With all due respect, but if you actually wasted hours (multiple) each (!) day on those issues, then yeah, I can fully believe that AI assisted coding 10 or even 100x'd you.

Re: Breaking the spell of vibe coding

#62

Post by daxfohl »

mgraczyk wrote: post #45
daxfohl wrote: post #7

I think it all boils down to, which is higher risk, using AI too much, or using AI too little? Right now I see the former as being hugely risky. Hallucinated bugs, coaxed into dead-end architectures, security concerns, not being familiar with the code when a bug shows up in production, less sense of ownership, less hands-on learning, etc. This is true both at the personal level and at the business level. (And astound…

Even if you believe that many are too far on one side now, you have to account for the fact that AI will get better rapidly. If you're not using it now you may end up lacking preparation when it becomes more valuable

But as it gets better, it'll also get easier, be built into existing products you already use, etc. So I wouldn't worry too much about that aspect. If you enjoy tinkering, or really want to dive deep into fundamentals, that's one thing, but I wouldn't worry too much about "learning to use some tool", as fast as things are changing.

Re: Breaking the spell of vibe coding

#63

Post by mgraczyk »

daxfohl wrote: post #62
mgraczyk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you believe that many are too far on one side now, you have to account for the fact that AI will get better rapidly. If you're not using it now you may end up lacking preparation when it becomes more valuable

But as it gets better, it'll also get easier, be built into existing products you already use, etc. So I wouldn't worry too much about that aspect. If you enjoy tinkering, or really want to dive deep into fundamentals, that's one thing, but I wouldn't worry too much about "learning to use some tool", as fast as things are changing.

I don't think so. That's a good point but the capability has been outpacing people's ability to use it for a while and that will continue.

Put another way, the ability to use AI became an important factor in overall software engineering ability this year, and as the year goes on the gap between the best and worst users or AI will widen faster because the models will outpace the harnesses

Re: Breaking the spell of vibe coding

#64

Post by daxfohl »

runarberg wrote: post #31
daxfohl wrote: post #7

I think it all boils down to, which is higher risk, using AI too much, or using AI too little? Right now I see the former as being hugely risky. Hallucinated bugs, coaxed into dead-end architectures, security concerns, not being familiar with the code when a bug shows up in production, less sense of ownership, less hands-on learning, etc. This is true both at the personal level and at the business level. (And astound…

This is basically Pascal’s wager. However, unlike the original Pascal’s wager, yours actually sounds sound. Another good alike wager I remember is: “What if climate change is a hoax, and we invested in all this clean energy infrastructure for nothing” .

Interesting analogy, but I'd say it's kind of the opposite. In the two you mentioned, the cost of inaction is extremely high, so they reach one conclusion, whereas here the argument is that the cost of inaction is pretty low, and reaches the opposite conclusion.

Re: Breaking the spell of vibe coding

#65

Post by logicprog »

samename wrote: post #58
logicprog wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't struggling to get enough sleep or shower enough and so on because you're so involved with the process of, you know, programming, especially interactive, exploratory programming with an immediate feedback loop, kind of a known phenomenon for programmers since essentially the dawn of interactive computing?

Using agents trigger different dopamine patterns, I'd compare it to a slot machine: did it execute it according to plan or did it make a fatal flaw? Also, multiple agents can run at once, which is a workflow for many developers. The work essentially doesn't come to a pausing point.

> did it execute it according to plan or did it [have] a fatal flaw?

That's most code when you're still working on it, no?

> Also, multiple agents can run at once, which is a workflow for many developers. The work essentially doesn't come to a pausing point.

Yeah the agent swarm approach sounds unsurvivably stressful to me lol

Re: Breaking the spell of vibe coding

#66

Post by [deleted] »

mprast wrote: post #53
daxfohl wrote: post #7

I think it all boils down to, which is higher risk, using AI too much, or using AI too little? Right now I see the former as being hugely risky. Hallucinated bugs, coaxed into dead-end architectures, security concerns, not being familiar with the code when a bug shows up in production, less sense of ownership, less hands-on learning, etc. This is true both at the personal level and at the business level. (And astound…

It's very interesting to me how many people presume that if you don't learn how to vibecode now you'll never ever be able to catch up. If the models are constantly getting better, won't these tools be easier to use a year from now? Will model improvements not obviate all the byzantine prompting strategies we have to use today?

[deleted]

Re: Breaking the spell of vibe coding

#67

Post by wavemode »

daxfohl wrote: post #7

I think it all boils down to, which is higher risk, using AI too much, or using AI too little? Right now I see the former as being hugely risky. Hallucinated bugs, coaxed into dead-end architectures, security concerns, not being familiar with the code when a bug shows up in production, less sense of ownership, less hands-on learning, etc. This is true both at the personal level and at the business level. (And astound…

> I think it all boils down to, which is higher risk, using AI too much, or using AI too little?

This framing is exactly how lots of people in the industry are thinking about AI right now, but I think it's wrong.

The way to adopt new science, new technology, new anything really, has always been that you validate it for small use cases, then expand usage from there. Test on mice, test in clinical trials, then go to market. There's no need to speculate about "too much" or "too little" usage. The right amount of usage is knowable - it's the amount which you've validated will actually work for your use case, in your industry, for your product and business.

The fact that AI discourse has devolved into a Pascal's Wager is saddening to see. And when people frame it this way in earnest, 100% of the time they're trying to sell me something.

Re: Breaking the spell of vibe coding

#68

Post by jph00 »

nkmnz wrote: post #32

> A study from METR found that when developers used AI tools, they estimated that they were working 20% faster, yet in reality they worked 19% slower. That is nearly a 40% difference between perceived and actual times! It’s not. It’s either 33% slower than perceived or perception overestimates speed by 50%. I don’t know how to trust the author if stuff like this is wrong.

> I don’t know how to trust the author if stuff like this is wrong.

She's not wrong.

A good way to do this calculation is with the log-ratio, a centered measure of proportional difference. It's symmetric, and widely used in economics and statistics for exactly this reason. I.e:

ln⁡(1.2/0.81) = ln⁡(1.2)-ln⁡(0.81) ≈ 0.393

That's nearly 40%, as the post says.

Re: Breaking the spell of vibe coding

#69

Post by fao_ »

daxfohl wrote: post #21
_se wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very reasonable take. The fact that this is being downvoted really shows how poor HN's collective critical thinking has become. Silicon Valley is cannibalizing itself and it's pretty funny to watch from the outside with a clear head.

I think it's like the California gold rush. Anybody and their brother can go out and dig, but the real money is in selling the shovels.

I don't think this is the case, because the AI companies are all just shuffling around the same 300 million or trillion to each other.

Re: Breaking the spell of vibe coding

#70

Post by jph00 »

regular_trash wrote: post #33
nkmnz wrote: post #32

> A study from METR found that when developers used AI tools, they estimated that they were working 20% faster, yet in reality they worked 19% slower. That is nearly a 40% difference between perceived and actual times! It’s not. It’s either 33% slower than perceived or perception overestimates speed by 50%. I don’t know how to trust the author if stuff like this is wrong.

Can you elaborate? This seems like a simple mistake if they are incorrect, I'm not sure where 33% or 50% come from here.

It's not a mistake. It's correct, and is a excellent way to present this information.
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