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Web development is fun again

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Re: Web development is fun again

#601

Post by cthalupa »

spankibalt wrote: post #405
jimbokun wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s possible to be someone who’s very good at writing quality programs but still enjoy delegating as much of that as possible to AI to focus on other things.

> "It’s possible to be someone who’s very good at writing quality programs but still enjoy delegating as much of that as possible to AI to focus on other things." That's true, Jimbo. And besides the point, because: 1. It wasn't about someone who's very good at writing quality programs, but someone who perceives themselves as someone who "is not the man who can build working programs". Do you comprehend the difference…

> 1. It wasn't about someone who's very good at writing quality programs, but someone who perceives themselves as someone who "is not the man who can build working programs". Do you comprehend the difference?

For someone who has taken heavy enjoyment in likening people to analphabets you seem to have entirely misunderstood (or if you understood, heavily misconstrued) the initial point of the person you are responding to.

The entire point is that their identity WAS someone who is the man who can build those programs, and now AI was threatening to do the same thing.

Unless you a presupposing that anyone who can be happy with the output of LLMs for writing code simply is impossible of having the ability to write quality code themselves. Which would be silly.

Re: Web development is fun again

#602

Post by CoolestBeans »

I personally don't find using LLMs "fun" but I do like this article for one simple reason. It points out that most contemporary frameworks for web are forms of slop and I don't think you should feel bad using an LLM to generate slop code and config to deal with it.

Re: Web development is fun again

#603

Post by dcre »

codr7 wrote: post #572
dcre wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just not true. I have wasted many hours looking for answers to hard-to-phrase questions and learned very little from the process. If an LLM can get me the same result in 30 seconds, it's very hard for me to see that as a bad thing. It just means I can spend more time thinking about the thing I want to be thinking about. I think to some extent people are valorizing suffering itself.

Learning means friction, it's not going to happen any other way.

I agree! I just don’t think the friction has to come from tediously trawling through a bunch of web pages that don’t contain the answer to your question.

Re: Web development is fun again

#604

Post by johnfn »

misiek08 wrote: post #471
johnfn wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you’re just saying “you should spend time on things which are valuable”. Isn’t that obvious?

Not so sure these days tbh. People are trying to shove as much shiny tools as possible instead of sometimes writing 10 vanilla JS lines and proceed to next feature or project. Maybe it’s already exhausted, but left-pad, is-odd, is-even are still my examples for people.

You seem to be lumping left-pad together with unit tests and build tools like typescript, then saying they are all bad because left-pad is bad.

Re: Web development is fun again

#605

Post by munksbeer »

int_19h wrote: post #349
munksbeer wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point no-one is going to have to argue about this. I'm guessing a bit here, but my guess is that within 5 years, in 90%+ jobs, if you're not using an AI assistant to code, you're going to be losing out on jobs. At that point, the argument over whether they're crap or not is done. I say this as someone who has been extremely sceptical over their ability to code in deep, complicated scenarios, but lately, claud…

> At that point, the argument over whether they're crap or not is done. Not really, it just transforms into a question of how many of those jobs are meaningful anyway, or more precisely, how much output from them is meaningful.

I don't agree. I've recently started using claude more than dabbling and I'm getting good use out of it.

Not every task will be suitable at the moment, but many are. Give claude lots of direction (I've been creating instructions.txt files) and iterate on those. Ask claude to generate a plan and write it out to a file. Read the file, correct what needs correcting, then get it to implement. It works pretty well, you'll probably be surprised. I'm still doing a lot of thought work, but claude is writing a lot of the actual code.

Re: Web development is fun again

#606

Post by jimbokun »

TuringTest wrote: post #589
jimbokun wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like someone who enjoys listening to music but not composing or performing music.

Or someone who enjoys playing music but not building their own instrument from scratch.

No.

Building the instrument would be electrical engineering.

Playing the instrument would be writing software.

Re: Web development is fun again

#607

Post by jimbokun »

jiveturkey wrote: post #533
ben_w wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is whether or not you find computers interesting and enjoy understanding how they work. I'm a stereotypical nerd, into learning for its own sake. I can explain computers from the quantum mechanics of band gaps in semiconductors up to fudging objects into C and the basics of operating systems with pre-emptive multitasking, virtual memory, and copy-on-write as they were c. 2004. Further up the stack it…

So, can you tell me everything that happens after you type www.google.com into the browser? ;)

Curious if anyone has turned answering this question into an entire book, because it could be a great read.

Re: Web development is fun again

#608

Post by spankibalt »

cthalupa wrote: post #600
spankibalt wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't "create" the pissing contest, I merely pointed it out in someone else's drivel. And of course, these labels are important to me for (precise) language defines the boundaries of my world; coder vs. non-coder, medico vs. quack, writer vs. analphabet, truth vs. lie, etc. Elementary.

I find it quite interesting that you categorize non-coders the same as quacks, analphabets, and lies. I would never consider myself a coder - though I can and have written quite a lot of code over the years - because it has always been a means to the ends for me. I don't particularly enjoy writing code. Programming isn't a passion. I can and have built working programs without a line of copy and pasted code off stack…

> "I find it quite interesting that you categorize non-coders the same as quacks, analphabets, and lies."

I categorized them not as "the same", but as examples of concept-delineating polar opposites. This as answer to somebody who essentially trotted out the "but they're just labels!1!!" line, which was already considered intellectually lazy before it was turned into a sad meme by people who married their bongs back in the 90s.

> "I would never consider myself a coder - though I can and have written quite a lot of code over the years [...]"

Good for you. A coder, to me, is simply somebody who can produce working programs on their own and has the neccessary occupational (self-) respect. This fans out into several degrees of capabilities, of course.

> "[...] but you called someone who claims to have written plenty of code themselves a coding-illiterate just because now they'd rather use an LLM than do it themselves. "

No. I simply answered this one question:

> “If I’m not the man who can [...] build working programs… WHO AM I?”

Aside from that I reflected on an insulting(ly daft) but extremely common attitude amongst sloperators, especially on parasocial media platforms:

> "As it turns out, writing code isn’t super useful."

Imagine I go to some other SIG to say shit like this: As it turns out, [reading and writing words/playing or operating an instrument or tool/drawing/calculating/...] isn’t "super useful". Suckers!

I'd expect to get properly mocked and then banned.

> "You basically took some people talking about their own opinions on what they find enjoyable, [...]"

Congratulations, you're just the next strawmen salesman. For the last time, bambini: I don't care if this guy uses LLMs and enjoys it... for that was never the focus of my argument at all.

Re: Web development is fun again

#609

Post by visarga »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #546
visarga wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why train to pedal fast when we already got motorcycles? You are preparing for yesterday's needs. There will never be a time when we need to solve this manually like it's 2019. Even in 2019 we would probably have used Google, solving was already based on extensive web resources. While in 1995 you would really have needed to do it manually. Instead of manual coding training your time is better invested in learning to…

> Instead of manual coding training your time is better invested in learning to channel coding agents All channelling is broken when the model is updated. Being knowledgeable about the foibles of a particular model release is a waste of time. > how to test code to our satisfaction Sure testing has value. > how to know if what AI did was any good This is what code review is for. > Testing without manual review, becaus…

> This is what code review is for.

My point is that visual inspection of code is just "vibe testing", and you can't reproduce it. Even you yourself, 6 months later, can't fully repeat the vibe check "LGTM" signal. That is why the proper form is a code test.

Re: Web development is fun again

#610

Post by visarga »

ben_w wrote: post #521
visarga wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why train to pedal fast when we already got motorcycles? You are preparing for yesterday's needs. There will never be a time when we need to solve this manually like it's 2019. Even in 2019 we would probably have used Google, solving was already based on extensive web resources. While in 1995 you would really have needed to do it manually. Instead of manual coding training your time is better invested in learning to…

Yes and no. Yes, I recon coding is dead. No, that doesn't mean there's nothing to learn. People like to make comparisons to calculators rendering mental arithmetic obsolete, so here's an anecdote: First year of university, I went to a local store and picked up three items each costing less than £1, the cashier rang up a total of more than £3 (I'd calculated the exact total and pre-prepared the change before reaching…

> But if I didn't already have experience of code review, I'd be limited to vibe-coding (by the original definition, not even checking).

Code review done visually is "just vibe testing" in my book. It is not something you can reproduce, it depends on the context in your head this moment. So we need actual code tests. Relying on "Looks Good To Me" is hand waving, code smell level testing.

We are discussing vibe coding but the problem is actually vibe testing. You don't even need to be in the AI age to vibe test, it's how we always did it when manually reviewing code. And in this age it means "walking your motorcycle" speed, we need to automate this by more extensive code tests.

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