I Will Never Use AI to Code • Hacker News Board

Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#91

Post by ok_dad » Mon, May 11, 2026, 7:44 AM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #88

ok_dad wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t agree with the presentation, but the dead comment here has a point I agree with. Most developers were shit before, and now they’re just faster at that shit. AI isn’t the cause, it’s a tool being misused. Misused at a grand scale, indeed. I don’t care, that’s literally not my problem. I can’t do anything about it, so I don’t complain, I use the tool the way that helps me without producing garbage. I can only c…

> Some guy is probably driving his car too fast and killing someone this instant, and vibe coding isn’t doing anything near as bad. Yet. Cars probably didn't kill random members of the public in the first two years of existence either. Even after their obvious dangers were understood it would be decades before pollution and the effects of roads everywhere, urbanisation and sprawl would be understood. Even though the…

What was the mistake? That cars were invented? You can’t control everything, you can’t put it back in the bottle. Do you think either of us have any control over the vibe coder type? They’re always going to be reaching for the easy button, whether that’s AI or something else.

Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#92

Post by globular-toast » Mon, May 11, 2026, 9:38 AM UTC

ok_dad wrote: post #91

globular-toast wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some guy is probably driving his car too fast and killing someone this instant, and vibe coding isn’t doing anything near as bad. Yet. Cars probably didn't kill random members of the public in the first two years of existence either. Even after their obvious dangers were understood it would be decades before pollution and the effects of roads everywhere, urbanisation and sprawl would be understood. Even though the…

What was the mistake? That cars were invented? You can’t control everything, you can’t put it back in the bottle. Do you think either of us have any control over the vibe coder type? They’re always going to be reaching for the easy button, whether that’s AI or something else.

The mistake was building our whole society around cars, letting driving become a de facto right, rather than the privilege and responsibility it should be.

What are you going to do when your government insists you use some vibe coded app to get access to healthcare? How do you feel about your family having to live in a world with vibe coded cars and drones flying around?

This is too big for us to just bury our heads in the sand. Our industry is already immature considering the impact it has on people's lives. Building regulations exist to ensure you can get a house built without it falling down. How are you going to get software built? You can't just do it all yourself.

Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#93

Post by ok_dad » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #92

ok_dad wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the mistake? That cars were invented? You can’t control everything, you can’t put it back in the bottle. Do you think either of us have any control over the vibe coder type? They’re always going to be reaching for the easy button, whether that’s AI or something else.

The mistake was building our whole society around cars, letting driving become a de facto right, rather than the privilege and responsibility it should be. What are you going to do when your government insists you use some vibe coded app to get access to healthcare? How do you feel about your family having to live in a world with vibe coded cars and drones flying around? This is too big for us to just bury our heads…

I can’t control others, what am I supposed to do? I vote, I call my congress critter, I do other stuff where I can, but I am not Sisyphus.

I am open to suggestions, I’d like to find more effective means to fight back.

Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#94

Post by nh23423fefe » Mon, May 11, 2026, 8:23 PM UTC

Anthony261 wrote: post #62

anon22981 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect people with opinions like the author’s haven’t been in a project where people use LLMs responsibly. We had a senior dev basically just prompt and push, with very little overseeing and minimal instructions, causing so many bad PRs and even prod bugs. That made me a sceptic for many months about agents. Then we started to have (myself included) people actual plan out the tasks for the bot: give good specs, go…

Nope. My point is not about the quality of the generated code, it's the fact that it was generated. No matter how good it is it will always be a liability without the accompanying asset which is the understanding produced by undertaking the effort of writing the code. Generated code is exclusively cognitive debt. It is also, by definition, legacy code since no one wrote it.

These are just bad definitions then? Not persuasive arguments. That just isn't what a liability is nor debt nor legacy.