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Nah, the article is generalizing from a single sample of current state, ignoring the larger trajectory (that, for AI coding, went from sci-fi to reality in two

Nah, the article is generalizing from a single sample of current state, ignoring the larger trajectory (that, for AI coding, went from sci-fi to reality in two years). Sure, the tools aren't perfect, so there's some art to using them now - which the author of TFA seems to be unaware of. Take for example: > You cannot ask these tools today to develop a performant React application. You cannot ask these tools to implement a secure user registration flow. It will choose to execute functions like is user registered on the client instead of the server. Of course you can ask them to do it. You can literally ask them to "write better code" (yes, with this exact phrase; see [0]), and you'll get better code. More performant, or more secure - it depends on specifics of the case. Or, you can ask them specifically to focus on security or performance, and you will typically get improvements on those axis. That's today. Next year, people will know how to prompt the models away from most common failure modes, and the models themselves will be further trained to avoid those same failure modes. In bringing specific problems up, TFA isn't making a convincing argument against future of "vibe coding" - it's literally helping in making it happen. -- [0] - https://minimaxir.com/2025/01/write-better-code/ https://minimaxir.com/2025/01/write-better-code/

lelandbatey 2y ago
Ah yes, the classic "we didn't have this at all 2 years ago, so we can expect a linear increase in capability 2 years from now! Trends will of course continue!" I think you're wrong. I think AI is going to stagnate and only the surrounding tooling will improve, but not enough to get us to the promised land. Arguably we already are seeing that happen. To see the supposed "this is how all code is written now" world AI proponents keep declaring, we're going to need to see improvements to the current AI where they can operate on context windows two orders of magnitude bigger than they are now, while costs for doing so also drop accordingly. Maybe that can be done, I'm betting it can't.
- PlunderBunny 2y ago
  Remember 2016/17 when we all thought we would have self-driving cars by now? People were modelling intersections without traffic lights, and talking about not needing parking space because the cars would just drive around when you weren’t in them. So much technology these days seems to be “get it to 80% so we can demo and cash out” but 80% isn’t just an arbitrary number - it seems to be the point and which the remainder of the work to finish is either very hard or (I suspect) impossible.
  - banana_dick_8 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - jryle70 2y ago
    We do have self car driving by now. No drivers. Easy to find in SF and many other cities. It's not yet available everywhere, but as the Amara's Law describes, "we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run".
    - raydev 2y ago
      > It's not yet available everywhere It's not available most anywhere. I don't know what exactly what the threshold should be, but it should be usable by most people in first world countries to make the claim "we have it". We don't have it.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        Self-driving has been long proven to be a workable idea. Yes, there's the other 90% of the work making it work reliably and safely enough in diverse environments, but we know this can be done, it's just a matter of throwing money at it. And it's not like there isn't a possible alternative either - we could be adapting roads to be much easier on self-driving cars. It's just that cooperation and coordination between humans is a way harder problem than self-driving, so it's easier to have a bunch of vendors solve the problems in tech the hard way, rather than to rely on the world to maintain roads properly. My belief is that, if full self-driving isn't becoming widely available in first world countries in 5 years, it's not going to be because of engineering problems, but rather because of legal and process issue around deploying it.
        PlunderBunny 2y ago
        I don't think we know it can be done - has anyone demonstrated a self-driving car that works in all conditions, but is prohibitively expensive in its current form? If they had, you could extrapolate and say 'it's coming as soon as the tech gets cheaper'. You can't adapt roads to fog or snow (unless you're going to enclose them in a tunnel). You can't adapt roads to pedestrians or bicycles (unless you prevent them from going near the road). Whatever adaptions you could make would be prohibitively expensive to roll out to all roads everywhere. In both the country I live in, and the USA, the government can barely afford to maintain the existing highway infrastructure. Of course it will get better, and self-driving will be more widely deployed, but I don't think you'll ever get 100% percent coverage (assuming that's what we both agree is the goal). I think in a way you're agreeing with my point - the last bit is just too hard, whether it's engineering, legal or political.
Jensson 2y ago
> Of course you can ask them to do it. You can literally ask them to "write better code" (yes, with this exact phrase; see [0]), and you'll get better code. More performant, or more secure - it depends on specifics of the case. That wasn't the requirement though. He said he wanted a performant or secure app, not "more performant" or "more secure". "more" is trivial, but actually getting to a good state is not. To actually make a larger program secure or performant you need a unified higher level architecture that is adhered to everywhere, vibe coding can't get you that. It can do some micro optimizations as you said, but it can't do these macro contexts and architecture. You can ask it for suggestions for such architectures, but you can't make it implement a full scale large app with all components using it.
jmull 2y ago
> Nah, the article is generalizing from a single sample of current state, ignoring the larger trajectory (that, for AI coding, went from sci-fi to reality in two years). You seemed to have missed the part of the article that clearly lays out the recent progression of AI coding. You’re also refuting the arguments the article makes against the future of vibe coding, but the article doesn’t make any arguments about the future of vibe coding! We all just end up talking past each other if no one is actually talking about the same thing.

lelandbatey 2y ago

Ah yes, the classic "we didn't have this at all 2 years ago, so we can expect a linear increase in capability 2 years from now! Trends will of course continue!" I think you're wrong. I think AI is going to stagnate and only the surrounding tooling will improve, but not enough to get us to the promised land. Arguably we already are seeing that happen. To see the supposed "this is how all code is written now" world AI proponents keep declaring, we're going to need to see improvements to the current AI where they can operate on context windows two orders of magnitude bigger than they are now, while costs for doing so also drop accordingly. Maybe that can be done, I'm betting it can't.

PlunderBunny 2y ago
Remember 2016/17 when we all thought we would have self-driving cars by now? People were modelling intersections without traffic lights, and talking about not needing parking space because the cars would just drive around when you weren’t in them. So much technology these days seems to be “get it to 80% so we can demo and cash out” but 80% isn’t just an arbitrary number - it seems to be the point and which the remainder of the work to finish is either very hard or (I suspect) impossible.
- banana_dick_8 2y ago
  [flagged]
- jryle70 2y ago
  We do have self car driving by now. No drivers. Easy to find in SF and many other cities. It's not yet available everywhere, but as the Amara's Law describes, "we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run".
  - raydev 2y ago
    > It's not yet available everywhere It's not available most anywhere. I don't know what exactly what the threshold should be, but it should be usable by most people in first world countries to make the claim "we have it". We don't have it.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Self-driving has been long proven to be a workable idea. Yes, there's the other 90% of the work making it work reliably and safely enough in diverse environments, but we know this can be done, it's just a matter of throwing money at it. And it's not like there isn't a possible alternative either - we could be adapting roads to be much easier on self-driving cars. It's just that cooperation and coordination between humans is a way harder problem than self-driving, so it's easier to have a bunch of vendors solve the problems in tech the hard way, rather than to rely on the world to maintain roads properly. My belief is that, if full self-driving isn't becoming widely available in first world countries in 5 years, it's not going to be because of engineering problems, but rather because of legal and process issue around deploying it.
      - PlunderBunny 2y ago
        I don't think we know it can be done - has anyone demonstrated a self-driving car that works in all conditions, but is prohibitively expensive in its current form? If they had, you could extrapolate and say 'it's coming as soon as the tech gets cheaper'. You can't adapt roads to fog or snow (unless you're going to enclose them in a tunnel). You can't adapt roads to pedestrians or bicycles (unless you prevent them from going near the road). Whatever adaptions you could make would be prohibitively expensive to roll out to all roads everywhere. In both the country I live in, and the USA, the government can barely afford to maintain the existing highway infrastructure. Of course it will get better, and self-driving will be more widely deployed, but I don't think you'll ever get 100% percent coverage (assuming that's what we both agree is the goal). I think in a way you're agreeing with my point - the last bit is just too hard, whether it's engineering, legal or political.

Jensson 2y ago

> Of course you can ask them to do it. You can literally ask them to "write better code" (yes, with this exact phrase; see [0]), and you'll get better code. More performant, or more secure - it depends on specifics of the case. That wasn't the requirement though. He said he wanted a performant or secure app, not "more performant" or "more secure". "more" is trivial, but actually getting to a good state is not. To actually make a larger program secure or performant you need a unified higher level architecture that is adhered to everywhere, vibe coding can't get you that. It can do some micro optimizations as you said, but it can't do these macro contexts and architecture. You can ask it for suggestions for such architectures, but you can't make it implement a full scale large app with all components using it.

jmull 2y ago

> Nah, the article is generalizing from a single sample of current state, ignoring the larger trajectory (that, for AI coding, went from sci-fi to reality in two years). You seemed to have missed the part of the article that clearly lays out the recent progression of AI coding. You’re also refuting the arguments the article makes against the future of vibe coding, but the article doesn’t make any arguments about the future of vibe coding! We all just end up talking past each other if no one is actually talking about the same thing.