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Counterpoint: AI has help me refactor things where I normally couldn’t. Things like extracting some common structure that’s present in a slightly different way
by torben-friis 1y ago
Counterpoint: AI has help me refactor things where I normally couldn’t. Things like extracting some common structure that’s present in a slightly different way in 30 places, where cursor detects it, or suggesting potential for a certain pattern.
The problem with vibe coding is more behavioral I think: the person more likely to jump in the bandwagon to avoid writing some code themselves is probably not the one thinking about long term architecture and craftsmanship. It’s a laziness enhancer.
- codr7 1y agoAnd once AI is not there anymore, you're back on square one. It only looks effective if you remove learning from the equation. It's the wrong tool for the job, that's what it is.
- swat535 1y agoHow is it the wrong tool for the job? In this particular case it's excellent, it can help you find proper abstractions.. without them you wouldn't realize. I kind of view this use case as enhanced code linters
- thejazzman 1y agoIf that's how engineers used it, sure, but instead many pretend they're brilliant by committing 10k lines they don't understand. I quit my last very good job because I became so fed up with this situation. It was bad enough before the CTO started using LLMs. It was ABSURD after. (This was a YC company that sold quickly after I quit, at a loss, presumably because they didn't know what else to do)
- mattfca 1y agothe classification of a tool being right for the job does not depend on how people use it someone holding a hammer by the head and failing at getting the nail in doesnt mean a hammer is a bad tool for nailing
- thejazzman 1y ago> If that's how engineers used it, sure No part of what I said suggested the tool wasn't capable of being a useful tool.
- dabockster 1y ago> It only looks effective if you remove learning from the equation. It's effective on things that would take months/years to learn, if someone could reasonably learn it on their own at all. I tried vibe coding a Java program as if I was pair programming with an AI, and I encountered some very "Java" issues that I would not have even had the opportunity to get experience in unless I was lucky enough to work on a Fortune 500 Java codebase. AI doesn't work in a waterfall environment. You have to be able to rapidly iterate, sometimes in a matter of hours, without bias and/or emotional attachment.
- Jensson 1y ago> AI doesn't work in a waterfall environment. You have to be able to rapidly iterate, sometimes in a matter of hours, without bias and/or emotional attachment. What do you mean? There is no difference between waterfall or agile in what you do during a few hours.
- lawgimenez 1y agoI just came out from a cave, what is this vibe coding?
- RossBencina 1y agoA form of coding by proxy, where the developer instructs (in English prose) an LLM software development agent (e.g. cursor IDE, aider) to write the code, with the defining attribute that the developer never reviews the code that was written.
- dabockster 1y agoI review my vibe code, even if it’s just skimming it for linter errors. But yeah, the meme is that people are apparently force pushing what ever gets spat out by an LLM without checking it.
- layer8 1y agoVibe coding is instructing AI to create/modify an application without yourself looking at or understanding the code. You just go by the "vibe" of how the running application behaves.
- raincole 1y ago> And once AI is not there anymore Do you expect an incoming collapse of modern society? That's the only case where LLM would be "not there anymore." Even if this current hype train dies completely, there will still businesses providing LLM interference, just far less new models. Thinking LLM would be "not there anymore" is even more delusional than thinking programmer as a job would cease to exist due to LLM.
- greesil 1y agoWhat do you think is going to happen when management is pushing on deadlines?
- winrid 1y agoYou're more likely to meet the deadline and refactoring it later is easier, obviously depending on various factors...
- torben-friis 1y agoThe same thing as always: either a strong tech voice convinces them to invest the required time or corners are cut and we all cry later. But I don’t see how that is made better or worse by AI.
- podviaznikov 1y ago100% this. I did this many times too. Often I wouldn’t bother with cleanup or refactor before, but now it’s way easier, faster and cheaper to do it. And it’s better in the long run.
- soraminazuki 1y agoAny actual evidence of it being better? Because publicly available evidence points to the contrary, where it repeatedly fails to complete the most basic of tasks. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44050152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44050152
- guappa 1y agoIt's better than him.
- bwfan123 1y agoThis is just not being reported yet in mainstream media. ie, that the emperor is only wearing undergarments (he is not fully naked). Part of the reason is that the reporters are themselves not in the trenches coding to be skeptical of the claims they hear.
- podviaznikov 1y agoI meant "better for me on the projects in the long run, since I can do refactoring cheaper"
- winrid 1y agoI have the same observation. I've been able to improve things I just didn't have the energy to do for a while. But if you're gonna be lazy, it will multiply the bad.
- guappa 1y agoYesterday I searched how to fix some windows issue, google AI told me to create a new registry key as a 32 bit value and write a certain string in there.
- winrid 1y agoGoogle's search LLM I think is not very good.
- protocolture 1y agoRecent example. Trying to get some third party hardware working with raspi The hardware provider provides 2 separate code bases with separate documentation but only supports the latest one. I literally had to force feed the newer code base into ChatGPT, and then feed in working example code to get it going, else it constantly reference the wrong methods. If I just kept going Code / output / repeat it would maybe have stumbled on the answer but it was way off.
- redtaperat 1y agoThis is one of several shortcomings I’ve encountered in all major LLMs. The llm has consumed multiple versions of SDKs from the same manufacturer and cannot tell them apart. Mixing up apis, methods, macros, etc. Worse is that for more esoteric code with fewer samples, or more wrong than right answers in the corpus means always getting broken code. I had this issue working on some NXP embedded code.
- dpkirchner 1y agoHuman sites are also really bad about mixing content from old and new versions. SO to this day still does not have a version field you can use to filter results or more precisely target questions.
- disqard 1y agoI'll quote one of the wisest people in tech I know of, Kentaro Toyama: "Technology acts as an amplifier of human intentions" ...so, if someone is just doing a sloppy job, AI-assisted vibe coding will enable them to do it faster.
- redtaperat 1y agoFrom bill cosby’s “Himself” live standup recording from the early 1980s: “Cocaine intensifies your personality … but what if you’re an asshole?”
- makeitdouble 1y ago> AI has help me refactor things where I normally couldn’t. Reading "couldn't" as, you would technically not be able to do it because of the complexity or intricacy of the problem, how did you guarantee that the change offered by the AI made proper sense and didn't leave out critical patterns that were too complex for you to detect ? Your comment makes it sound like you're now dependent on AI to refactor again if dire consequences are detected way down the line (in a few months for instance), and the problem space is already just not graspable by a mere human. Which sounds really bad if that's the case.
- firecall 1y agoThat's an important distinction! There's a difference between not intellectually understanding something and not being able to refactor something because if you start pulling on a thread, you are not sure what will unravel! And often there just isn't time allocated in a budget to begin an unlimited game of bug testing whack-a-mole!
- OccamsMirror 1y agoTo makeitdouble's point, how is this any different with an LLM provided solution? What confidence do you have that isn't also beginning an unlimited game of bug testing whack-a-mole? My confidence in LLMs is not that high and I use Claude a lot. The limitations are very apparent very quickly. They're great for simple refactors and doing some busy work, but if you're refactoring something you're too afraid to do by hand then I fear you've simply deferred responsibility to the LLM - assuming it will understand the code better than you do, which seems foolhardy.
- rocqua 1y agoEspecially with refactoring, it tends to be tedious and repetitive work that is slightly too complicated for a (regex) search replace. A lot of repetitive slight variations on the same easy to describe change sounds pretty good to ask an LLM to do quickly.
- pshc 1y ago
- adonese 1y agoIs cursor _that_ good on monorepo? My use with AI so far has been the chat interface. I provide a clear description of what i want and manually copy paste it. Using copilot, I couldn't buy their agentic mode nor adding files to the chat' session context. Gemini' large context has been really good handling large context, but still doesn't help much in refactoring.
- Aeolun 1y agoIf you can feed it the right context. Though I’m sure it’s more the model than Cursor doing the work. Cursor just makes it easy to apply and review.
- torben-friis 1y agoCursor is good as retrieving the appropriate context and baking it into your request, which significantly improves responses and reduces friction. It sometimes pulls generic config or other stuff that I might miss to include in a first attempt
- throwaway2037 1y ago> Counterpoint: AI has help me refactor things where I normally couldn’t. Things like extracting some common structure that’s present in a slightly different way in 30 places, where cursor detects it, or suggesting potential for a certain pattern. I have a feeling this post is going to get a lot of backlash, but I think this is a very good counterpoint. To be clear: I am not here to shill for LLMs nor vibe coding. This is a good example where an "all seeing" LLM can be helpful. Whether or not you choose to accept the recommendation from the LLM isn't my main point. The LLM making you aware is the key value here. Recently, I was listening to a podcast about realistic real world uses for an LLM. One of them was a law firm trying to review details of a case to determine a strategy. One of podcasters (sp?) recoiled in horror: "An LLM is writing your briefs?" They replied: "No, no. We use it generate ideas. Then, we select best." It was experts (lawyers, in this case) using an LLM as a tool.
- bamboozled 1y agoI've found it can help one get the confidence to get started, but there are limits and there is a point where a lack of domain knowledge and a desired target (sane) architecture will bight you hard. You can have AI almost generated anything, but even AI has limited to understanding requirements, if you cannot articulate what you want very precisely, it's difficult to get "AI" to help you with that.
- jajko 1y agoIf you couldnt do the task youself (a very loaded statement which I honestly dont't believe), how could you even validate what llm did was correct, didnt miss anything, didnt introduce a nasty corner case bug etc? In any case a very rare and specific corner case you mention, a dev can go on a decade or two (or lifetime or two) without ever experiencing similar requirement. If it should be a convincing argument for almighty llm it certainly isnt.