4 ms·
If a farmer describes something as “organic” (meaning produced in a certain way without artificial fertilizers etc), a chemist sneers because to them all produc
by seanhunter 1y ago
If a farmer describes something as “organic” (meaning produced in a certain way without artificial fertilizers etc), a chemist sneers because to them all produce is organic (consisting of carbon compounds). If a chemist calls something a metal, well, to an astrophysicist everything heavier than helium is a metal.
So someone describes themselves as a “prompt engineer” and a software engineer sneers. Well, many mechanical/chemical/electrical engineers would take issue at the use of the word “engineer” from someone who can’t convert a vector between rectangular and polar coordinates, find and solve the differential equations governing the motion of a harmonic oscillator etc.
Language is dynamic and used in context and no-one really gets to hold back the tide if society decides to use words in a particular way.
- OldfieldFund 1y agoI'm getting tired of these posts. 3 on the front page in the last 24 hours? 1. Is a significant number of people claiming that vibe coding is engineering? 2. Are people vibe coding in serious companies/on serious projects? 3. Are true engineers getting replaced by vibe coders? 4. Are we holding a prototype for a social app for dog walkers to the same standard as the persistence layer for a bank? 5. If a vibe coder's PR gets merged into a critical system, isn't that a catastrophic failure of code review, automated testing, and senior oversight? This whole vibe coding panic feels like experienced engineers complaining that junior engineers are, well, junior. The entire point of a career is to move from 'what works' (vibes) to 'why it works' (first principles).