6 ms·

There seems to be two camps of people: those who love the coding and those who love delivering value/solutions. I am in the latter camp. The happy consumer and

There seems to be two camps of people: those who love the coding and those who love delivering value/solutions. I am in the latter camp. The happy consumer and the polished product is what gives me satisfaction, the code is just really a vehicle from A to B. It’s a shame for anyone in the first camp who wants a career.

czpl 9mo ago
polished product, and LLM generated code should not be put in the same conversation.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- solumunus 9mo ago
  You're simply wrong and it will become obvious in time.
  - czpl 9mo ago
    I'll believe it when I see it. So far time has shown the opposite is true.
vanillameow 9mo ago
If you really want to deliver polished products, you still have to manually review the code. When I tried actually "vibecoding" something, I got exhausted so fast by trying to keep up with the metric tons of code output by the AI. I think most developers agree that reviewing other people's code is more exhausting mentally than writing your own. So I doubt those who see coding as too mentally straining will take the time to fully review AI written code. More likely that step is just skipped and replaced with thoughts and prayers.
- solumunus 9mo ago
  I do manually review. I don't think the quality of my output has reduced even slightly. I'm just able to do much more. I deliver features more quickly, and I'm making more money, so of course I'm happy. If there was no money in programming I wouldn't be doing it, I think that's the major distinction. I barely have any understanding of how a CPU works, I don't care. I build stuff and people are very happy with what I build and pay me money for it...
exceptione 9mo ago
Agree with those 2 camps. The latter camp is all cheered up which is nice, but they should be asking the question if their solution is valuable enough to be maintained. If so, you should make all generated code your code, exactly in the form it needs to be according to your deep expertise. If not, congratulations, you have invented throw-away code. Code of conduct: don't throw this code at people from the former camp. Or to phrase it more succinctly: if you are in camp 2 but don't have the passion of camp 1, you are a threat for the long term. The reverse is dangerous too, but can be offset to a certain extent with good product management.
- closewith 9mo ago
  > If so, you should make all generated code your code, exactly in the form it needs to be according to your deep expertise. Is this also true of all third party code used by their solution? Should they make all libraries and APIs they use their own in exactly in the form it needs to be according to their deep expertise? If not, why not? If so, does this extend to the rest of the stack? Interpreters, OSes, drivers? If not, why not?
  - karmakurtisaani 9mo ago
    No. They don't need to maintain, debug and extend those libraries.
    - closewith 9mo ago
      Well, what if one becomes unmaintained or has issues that only affect your project. Why is that uncontrolled code different to generated code? Is it specifically that it's generated? This isn't a trick question, BTW. It's a genuine attempt to get to the rationale behind your (and the GP's) stance on this. In particular, the GP said: > Or to phrase it more succinctly: if you are in camp 2 but don't have the passion of camp 1, you are a threat for the long term. That hints I think at their rationale, that their stance is based on placing importance on the parts of software development that they enjoy, rather than any logical basis.
bitwize 9mo ago
As a professional, your job is to deliver value and solutions. It used to be that you could do this by writing code. AI changes this calculus because if the machine can write the code instead, the value you deliver by writing it yourself is greatly diminished.
000ooo000 9mo ago
This false dichotomy comes up from time to time, that you either like dicking around with code in your basement or you like being a big boy with your business pants on delivering the world's 8000th online PDF tools site. It's tired. Please let it die.
- lioeters 9mo ago
  "There are two kinds of programmers: those who love making programs, and those who love making money. I'm in the latter group."
  - solumunus 9mo ago
    Pretty much. But I like making money THIS way. Other ways would be fine, but I enjoy this immensely.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- solumunus 9mo ago
  It's not that extreme. There are people who would code whether it was their career or not, I'm not one of those people. I fell into software development in order to make money, if the money stopped then I would stop. I love building and selling products, if I can't do that then I have no interest in programming. I'm interested in machines, CPU's, etc. I'm interested in products, liaising with customers, delivering solutions, improving things for users, etc. You think there is no distinction there? Again, there are people who code for fun, I'm simply not one of them...
  - blibble 9mo ago
    why are you on a hacker forum then? maybe "MBA news" would be better suited?
bpev 9mo ago
I've also noticed a kind of grouping like this. I've described them as the "Builders" and the "Solvers". Where the former enjoys the construction aspect of the code more, and the latter enjoys the problem/puzzle-solving aspect of code more. I guess it's more of a scale than a binary, since everyone's got a bit of both, but I think I agree that AI is more fun for the builders.
latexr 9mo ago
> those who love delivering value/solutions. This is such marketing speak. The words mean nothing, they’re just a vague amalgamation of feelings. “Vibes”, if you will. If you “love delivering value and solutions”, go donate and volunteer at a food bank, there’s no need for code at any point. > The happy consumer and the polished product More marketing speak. If you are using LLMs to write your code, by definition your product isn’t “polished”. Polishing means pouring over every detail with care to ensure perfection. Letting an LLM spit out code you just accept is not it. The word you’re looking for is “shiny”, meaning that it looks good at a glance but may or may not be worth anything.
- matwood 9mo ago
  It’s not marketing speak, but it’s rarely 100 percent one or the other. > More marketing speak. If you are using LLMs to write your code, by definition your product isn’t “polished”. This doesn’t make any sense. Polished to who? The end user? You can absolutely use AI to polish the user experience. Whether coding by hand or AI the most important aspect of polish is having someone who cares.
- deleted 9mo ago
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    - deleted 9mo ago
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- closewith 9mo ago
  > This is such marketing speak. The words mean nothing, they’re just a vague amalgamation of feelings. “Vibes”, if you will. I actually think this reveals more about you than you might realise. A _lot_ of people enjoy being able to help people resolve problems with their skills. Delivering value is marketing speak, but it's specifically helping people in ways that's valuable. A lot of people who work in software are internally motivated by this. The act of producing code may (or may not be) also enjoyable, but the ultimate internal motivation is to hand over something that helps others (and the external motivation is obviously dollars and cents). There is also a subset of people who enjoy the process of writing code for its own sake, but it's a minority of developers (and dropping all the time as tooling - including LLMs - opens development to more people). > If you are using LLMs to write your code, by definition your product isn’t “polished”. Polishing means pouring over every detail with care to ensure perfection. You can say the same thing about libraries, interpreters, OSes, compilers, microcode, assembly. If you're not flipping bits directly in CPU registers, your not pouring over every little detail to ensure perfection. The only difference between you and the vibe coder who's never written a single LoC is the level of abstraction you're working at. Edit: > If you “love delivering value and solutions”, go donate and volunteer at a food bank, there’s no need for code at any point. I also think this says maybe a lot about you, also, as many people also donate their time and efforts to others. I think it may be worth some self-reflection to see whether your cynicism has become nihilism.
philipwhiuk 9mo ago
They're not that binary. I like using my software engineering skills to solve people's problems. I don't do coding for it's own sake - there's always a thing I'm trying to implement for someone.
Eufrat 9mo ago
You’re forcing a binary choice here. I think for a lot of minor things, having AI generate stuff is okay, but it’s rather astounding how verbose and sometimes bizarre the code is. It mostly works, but it can be hard to read. What I’m reading from a lot of people is that they’re enjoying coding again because they don’t have to deal with the stuff they don’t want to do, which...I mean, that’s just it isn’t it? Everyone wants to work on what they enjoy, but that’s not how most things work. Another problem is that if you just let the AI do a lot of the foundational stuff and only focus on the stuff that you’re interested in, you sometimes just miss giant pieces of important context. I’ve tried reading AI driven code, sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it’s just unextensible nonsense that superficially works. This isn’t tech that should replace anything and needs to be monitored judiciously. It can have value, but what I suspect is going to happen is we are going to have a field day with people fixing and dealing with ridiculous security holes for the next decade after this irrational exuberance goes away. It should be used in the same way that any other ML technique should be. Judiciously and in a specific use case. Said another way, if these models are the future of general programming, where are the apps already? We’re years into this and where are they? We have no actual case studies, just a bunch of marketing copy and personal anecdotes. I went hunting for some business case studies a while ago and I found a Deloitte “case study” which was just pages of “AI may help” without any actual concrete cases. Where are the actual academic studies showing that this works? People claiming AI makes them code faster reminds me that Apple years ago demonstrated in multiple human interaction studies that the mouse is faster, but test subjects all thought keyboard shortcuts were faster [1]. Sometimes objective data doesn’t matter, but it’s amusing that the whole pitch for agentic AI is that it is faster and evidence is murky for this at best. [1] https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html
bravetraveler 9mo ago
I just work here, man. What's all this 'love' stuff? :) I propose a third camp: skilled employee seeking compensation. edit: to stay on the larger topic, I haven't been swayed much one way or the other. ~90% of the code I need existed a decade ago in the form of reusable modules. Anything new is closer to pseudo-code, an amplifier or sandbox isn't something I'm that interested in.
- tonyedgecombe 9mo ago
  I propose a fourth, unskilled employee seeking compensation.
  - bravetraveler 9mo ago
    How could I forget the largest group?!
kklisura 9mo ago
> ...and those who love delivering value/solutions. I am in the latter camp. The happy consumer and the polished product is what gives me satisfaction... Can't the customer now just skip you and generate a product for himself via AI?
- solumunus 9mo ago
  Serious? Have you used an LLM? Of course they couldn't... LLM's speed up my development velocity. Maybe 1.5x-2x? Hard to measure. You still need the knowledge to make smart decisions, enforce sensible/maintainable architecture & patterns, etc. How is a regular person going to review code to make sure it's correct/efficient/safe?
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
sodafountan 9mo ago
And yet, there's still room for people who love to code to do great work. Look at bun for instance https://bun.com/ https://bun.com/. It's a JavaScript runtime that dramatically improves on the performance of node.js to the point where it will likely completely deprecate it in the coming years. It does so many things right out of the box, but it's essentially just an incremental improvement in the development world. I think AI-augmented development will lead to faster and vastly improved software over the years. This isn't just a space that's being disrupted on the maker/creator side of developing software. And from a makers/creators point of view, you wouldn't even need to keep up with the latest trends like performance, AI should just know which libraries are the best to use to develop your solutions.
maxkfranz 9mo ago
Some love to paint, while many just want a picture.

czpl 9mo ago

polished product, and LLM generated code should not be put in the same conversation.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
solumunus 9mo ago
You're simply wrong and it will become obvious in time.
- czpl 9mo ago
  I'll believe it when I see it. So far time has shown the opposite is true.

vanillameow 9mo ago

If you really want to deliver polished products, you still have to manually review the code. When I tried actually "vibecoding" something, I got exhausted so fast by trying to keep up with the metric tons of code output by the AI. I think most developers agree that reviewing other people's code is more exhausting mentally than writing your own. So I doubt those who see coding as too mentally straining will take the time to fully review AI written code. More likely that step is just skipped and replaced with thoughts and prayers.

solumunus 9mo ago
I do manually review. I don't think the quality of my output has reduced even slightly. I'm just able to do much more. I deliver features more quickly, and I'm making more money, so of course I'm happy. If there was no money in programming I wouldn't be doing it, I think that's the major distinction. I barely have any understanding of how a CPU works, I don't care. I build stuff and people are very happy with what I build and pay me money for it...

exceptione 9mo ago

Agree with those 2 camps. The latter camp is all cheered up which is nice, but they should be asking the question if their solution is valuable enough to be maintained. If so, you should make all generated code your code, exactly in the form it needs to be according to your deep expertise. If not, congratulations, you have invented throw-away code. Code of conduct: don't throw this code at people from the former camp. Or to phrase it more succinctly: if you are in camp 2 but don't have the passion of camp 1, you are a threat for the long term. The reverse is dangerous too, but can be offset to a certain extent with good product management.

closewith 9mo ago
> If so, you should make all generated code your code, exactly in the form it needs to be according to your deep expertise. Is this also true of all third party code used by their solution? Should they make all libraries and APIs they use their own in exactly in the form it needs to be according to their deep expertise? If not, why not? If so, does this extend to the rest of the stack? Interpreters, OSes, drivers? If not, why not?
- karmakurtisaani 9mo ago
  No. They don't need to maintain, debug and extend those libraries.
  - closewith 9mo ago
    Well, what if one becomes unmaintained or has issues that only affect your project. Why is that uncontrolled code different to generated code? Is it specifically that it's generated? This isn't a trick question, BTW. It's a genuine attempt to get to the rationale behind your (and the GP's) stance on this. In particular, the GP said: > Or to phrase it more succinctly: if you are in camp 2 but don't have the passion of camp 1, you are a threat for the long term. That hints I think at their rationale, that their stance is based on placing importance on the parts of software development that they enjoy, rather than any logical basis.

bitwize 9mo ago

As a professional, your job is to deliver value and solutions. It used to be that you could do this by writing code. AI changes this calculus because if the machine can write the code instead, the value you deliver by writing it yourself is greatly diminished.

000ooo000 9mo ago

This false dichotomy comes up from time to time, that you either like dicking around with code in your basement or you like being a big boy with your business pants on delivering the world's 8000th online PDF tools site. It's tired. Please let it die.

lioeters 9mo ago
"There are two kinds of programmers: those who love making programs, and those who love making money. I'm in the latter group."
- solumunus 9mo ago
  Pretty much. But I like making money THIS way. Other ways would be fine, but I enjoy this immensely.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
solumunus 9mo ago
It's not that extreme. There are people who would code whether it was their career or not, I'm not one of those people. I fell into software development in order to make money, if the money stopped then I would stop. I love building and selling products, if I can't do that then I have no interest in programming. I'm interested in machines, CPU's, etc. I'm interested in products, liaising with customers, delivering solutions, improving things for users, etc. You think there is no distinction there? Again, there are people who code for fun, I'm simply not one of them...
- blibble 9mo ago
  why are you on a hacker forum then? maybe "MBA news" would be better suited?

bpev 9mo ago

I've also noticed a kind of grouping like this. I've described them as the "Builders" and the "Solvers". Where the former enjoys the construction aspect of the code more, and the latter enjoys the problem/puzzle-solving aspect of code more. I guess it's more of a scale than a binary, since everyone's got a bit of both, but I think I agree that AI is more fun for the builders.

latexr 9mo ago

> those who love delivering value/solutions. This is such marketing speak. The words mean nothing, they’re just a vague amalgamation of feelings. “Vibes”, if you will. If you “love delivering value and solutions”, go donate and volunteer at a food bank, there’s no need for code at any point. > The happy consumer and the polished product More marketing speak. If you are using LLMs to write your code, by definition your product isn’t “polished”. Polishing means pouring over every detail with care to ensure perfection. Letting an LLM spit out code you just accept is not it. The word you’re looking for is “shiny”, meaning that it looks good at a glance but may or may not be worth anything.

matwood 9mo ago
It’s not marketing speak, but it’s rarely 100 percent one or the other. > More marketing speak. If you are using LLMs to write your code, by definition your product isn’t “polished”. This doesn’t make any sense. Polished to who? The end user? You can absolutely use AI to polish the user experience. Whether coding by hand or AI the most important aspect of polish is having someone who cares.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
closewith 9mo ago
> This is such marketing speak. The words mean nothing, they’re just a vague amalgamation of feelings. “Vibes”, if you will. I actually think this reveals more about you than you might realise. A _lot_ of people enjoy being able to help people resolve problems with their skills. Delivering value is marketing speak, but it's specifically helping people in ways that's valuable. A lot of people who work in software are internally motivated by this. The act of producing code may (or may not be) also enjoyable, but the ultimate internal motivation is to hand over something that helps others (and the external motivation is obviously dollars and cents). There is also a subset of people who enjoy the process of writing code for its own sake, but it's a minority of developers (and dropping all the time as tooling - including LLMs - opens development to more people). > If you are using LLMs to write your code, by definition your product isn’t “polished”. Polishing means pouring over every detail with care to ensure perfection. You can say the same thing about libraries, interpreters, OSes, compilers, microcode, assembly. If you're not flipping bits directly in CPU registers, your not pouring over every little detail to ensure perfection. The only difference between you and the vibe coder who's never written a single LoC is the level of abstraction you're working at. Edit: > If you “love delivering value and solutions”, go donate and volunteer at a food bank, there’s no need for code at any point. I also think this says maybe a lot about you, also, as many people also donate their time and efforts to others. I think it may be worth some self-reflection to see whether your cynicism has become nihilism.

philipwhiuk 9mo ago

They're not that binary. I like using my software engineering skills to solve people's problems. I don't do coding for it's own sake - there's always a thing I'm trying to implement for someone.

Eufrat 9mo ago

You’re forcing a binary choice here. I think for a lot of minor things, having AI generate stuff is okay, but it’s rather astounding how verbose and sometimes bizarre the code is. It mostly works, but it can be hard to read. What I’m reading from a lot of people is that they’re enjoying coding again because they don’t have to deal with the stuff they don’t want to do, which...I mean, that’s just it isn’t it? Everyone wants to work on what they enjoy, but that’s not how most things work. Another problem is that if you just let the AI do a lot of the foundational stuff and only focus on the stuff that you’re interested in, you sometimes just miss giant pieces of important context. I’ve tried reading AI driven code, sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it’s just unextensible nonsense that superficially works. This isn’t tech that should replace anything and needs to be monitored judiciously. It can have value, but what I suspect is going to happen is we are going to have a field day with people fixing and dealing with ridiculous security holes for the next decade after this irrational exuberance goes away. It should be used in the same way that any other ML technique should be. Judiciously and in a specific use case. Said another way, if these models are the future of general programming, where are the apps already? We’re years into this and where are they? We have no actual case studies, just a bunch of marketing copy and personal anecdotes. I went hunting for some business case studies a while ago and I found a Deloitte “case study” which was just pages of “AI may help” without any actual concrete cases. Where are the actual academic studies showing that this works? People claiming AI makes them code faster reminds me that Apple years ago demonstrated in multiple human interaction studies that the mouse is faster, but test subjects all thought keyboard shortcuts were faster [1]. Sometimes objective data doesn’t matter, but it’s amusing that the whole pitch for agentic AI is that it is faster and evidence is murky for this at best. [1] https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html

bravetraveler 9mo ago

I just work here, man. What's all this 'love' stuff? :) I propose a third camp: skilled employee seeking compensation. edit: to stay on the larger topic, I haven't been swayed much one way or the other. ~90% of the code I need existed a decade ago in the form of reusable modules. Anything new is closer to pseudo-code, an amplifier or sandbox isn't something I'm that interested in.

tonyedgecombe 9mo ago
I propose a fourth, unskilled employee seeking compensation.
- bravetraveler 9mo ago
  How could I forget the largest group?!

kklisura 9mo ago

> ...and those who love delivering value/solutions. I am in the latter camp. The happy consumer and the polished product is what gives me satisfaction... Can't the customer now just skip you and generate a product for himself via AI?

solumunus 9mo ago
Serious? Have you used an LLM? Of course they couldn't... LLM's speed up my development velocity. Maybe 1.5x-2x? Hard to measure. You still need the knowledge to make smart decisions, enforce sensible/maintainable architecture & patterns, etc. How is a regular person going to review code to make sure it's correct/efficient/safe?
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

sodafountan 9mo ago

And yet, there's still room for people who love to code to do great work. Look at bun for instance https://bun.com/ https://bun.com/. It's a JavaScript runtime that dramatically improves on the performance of node.js to the point where it will likely completely deprecate it in the coming years. It does so many things right out of the box, but it's essentially just an incremental improvement in the development world. I think AI-augmented development will lead to faster and vastly improved software over the years. This isn't just a space that's being disrupted on the maker/creator side of developing software. And from a makers/creators point of view, you wouldn't even need to keep up with the latest trends like performance, AI should just know which libraries are the best to use to develop your solutions.

maxkfranz 9mo ago

Some love to paint, while many just want a picture.