4 ms·

Its really becoming a good litmus test for how someones coding ability whether they think LLMS can do well on complex tasks. For example, someone may ask an LL

Its really becoming a good litmus test for how someones coding ability whether they think LLMS can do well on complex tasks. For example, someone may ask an LLM to write a simple http web server, and it can do that fine, and they consider that complex, when in reality its really not.

threethirtytwo 9mo ago
It’s not. There are tons of great programmers, that are big names in the industry who now exclusively vibe code. Many of these names are obviously intelligent and great programmers. This is an extremely false statement.
- HarHarVeryFunny 9mo ago
  People use "vibe coding" to mean different things - some mean the original Karpathy "look ma, no hands!", feel the vibez, thing, and some just (confusingly) use "vibe coding" to refer to any use of AI to write code, including treating it as a tool to write small well-defined parts that you have specified, as opposed to treating it as a magic genie. There also seem to be people hearing big names like Karpathy and Linus Torvalds say they are vibe coding on their hobby projects, meaning who knows what, and misunderstanding this as being an endorsement of "magic genie" creation of professional quality software. Results of course also vary according to how well what you are asking the AI to do matches what it was trained on. Despite sometimes feeling like it, it is not a magic genie - it is a predictor that is essentially trying to best match your input prompt (maybe a program specification) to pieces of what it was trained on. If there is no good match, then it'll have a go anyway, and this is where things tend to fall apart.
  - threethirtytwo 9mo ago
    karpathy is biased. I wouldn't use his name as he's behind the whole vibe coding movement. You have to pick people with nothing to gain. https://x.com/rough__sea/status/2013280952370573666 https://x.com/rough__sea/status/2013280952370573666
    - HarHarVeryFunny 9mo ago
      I don't think he meant to start a movement - it was more of a throw-away tweet that people took way too seriously, although maybe with his bully pulpit he should have realized that would happen.
      - threethirtytwo 9mo ago
        Still I don’t think he’ll speak against it.
  - dudeinhawaii 9mo ago
    Funny, the last interview I watched with Karpathy he highlighted the way the AI/LLM was unable to think in a way that aligned with his codebase. He described vibe-coding a transition from Python to Rust but specifically called out that he hand-coded all of the python code due to weaknesses in LLM's ability to handle performant code. I'm pretty sure this was the last Dwarkesh interview with "LLMs as ghosts".
    - HarHarVeryFunny 9mo ago
      Right, and he also very recently said that he felt essentially left behind by AI coding advances, thinking that his productivity could be 10x if he knew how to use it better. It seems clear that Karpathy himself is well aware of the difference between "vibe coding" as he defined it (which he explicitly said was for playing with on hobby projects), and more controlled productive use of AI for coding, which has either eluded him, or maybe his expectations are too high and (although it would be surprising) he has not realized the difference between the types of application where people are finding it useful, and use cases like his own that do not play to its strength.
- ActorNightly 9mo ago
  Non sequitor. You don't have to be bad at coding to use LLMs. The argument was specifically about thinking that LLMS can be great at accomplishing complex tasks (which they are not)
  - threethirtytwo 9mo ago
    Wtf are you talking about. Great programmers use LLMs for complex tasks. That was the point of my comment
    - mike741 9mo ago
      You didn't state any complex tasks though. You only stated programmers who use LLMs.
      - threethirtytwo 9mo ago
        i thought it was implied, guess not. Great programmers wouldn't support or back AI if it couldn't handle complex tasks. AI can handle complex tasks inconsistently when operating on it's own. They can handle complex tasks consistently when pair programming with a human operator.
    - ActorNightly 9mo ago
      And my point is that what you think are complex tasks are not really complex. The simple case is that if you ask an agent to do a whole bunch of modifications across a large number of files, it often loses context due to context windows. Now, you can make your own agents with custom mcp servers to basically improve its ability to do tasks, but then you are basically just building automation tools in the first place.
      - threethirtytwo 9mo ago
        See my other response. I didn't define what a complex task is. I used people with reputation, intelligence and ability greater then myself to say, if they endorce it, then they must be using it on complex tasks and it must be successful to them. I can certainly see how you're better than every one of those people and how to you what they call "complex" is just simplistic. I've never met anyone great like you.
- bofadeez 9mo ago
  How many more appeal-to-authority counter arguments are going to be made in this thread
  - threethirtytwo 9mo ago
    They are more effective then on the ground in your face evidence largely because people who are so against AI are blind to it. I hold a result of AI in front of your face and they still proclaim it’s garbage and everything else is fraudulent. Let’s be clear. You’re arguing against a fantasy. Nobody even proponents of AI claims that AI is as good as humans. Nowhere near it. But they are good enough for pair programming. That is indisputable. Yet we have tons of people like you who stare at reality and deny it and call it fraudulent. Examine the lay of the land if that many people are so divided it really means both perspectives are correct in a way.
    - bofadeez 9mo ago
      I think the author is way understating the uselessness of LLMs in any serious context outside of a demo to an investor. I've had nothing but low IQ nonsense from every SOTA model. If we're being honest with ourselves, Opus 4.5 / GPT 5.2 etc are maybe 10-20% better than GPT 3.5 at most. It's a total and absolute catastrophic failure that will go down in history as one of humanity's biggest mistakes.
    - habinero 9mo ago
      If you want to be any good at all in this industry, you have to develop enough technical skills to evaluate claims for yourself. You have to. It's essential. Because the dirty secret is a lot of successful people aren't actually smart or talented, they just got lucky. Or they aren't successful at all, they're just good at pretending they are, either through taking credit for other people's work or flat out lying. I've run into more than a few startups that are just flat out lying about their capabilities and several that were outright fraud. (See DoNotPay for a recent fraud example lol) Pointing to anyone and going "well THEY do it, it MUST work" is frankly engineering malpractice. It might work. But unless you have the chops to verify it for yourself, you're just asking to be conned.
- AstroBen 9mo ago
  Yeah, take Ryan Dahl: His tweets were getting ~40k views average. He made his big proclamation about AI and boom viral 7 million This is happening over, and over, and over again I'm not saying he's making shit up but you're naive if you don't think they're slightly tempted by the clear reaction this content gets
  - threethirtytwo 9mo ago
    He’d get an equivalent reaction for talking shit about AI. Anyway it’s not just him. Plenty of other people.

threethirtytwo 9mo ago

It’s not. There are tons of great programmers, that are big names in the industry who now exclusively vibe code. Many of these names are obviously intelligent and great programmers. This is an extremely false statement.

HarHarVeryFunny 9mo ago
People use "vibe coding" to mean different things - some mean the original Karpathy "look ma, no hands!", feel the vibez, thing, and some just (confusingly) use "vibe coding" to refer to any use of AI to write code, including treating it as a tool to write small well-defined parts that you have specified, as opposed to treating it as a magic genie. There also seem to be people hearing big names like Karpathy and Linus Torvalds say they are vibe coding on their hobby projects, meaning who knows what, and misunderstanding this as being an endorsement of "magic genie" creation of professional quality software. Results of course also vary according to how well what you are asking the AI to do matches what it was trained on. Despite sometimes feeling like it, it is not a magic genie - it is a predictor that is essentially trying to best match your input prompt (maybe a program specification) to pieces of what it was trained on. If there is no good match, then it'll have a go anyway, and this is where things tend to fall apart.
- threethirtytwo 9mo ago
  karpathy is biased. I wouldn't use his name as he's behind the whole vibe coding movement. You have to pick people with nothing to gain. https://x.com/rough__sea/status/2013280952370573666 https://x.com/rough__sea/status/2013280952370573666
  - HarHarVeryFunny 9mo ago
    I don't think he meant to start a movement - it was more of a throw-away tweet that people took way too seriously, although maybe with his bully pulpit he should have realized that would happen.
    - threethirtytwo 9mo ago
      Still I don’t think he’ll speak against it.
- dudeinhawaii 9mo ago
  Funny, the last interview I watched with Karpathy he highlighted the way the AI/LLM was unable to think in a way that aligned with his codebase. He described vibe-coding a transition from Python to Rust but specifically called out that he hand-coded all of the python code due to weaknesses in LLM's ability to handle performant code. I'm pretty sure this was the last Dwarkesh interview with "LLMs as ghosts".
  - HarHarVeryFunny 9mo ago
    Right, and he also very recently said that he felt essentially left behind by AI coding advances, thinking that his productivity could be 10x if he knew how to use it better. It seems clear that Karpathy himself is well aware of the difference between "vibe coding" as he defined it (which he explicitly said was for playing with on hobby projects), and more controlled productive use of AI for coding, which has either eluded him, or maybe his expectations are too high and (although it would be surprising) he has not realized the difference between the types of application where people are finding it useful, and use cases like his own that do not play to its strength.
ActorNightly 9mo ago
Non sequitor. You don't have to be bad at coding to use LLMs. The argument was specifically about thinking that LLMS can be great at accomplishing complex tasks (which they are not)
- threethirtytwo 9mo ago
  Wtf are you talking about. Great programmers use LLMs for complex tasks. That was the point of my comment
  - mike741 9mo ago
    You didn't state any complex tasks though. You only stated programmers who use LLMs.
    - threethirtytwo 9mo ago
      i thought it was implied, guess not. Great programmers wouldn't support or back AI if it couldn't handle complex tasks. AI can handle complex tasks inconsistently when operating on it's own. They can handle complex tasks consistently when pair programming with a human operator.
  - ActorNightly 9mo ago
    And my point is that what you think are complex tasks are not really complex. The simple case is that if you ask an agent to do a whole bunch of modifications across a large number of files, it often loses context due to context windows. Now, you can make your own agents with custom mcp servers to basically improve its ability to do tasks, but then you are basically just building automation tools in the first place.
    - threethirtytwo 9mo ago
      See my other response. I didn't define what a complex task is. I used people with reputation, intelligence and ability greater then myself to say, if they endorce it, then they must be using it on complex tasks and it must be successful to them. I can certainly see how you're better than every one of those people and how to you what they call "complex" is just simplistic. I've never met anyone great like you.
bofadeez 9mo ago
How many more appeal-to-authority counter arguments are going to be made in this thread
- threethirtytwo 9mo ago
  They are more effective then on the ground in your face evidence largely because people who are so against AI are blind to it. I hold a result of AI in front of your face and they still proclaim it’s garbage and everything else is fraudulent. Let’s be clear. You’re arguing against a fantasy. Nobody even proponents of AI claims that AI is as good as humans. Nowhere near it. But they are good enough for pair programming. That is indisputable. Yet we have tons of people like you who stare at reality and deny it and call it fraudulent. Examine the lay of the land if that many people are so divided it really means both perspectives are correct in a way.
  - bofadeez 9mo ago
    I think the author is way understating the uselessness of LLMs in any serious context outside of a demo to an investor. I've had nothing but low IQ nonsense from every SOTA model. If we're being honest with ourselves, Opus 4.5 / GPT 5.2 etc are maybe 10-20% better than GPT 3.5 at most. It's a total and absolute catastrophic failure that will go down in history as one of humanity's biggest mistakes.
  - habinero 9mo ago
    If you want to be any good at all in this industry, you have to develop enough technical skills to evaluate claims for yourself. You have to. It's essential. Because the dirty secret is a lot of successful people aren't actually smart or talented, they just got lucky. Or they aren't successful at all, they're just good at pretending they are, either through taking credit for other people's work or flat out lying. I've run into more than a few startups that are just flat out lying about their capabilities and several that were outright fraud. (See DoNotPay for a recent fraud example lol) Pointing to anyone and going "well THEY do it, it MUST work" is frankly engineering malpractice. It might work. But unless you have the chops to verify it for yourself, you're just asking to be conned.
AstroBen 9mo ago
Yeah, take Ryan Dahl: His tweets were getting ~40k views average. He made his big proclamation about AI and boom viral 7 million This is happening over, and over, and over again I'm not saying he's making shit up but you're naive if you don't think they're slightly tempted by the clear reaction this content gets
- threethirtytwo 9mo ago
  He’d get an equivalent reaction for talking shit about AI. Anyway it’s not just him. Plenty of other people.