5 ms·

I like coding, I really do. But like you, I like building things more than I like the way I build them. I do not find myself miss writing code by hand as much.

I like coding, I really do. But like you, I like building things more than I like the way I build them. I do not find myself miss writing code by hand as much. I do find it that the developers that focused on "build the right things" mourn less than those who focused on "build things right". But I do worry. The main question is this - will there be a day that AI will know what are "the right things to build" and have the "agency" (or illusion of) to do it better than an AI+human (assuming AI will get faster to the "build things right" phase, which is not there yet) My main hope is this - AI can beat a human in chess for a while now, we still play chess, people earn money from playing chess, teaching chess, chess players are still celebrated, youtube influencers still get monetized for analyzing games of celebrity chess players, even though the top human chess player will likely lose to a stockfish engine running on my iPhone. So maybe there is hope.

RivieraKid 8mo ago
> I do find it that the developers that focused on "build the right things" mourn less than those who focused on "build things right". I've always been strongly in the first category, but... the issue is that 10x more people will be able to build the right things. And if I build the right thing, it will be easy to copy. The market will get crowded, so distribution will become even harder than it is today. Success will be determined by personal brand, social media presence, social connections.
- epicureanideal 8mo ago
  > Success will be determined by personal brand, social media presence, social connections. Always has been. (Meme)
dynamite-ready 8mo ago
For me, photography is the metaphor - https://raskie.com/post/we-have-ai-at-home https://raskie.com/post/we-have-ai-at-home - We've had the technology to produce a perfect 2D likeness of a subject for close to two centuries now, and people are still painting. Video didn't kill the radio star either. In fact the radio star has become more popular than ever in this, the era of the podcast.
- bayarearefugee 8mo ago
  While what you're saying is true, I think it is important to recognize that painting in a way that generates a livable income is mostly a marketing gig. Likewise, being a podcaster, or "influencer" in general, is all about charisma and marketing. So with value destruction for knowledge workers (and perhaps physical workers too once you factor in robotics) we may in fact be moving into a real "attention economy" where all value is related to being a charismatic marketer, which will be good for some people for a while, terrible for the majority, but even for the winners it seems like a limited reprieve. Historically speaking charismatic marketers can only really exist through the patronage of people who mostly aren't themselves charismatic marketers. Without patrons (who have disposable income to share) the charismatic marketers are eventually just as fucked as everyone else.
- jsrcout 8mo ago
  Art, photography, acting, music - none of them are good career choices. You'll either be one of the fortunate few, or you'll struggle to make a living. Sucks but that's how it is.
rubenflamshep 8mo ago
> will there be a day that AI will know what are "the right things to build" and have the "agency" (or illusion of) to do it better than an AI+human I share this sentiment. It's really cool that these systems can do 80% of the work. But given what this 80% entails, I don't see a moat around that remaining 20%.
- eranation 8mo ago
  I can't explain it in a way that will make sense or base it on any data, but I do see that moat all the time. For example, Microsoft / GitHub somehow taking a 3 year lead (with Co-Pilot) and losing it to Cursor in months, and still catching up. Microsoft / GitHub have no real limitation to doing better/faster, maybe it's the big company mentality, moving slower, fear of taking risks where you have a lot to lose, or when the personal incentive for a product manager at github is much much lower than the one of a co-founder of a seed stage startup. Co-Pilot was a microscopic line item for Microsoft as a whole, and probably marginal for GitHub too. But for Cursor, this was everything. This is why we have innovation, if mega-corps didn't promote people to their level of incompetence, if bureaucracy and politics didn't ruin every good thing, if private equity didn't bleed every beloved product to the last penny, we would have no chance for any innovation or entrepreneurship because these company have practically close to unlimited resources. So my only conclusion from this is - the moat is sometimes just the will to do better, to dare to say, I don't care if someone has a billion dollars to compete with me, I'll still do better. In other words, don't underestimate the power of big companies to make colossal mistakes and build crappy products. My only worry is, that AI would not make the same mistakes an we'll basically have a handful of companies in the world (the makers of models, owner of tokens e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Amazon, Meta, xAi), if AI led product teams will be able to not make the mistakes of modern corporations of ruining everything good that they got in their hands, then maybe software related entrepreneurship will be dead.
blargthorwars 8mo ago
Computers are better at chess. Humans invented chess and enjoy it. I think humans have the advantage.
godelski 8mo ago
> "build the right things" [vs] "build things right" I think this (frequent) comparison is incorrect. There are times when quality doesn't matter and times that it does. Without that context these discussions are meaningless. If I build my own table no one really gives a shit about the quality besides me and maybe my friends judging me. But if I sell it, well then people certainly care[0] and they have every right to. If I build my own deck at my house people do also care and there's a reason I need to get permits for this, because the danger it can cause to others. It's not a crazy thing to get your deck inspected and that's really all there is to it. So I don't get these conversations because people are just talking past one another. Look, no one gives a fuck if you poorly vibe code your personal website, or at least it is gonna be the same level as building your own table. But if Ikea starts shipping tables with missing legs (even if it is just 1%) then I sure give a fuck and all the customers have a right to be upset. I really think a major part of this concern with vibe coding is about something bigger. It is about slop in general. In the software industry we've been getting sloppier and sloppier and LLMs significantly amplify that. It really doesn't matter if you can vibe code something with no mistakes, what matters is what the businesses do. Let's be honest, they're rushing and don't care about quality because they have markets cornered and consumers are unable to accurately evaluate products prior to purchase. That's the textbook conditions for a lemon market. I mean the companies outsource tech support so you call and someone picks up who's accent makes you suspicious of their real name being "Steve". After all, it is the fourth "Steve" you've talked to as you get passed around from support person to support person. The same companies who contract out coders from poor countries and where you find random comments in another language. That's the way things have been going. More vaporware. More half baked products. So yeah, when you have no cake the half baked cake is probably better than nothing. At home it also doesn't matter if you're eating a half baked cake or one that competes with the best bakers in the world. But for everyday people who can't bake their own cakes, what do they do? All they see is a box with a cake in it, one is $1, another for $10, and another other is $100. They look the same but they can't know until they take a bite. You try enough of the $1 cakes and by the time you give up the $10 cakes are all gone. By the time you get so frustrated you'll buy the $100 cake they're gone too. I don't dislike vibe coding because it is "building things the wrong way" or any of that pretentious notion. I, and I believe most people with a similar opinion, care because "the right things" aren't being built. Most people don't care how things were built, but they sure do care about the result. Really people only start caring about how the sausage is made when they find out that something distasteful is being served and concealed from them. It's why everyone is saying "slop". So when people make this false dichotomy it just feels like people aren't listing to what's actually being said. [0] Mind you, it is much easier for an inexperienced person to judge the quality of a table than software. You don't need to be a carpenter to know a table's leg is missing or that it is wobbly but that doesn't always hold true for more sophisticated things like software or even cars. If you haven't guessed already, I'm referencing lemon markets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
bayarearefugee 8mo ago
> will there be a day that AI will know what are "the right things to build" and have the "agency" (or illusion of) to do it better than an AI+human (assuming AI will get faster to the "build things right" phase, which is not there yet) Of course, and if LLMs keep improving at current rates it will happen much faster than people think. Arguably you don't need junior software engineers anymore. When you also don't need senior software engineers anymore it isn't that much of a jump to not needing project managers, managers in general or even software companies at all anymore. Most people, in order to protect their own ego, will assume *their* job is safe until the job one rung down from them disappears and then the justified worrying will begin. People on the "right things to build" track love to point out how bad people are at describing requirements, so assume their job as a subject matter expert and/or customer-facing liaison will be safe, but does it matter how bad people are at describing requirements if iteration is lightning fast with the human element removed? Yes, maybe someone who needs software and who isn't historically some sort of software designer is going to have to prompt the LLM 250 times to reach what they really want, but that'll eventually still be faster than involving any humans in a single meeting or phone call. And a lot of people just won't really need software as we currently think about it at all, they'll just be passing one-off tasks to the AI. The real question is what happens when the labor market for non-physical work completely implodes as AI eats it all. Based on current trends I'm going to predict in terms of economics and politics we handle it as poorly as possible leading to violent revolution and possible societal collapse, but I'd love to be wrong.
- lagrange77 8mo ago
  > The real question is what happens when the labor market for non-physical work completely implodes as AI eats it all. Based on current trends I'm going to predict in terms of economics and politics we handle it as poorly as possible leading to violent revolution and possible societal collapse, but I'd love to be wrong. Exactly and the world has to start talking about it. Eventually everybody will, including all sorts of politicians who advocate to 'finally tackle the problem', which will be too late.
notnullorvoid 8mo ago
> The main question is this - will there be a day that AI will know what are "the right things to build" What makes you think AI already isn't at the same level of quality or higher for "build the right things" as it is for "building things right"?

RivieraKid 8mo ago

> I do find it that the developers that focused on "build the right things" mourn less than those who focused on "build things right". I've always been strongly in the first category, but... the issue is that 10x more people will be able to build the right things. And if I build the right thing, it will be easy to copy. The market will get crowded, so distribution will become even harder than it is today. Success will be determined by personal brand, social media presence, social connections.

epicureanideal 8mo ago
> Success will be determined by personal brand, social media presence, social connections. Always has been. (Meme)

dynamite-ready 8mo ago

For me, photography is the metaphor - https://raskie.com/post/we-have-ai-at-home https://raskie.com/post/we-have-ai-at-home - We've had the technology to produce a perfect 2D likeness of a subject for close to two centuries now, and people are still painting. Video didn't kill the radio star either. In fact the radio star has become more popular than ever in this, the era of the podcast.

bayarearefugee 8mo ago
While what you're saying is true, I think it is important to recognize that painting in a way that generates a livable income is mostly a marketing gig. Likewise, being a podcaster, or "influencer" in general, is all about charisma and marketing. So with value destruction for knowledge workers (and perhaps physical workers too once you factor in robotics) we may in fact be moving into a real "attention economy" where all value is related to being a charismatic marketer, which will be good for some people for a while, terrible for the majority, but even for the winners it seems like a limited reprieve. Historically speaking charismatic marketers can only really exist through the patronage of people who mostly aren't themselves charismatic marketers. Without patrons (who have disposable income to share) the charismatic marketers are eventually just as fucked as everyone else.
jsrcout 8mo ago
Art, photography, acting, music - none of them are good career choices. You'll either be one of the fortunate few, or you'll struggle to make a living. Sucks but that's how it is.

rubenflamshep 8mo ago

> will there be a day that AI will know what are "the right things to build" and have the "agency" (or illusion of) to do it better than an AI+human I share this sentiment. It's really cool that these systems can do 80% of the work. But given what this 80% entails, I don't see a moat around that remaining 20%.

eranation 8mo ago
I can't explain it in a way that will make sense or base it on any data, but I do see that moat all the time. For example, Microsoft / GitHub somehow taking a 3 year lead (with Co-Pilot) and losing it to Cursor in months, and still catching up. Microsoft / GitHub have no real limitation to doing better/faster, maybe it's the big company mentality, moving slower, fear of taking risks where you have a lot to lose, or when the personal incentive for a product manager at github is much much lower than the one of a co-founder of a seed stage startup. Co-Pilot was a microscopic line item for Microsoft as a whole, and probably marginal for GitHub too. But for Cursor, this was everything. This is why we have innovation, if mega-corps didn't promote people to their level of incompetence, if bureaucracy and politics didn't ruin every good thing, if private equity didn't bleed every beloved product to the last penny, we would have no chance for any innovation or entrepreneurship because these company have practically close to unlimited resources. So my only conclusion from this is - the moat is sometimes just the will to do better, to dare to say, I don't care if someone has a billion dollars to compete with me, I'll still do better. In other words, don't underestimate the power of big companies to make colossal mistakes and build crappy products. My only worry is, that AI would not make the same mistakes an we'll basically have a handful of companies in the world (the makers of models, owner of tokens e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Amazon, Meta, xAi), if AI led product teams will be able to not make the mistakes of modern corporations of ruining everything good that they got in their hands, then maybe software related entrepreneurship will be dead.

blargthorwars 8mo ago

Computers are better at chess. Humans invented chess and enjoy it. I think humans have the advantage.

godelski 8mo ago

> "build the right things" [vs] "build things right" I think this (frequent) comparison is incorrect. There are times when quality doesn't matter and times that it does. Without that context these discussions are meaningless. If I build my own table no one really gives a shit about the quality besides me and maybe my friends judging me. But if I sell it, well then people certainly care[0] and they have every right to. If I build my own deck at my house people do also care and there's a reason I need to get permits for this, because the danger it can cause to others. It's not a crazy thing to get your deck inspected and that's really all there is to it. So I don't get these conversations because people are just talking past one another. Look, no one gives a fuck if you poorly vibe code your personal website, or at least it is gonna be the same level as building your own table. But if Ikea starts shipping tables with missing legs (even if it is just 1%) then I sure give a fuck and all the customers have a right to be upset. I really think a major part of this concern with vibe coding is about something bigger. It is about slop in general. In the software industry we've been getting sloppier and sloppier and LLMs significantly amplify that. It really doesn't matter if you can vibe code something with no mistakes, what matters is what the businesses do. Let's be honest, they're rushing and don't care about quality because they have markets cornered and consumers are unable to accurately evaluate products prior to purchase. That's the textbook conditions for a lemon market. I mean the companies outsource tech support so you call and someone picks up who's accent makes you suspicious of their real name being "Steve". After all, it is the fourth "Steve" you've talked to as you get passed around from support person to support person. The same companies who contract out coders from poor countries and where you find random comments in another language. That's the way things have been going. More vaporware. More half baked products. So yeah, when you have no cake the half baked cake is probably better than nothing. At home it also doesn't matter if you're eating a half baked cake or one that competes with the best bakers in the world. But for everyday people who can't bake their own cakes, what do they do? All they see is a box with a cake in it, one is $1, another for $10, and another other is $100. They look the same but they can't know until they take a bite. You try enough of the $1 cakes and by the time you give up the $10 cakes are all gone. By the time you get so frustrated you'll buy the $100 cake they're gone too. I don't dislike vibe coding because it is "building things the wrong way" or any of that pretentious notion. I, and I believe most people with a similar opinion, care because "the right things" aren't being built. Most people don't care how things were built, but they sure do care about the result. Really people only start caring about how the sausage is made when they find out that something distasteful is being served and concealed from them. It's why everyone is saying "slop". So when people make this false dichotomy it just feels like people aren't listing to what's actually being said. [0] Mind you, it is much easier for an inexperienced person to judge the quality of a table than software. You don't need to be a carpenter to know a table's leg is missing or that it is wobbly but that doesn't always hold true for more sophisticated things like software or even cars. If you haven't guessed already, I'm referencing lemon markets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

bayarearefugee 8mo ago

> will there be a day that AI will know what are "the right things to build" and have the "agency" (or illusion of) to do it better than an AI+human (assuming AI will get faster to the "build things right" phase, which is not there yet) Of course, and if LLMs keep improving at current rates it will happen much faster than people think. Arguably you don't need junior software engineers anymore. When you also don't need senior software engineers anymore it isn't that much of a jump to not needing project managers, managers in general or even software companies at all anymore. Most people, in order to protect their own ego, will assume *their* job is safe until the job one rung down from them disappears and then the justified worrying will begin. People on the "right things to build" track love to point out how bad people are at describing requirements, so assume their job as a subject matter expert and/or customer-facing liaison will be safe, but does it matter how bad people are at describing requirements if iteration is lightning fast with the human element removed? Yes, maybe someone who needs software and who isn't historically some sort of software designer is going to have to prompt the LLM 250 times to reach what they really want, but that'll eventually still be faster than involving any humans in a single meeting or phone call. And a lot of people just won't really need software as we currently think about it at all, they'll just be passing one-off tasks to the AI. The real question is what happens when the labor market for non-physical work completely implodes as AI eats it all. Based on current trends I'm going to predict in terms of economics and politics we handle it as poorly as possible leading to violent revolution and possible societal collapse, but I'd love to be wrong.

lagrange77 8mo ago
> The real question is what happens when the labor market for non-physical work completely implodes as AI eats it all. Based on current trends I'm going to predict in terms of economics and politics we handle it as poorly as possible leading to violent revolution and possible societal collapse, but I'd love to be wrong. Exactly and the world has to start talking about it. Eventually everybody will, including all sorts of politicians who advocate to 'finally tackle the problem', which will be too late.

notnullorvoid 8mo ago

> The main question is this - will there be a day that AI will know what are "the right things to build" What makes you think AI already isn't at the same level of quality or higher for "build the right things" as it is for "building things right"?