10 ms·

I am happier writing code by hand

386 points by lazyfolder 8mo ago

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falloutx 8mo ago
I am happy someone else is also talking about addictive nature of vibe coding and its gambling-esque rewards. Would we see agentic programmers begging for tokens on kickstarter in future? That would be funny.
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ramesh31 8mo ago
I also came to a pretty simple understanding over the years. If I'm coding and making progress on a project, I'm happy. If I'm not, or I'm stuck on something, I'm unhappy. This is a profoundly unhealthy way to live because life will pass you by. There is more to our existence than work, or even hobbies. And if AI lets me get more time for that, I am happier than ever.
- rpodraza 8mo ago
  This is great in theory, but answer me sincerely: are you spending less time at work because of AI? Because I reckon for most programmers here it is not the case at all.
  - hirako2000 8mo ago
    There certainly are many who create a bit more PR. Ai generated. So they can roll their thumb for most of the day.
- taway1874 8mo ago
  Yes but is AI really getting you unstuck or are you playing a game of whack-a-mole where it fixes one bug and generates several others that you are unaware off (just one example)?
  - skerit 8mo ago
    > Yes but is AI really getting you unstuck Yes, it really is.
woeirua 8mo ago
This is no different then carpentry. Yes, all furniture can now be built by machines. Some people still choose to build it by hand. Does that make them less productive? Yes. Will they ever carve furniture by hand for a business? Probably not. Can they still enjoy the act of working with the wood? Yes. If you want to code by hand, then do it! No one's stopping you. But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer.
- tasuki 8mo ago
  > But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer. If the local bakery can sell expensive artisanal brioches, surely the programmers can sell expensive artisanal ones and zeroes!
- falloutx 8mo ago
  Only cutting of the furniture is automated. Still designed and assembled by humans. There is no machine which spits out a sofa.
  - brulard 8mo ago
    That is not a technical constraint and may be automated if it made sense financially. Same with software - for some time software won't be all designed, coded, tested, deployed to production without human supervision or approval. But the pieces in between are more and more filled by AI, as are the logistics of designing, manufacturing and distributing sofas.
    - mrits 8mo ago
      If it wasn't a technical constraint it would make sense financially.
- candiddevmike 8mo ago
  > If you want to code by hand, then do it! No one's stopping you. But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer. If you can't code by hand professionally anymore, what are you being paid to do? Bring the specs to the LLMs? Deal with the customers so the LLMs don't have to?
acedTrex 8mo ago
I will do what i know gives me the best possible and fastest outcome over the long term, 5-10 year period. And that remains largely neovim and by hand. The process of typing code gives me a deeper understanding of the project that lets me deliver future features FASTER. I'm fundamentally convinced that my investment into deep long term grokking of a project will allow me to surpass primarily LLM projects over the long term in raw velocity. It also stands to reason that any task that i deem to NOT further my goal of learning or deep understanding that can be done by an LLM i will use the LLM for it. And as it turns out there are a TON of those tasks so my LLM usage is incredibly high.
- lazyfolder 8mo ago
  > I will do what i know gives me the best possible and fastest outcome over the long term, 5-10 year period. And that remains largely neovim and by hand. The process of typing code gives me a deeper understanding of the project that lets me deliver future features FASTER. I'm fundamentally convinced that my deep long term understanding of a project will allow me to surpass primarily LLM projects over the long term. I have never thought of that aspect! This is a solid point!
- wazHFsRy 8mo ago
  I love that take and sympathise deeply with it. I also have come to the conclusion to focus my manual work on those areas where I can get learning from and try to automate the rest away as much as possible.
- chasd00 8mo ago
  This is the way. I think we’re in for some rough years at first but then what you described will settle in to the “best practice” (I hate that term). I look forward to the really bizarre bugs and incidents that make the news in the next 2-3 years. …Well as long as they’re not from my teams hah :)
  - vdfs 8mo ago
    > really bizarre bugs and incidents that make the news in the next 2-3 years I take it that you are not using Windows 11
testemailfordg2 8mo ago
Feel hand/human written code of an experienced individual should be more valuable for a business than one created by agents. Surely, agents and humans might be using the same underlying frameworks or programming languages, but the value difference depends on the breadth and depth of experience. Agents gives you the breadth but an experienced individuals give you the depth in understanding/problem solving.
rf15 8mo ago
This is pointing out one factor of vibecoding that is talked about too little: that it feels good, and that this feeling often clouds people's judgment on what is actually achieved (i.e. you lost control of the code and are running more and more frictionless on hopes and dreams)
- lazyfolder 8mo ago
  Definitely. And it’s hard to separate out whether the person is actually more productive or feels more productive.
  - division_by_0 8mo ago
    Yes, this (higher perceived vs. lower actual productivity) was probably at least true for early 2025. https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/ https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...
- Trasmatta 8mo ago
  I'll also say that vibecoding only feels good until it doesn't. And then you realize you don't understand the huge mess of code you've just produced at all. At least when I write by hand, I have a deep and intimate understanding of the system.
- xyzzy_plugh 8mo ago
  Conversely I feel like this is talked about a lot. I think this is a sort of essential cognitive dissonance that is present in many scenarios we're already beyond comfortable with, such as hiring consultants or off-shoring or adopting the latest hot framework. We are a species that likes things that feel good even if they're bad for us. We don't stand a chance and we know it.
  - grayhatter 8mo ago
    > We don't stand a chance and we know it. Drugs, alcoholism, overeating, orgies, doom scrolling, gambling. Addictions are a problem or danger to humans, no doubt. But we don't stand a chance? I'm not sure the evidence supports your argument.
eddythompson80 8mo ago
It really depends on the project for me. For example,I never enjoyed writing react code (or really any UI), just the outcome of my idea materializing in a usable interface. There is nothing creative or fun for me in almost any UX framework. It’s just a ton of predictable typing (now we need a fricking box. And another box. And another stupid box…) I’m more than happy outsourcing that. However, my thoughts are too random and imprecise that actually outsourcing it before to another person always felt disrespectful to them. I don’t have to worry about that with AI. My company is paying it, and when I’m prototyping a react thing every now and then, I burn few thousand dollars a day for the lols. If they don’t like it, take it away. I just won’t do that part because I have no interest in it. Some other parts of the project, I do enjoy working on by hand. At least setting up the patterns I think will result in simple readable flow, reduce potential bugs, etc. AI s not great at that. It’s happy to mix strings, nulls, bad type castings, no separation of concerns, no small understandable functions, no reusable code, etc. which is th part i enjoy thinking about
- kelipso 8mo ago
  Same with gui. I’m making a web gui that’s very specific for a project that I’m working on. My team finds it very useful but I would never make that thing without AI assistance, combination of I don’t find it interesting or fun, would take too long, I am not familiar with web gui stuff.
  - chasd00 8mo ago
    Claude code makes react + tailwindcss + whatever component library actually bearable for me. I can just “make a navbar on the left hand side of the screen like vscode has” and it mostly does it, a few tweaks and I have what I want. I waste so much time on that stuff doing it by hand it drives me crazy. Also “pull records from table X and display them in a data grid. Include a “New” button and associated functionality respecting column constraints in the database. Also add an edit and delete button for each row in the table”. God, it’s really nice to have an LLM get that 85% of the way done in maybe 2 min.
- DrewADesign 8mo ago
CurleighBraces 8mo ago
Has anyone got any insights into what hiring software engineers looks like these days? As someone currently with a job and not hiring it is hard to imagine. Has there been any sort of paradigm shift in coding interviews? Is LLM use expected/encouraged or frowned upon? If companies are still looking for people to write code by hand then perhaps the author is onto something, if however we as an industry are moving on, will those who don't adapt be relegated to hobbyists?
- falloutx 8mo ago
  Most of the hiring is happening in heavy AI coding companies, a lot of mid sized companies have freezed hiring or they are also only hiring people who claim to use AI to be 10x devs. For non-lying devs, only big companies seem to be hiring and their process hasnt changed much. you are still expect to solve leetcode and then also sit through system design.
  - hirako2000 8mo ago
    I confirm less hiring and those who do throw more difficult leetcode challenges than ever. The kind of challenge impossible to solve in time without an LLM doing the most part.
- woeirua 8mo ago
  Most companies haven't recognized that LLM cheating is extremely effective and widespread yet. Hiring practices have not kept up.
- doppeldanger 8mo ago
  [dead]
- chasd00 8mo ago
  I haven’t noticed much change yet at my firm. However, I work at a giant organization (700k+ employees) and they’re struggling to keep up. The lawyers aren’t even sure if we own the IP of agent generated code let alone the legal risk of sending client IP to the model providers. It’s going to take a while.
ryan_n 8mo ago
I said something similar in a different thread but the joy of actually physically writing code is the main reason why I became a software developer. I think there is some beauty to writing code. I enjoy typing the syntax, the interaction with my IDE, debugging by hand (and brain) rather than LLM, even if it's less efficient. I still use AI, but I do find it terribly sad that this type of more "manual" programming seems to be being forced out.
- sigmoid10 8mo ago
  I also enjoy walking more than driving, but if I had to travel 50 miles every day for my job, I would never dream of going on foot. Same goes for AI for me. If I can finish a project in half the time or less, I still feel enough accomplishment and on top of that I will use the gained free time for self actualisation. I like my job and I love coding and solving challenging problems, but I also love tons of other stuff that could use more of my attention. AI has created an insane net positive value for me so far. And I see tons of other people who could also benefit from it the same way, if only they spent a bit more time learning how to use it effectively. Considering how everyone and their uncle thinks they need to chime in on what AI is or is not or what it can or can not do, I find most people have frustratingly little insight into what you can actually do already. Even the people working at companies like Amazon or MS who claim to work on AI integrations sometimes seem to be missing some essentials.
  - ryan_n 8mo ago
    I don’t really understand your point about AI freeing up your time to do other stuff at your job. Does your employer let you work less hours since you’re finishing projects sooner? Mine certainly doesn’t, and I’d rather be coding than doing the other parts of my job. But maybe I’m misunderstanding why you were trying to say? I also would rather a project take longer and struggle through it without using AI as I find joy in the process. But as I said in my original post I understand that type of work appears to be coming to an end.
    - sigmoid10 8mo ago
neversupervised 8mo ago
Dev happiness is not the determining factor of how software will be written at scale
- Trasmatta 8mo ago
  I hate the implication that the happiness of employees is of no consequence and must be sacrificed for...whatever software is being produced. But I guess that's nothing new.
- TZubiri 8mo ago
  It's one of the factors, especially when you consider it not just as one of the factors ethically, but also because their input is valued and if they are not happy it means something might be operationally wrong (although of course there might be a tradeoff between productivity and worker happiness)
- angrydev 8mo ago
  Well said
- krupan 8mo ago
  If you think unhappy devs are going to produce anything good then please let me know the stock ticker of your company so I can short it
  - wiredpancake 8mo ago
    [dead]
softwaredoug 8mo ago
Even if Claude writes 100% code, I think there will be a bifurcation between people who are finicky about 10 lines of code. And those finicky about high level product experiences. I think the 10 lines of code people worry their jobs now become obsolete. In cases where the code required googling how to do X with Y technology, that's true. That's just going to be trivially solvable. And it will cause us to not need as many developers. In my experience though, the 10 lines of finicky code use case usually has specific attributes: 1. You don't have well defined requirements. We're discovering correctness as we go. We 'code' to think how to solve the problem, adding / removing / changing tests as we go. 2. The constraints / correctness of this code is extremely multifaceted. It simultaneously matters for it to be fast, correct, secure, easy to use, etc 3. We're adapting a general solution (ie a login flow) to our specific company or domain. And the latter requires us to provide careful guidance to the LLM to get the right output It may be Claude Code around these fewer bits of code, but in these cases its still important to have taste and care with code details itself. We may weirdly be in a case where it's possible to single-shot a slack clone, but taking time to change the 2 small features we care about is time consuming and requires thoughtfulness.
- grayhatter 8mo ago
  > I think the 10 lines of code people worry their jobs now become obsolete. I'm gonna assume you think you're in the other camp, but please correct me if I'm mistaken. I'd say I'm in the 10 lines of code camp, but I'd say that group is the least afraid of fictionalized career threat. The people that obsess over those 10 lines are the same people who show up to fix the system when prod goes down. They're the ones that change 2 lines of code to get a 35% performance boost. It annoys me a lot when people ship broken code. Vibe coded slop is almost always broken, because of those 10 lines.
  - softwaredoug 8mo ago
    I’m probably in the 10 lines of code camp At the same time I make enough silly mistakes hand coding it feels irresponsible to NOT have a coding LLM generate code. But I look at all the code and (gasp) make manual changes :)
jairojair 8mo ago
I understand it’s certainly happier for you, but for most people, it’s more about paying the bills.
moralestapia 8mo ago
[flagged]
drob518 8mo ago
It feels like all of modern society is being reduced to button clicks that produce dopamine hits. And that’s sad. No wonder everything is a mess.
- utopiah 8mo ago
  When slot machine is the ultimate UX.
  - lstodd 8mo ago
    Cf. wirehead, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)
fallat 8mo ago
These are starting to become daily horoscopes
freeopinion 8mo ago
I think it is pretty indisputable that there is a valuable place for AI. I recently had to interact with a very horrible db schema. The best approach I came up with to solve my challenge involved modelling a table with 300 columns. Converting some sql ddl to a Rust struct was simple but tedious work. A prompt with less than 15 words guided an AI to produce the 900+ loc for me. It took a couple seconds to scan it to see that each field had both annotations I needed and the datatypes were sane. That is exactly the type of help that makes me happy to have AI assistance. I have no idea how much electricity it consumed. Somebody more clever than me might have prompted the AI to generate the other 100 loc that used the struct to solve the whole problem. But it would have taken me longer to build the prompt than it took me to write the code. Perhaps an AI might have come up with a more clever solution. Perhaps memorializing a prompt in a comment would be super insightful documentation. But I don't really need or want AI to do everything for me. I use it or not in a way that makes me happy. Right now that means I don't use it very much. Mostly because I haven't spent the time to learn how to use it. But I'm happy.
- tomaskafka 8mo ago
  You’d have consumed probably 2+ magnitudes of energy or more just for coffee (and its growth and supply chain) to write that piece of code. Not counting the building, food, transportation… Us humans are expensive part of the machine.
- lokar 8mo ago
  I worry that means the bad code / schema / design never gets improved. I've spent a lot of my career cleaning up stuff like that, I guess with AI we just stop caring?
  - onehair 8mo ago
    I wonder just what goes into someone's mind, when they do not care about who in the future is gonna have to maintain what they've crafted. Nor care about the experience of the user. Nor even feel accountable when they haven't done their due diligence to do things right.
shmerl 8mo ago
Programming is a creative work. Replacing human creativity with pseudo parrot code generation impacts this process in bad ways. It's same reason many artists despise using AI for art. Bean counters don't care about creativity and art though, so they'll never get it.
- cat_plus_plus 8mo ago
  Good for artists I guess, I wouldn't know because I am not one. The best I can manage is drawing a stick figure of a cat. Years back I was working on a Mac app and I needed an icon. So I talked to an artist and she asked for $5K to make one for me. I couldn't justify spending so much on a hobby that I didn't know if it would go anywhere so I wrote a little app that procedurally generated me some basic sucky icon. I am sure Gordon Ramsay is also not impressed with cooking skills of my microwave, I just don't know how his objections practically relate to getting me fed daily.
Isamu 8mo ago
For me writing code is clarifying ideas, it’s an important part of the process. Sometimes you start to see a radical way of simplifying what you want, that only happens if you are willing to transform what your requirements are if they turn out to be overly prescriptive. I think though it is probably better for your career to churn out lines, it takes longer to radically simplify, people don’t always appreciate the effort. Plus instead if you go the other way, increase scope and time and complexity that more likely will result in rewards to you for the greater effort.
mooktakim 8mo ago
Initially I felt like this but now I've changed. Now I realise a lot of grunt work doesn't need to be done by me, i can direct llm to make changes. I can also experiment more as I'm able to build complex features, try it out and delete it without feeling too bad.
- kmaitreys 8mo ago
  The more I read about things like this more I realize that software engineering today's just bloat and grunt work that people want to escape. It's so ironic because computers/computer programs were literally invented to avoid doing grunt work.
  - mooktakim 8mo ago
    I agree. But I do have some concerns. Sometimes the LLM writes code and its a lot of work to go through it. I get lazy and trust LLM too much. I've been doing this for a while so I know how it should write, I go back and try to fix or refactor. But a new dev might direct LLM to write code they might not understand. Like a blackbox. LLM makes a lot of decisions without you realising, decisions which you used to make yourself. Writing code is making thousand decisions.
  - dalmo3 8mo ago
    To be fair a lot of bloat and gruntness are safety nets we built for our own benefit. Static typing, linting, test harnesses, visual regressions, CI etc. If AI to do the legwork there while I focus on business logic and UX, it's a win-win.
angrydev 8mo ago
> “What’s the point of it all?” I thought, LLMs can generate decent-ish and correct-ish looking code while I have more time to do what? doomscroll? You could look back throughout human history at the inventions that made labor more efficient and ask the same question. The time-savings could either result in more time to do even more work, or more time to keep projects on pace at a sane and sustainable rate. It's up to us to choose.
qoez 8mo ago
I find it helps me just forced to be focused on a task for a few hours. Just the blocked out attention I spend on it will help refine and discover new problems and angles etc. I don't think just blocking out the time without actually trying to code it (staring at a wall) is as effective.
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cat_plus_plus 8mo ago
I am TL of an Android app with dozens of screens that expose hundreds of different distinct functions. My task is to expose all of these functions as appfunctions that can be called by an LLM in response to free form user requests. My current plan is to build a little LangGraph pipeline where first step is AI documenting all functions in each app's fragment, second step is extracting them into app functions, then refactoring fragment to call app functions etc. And by build I mean Gemini will build it for me and I will ask for some refinement and edit prompts. I also like writing code by hand, I just don't want to maintain other people's code. LMK if you need a job referral to hand refactor 20K lines of code in 2 months. Do you also enjoy working on test coverage?
analog8374 8mo ago
It's a phenomenon you see in a lot of crafts. We enjoy the craft, but when it becomes all about the product and we optimize for that, the fun goes away. Succinctly: process over product.
HPsquared 8mo ago
If you write it by hand you get not only code, but also understanding.
- ebhn 8mo ago
  Yea my job as a SWE is to have a correct mental model of the code and bing it with me everywhere I go... meetings, feature design, debugging sessions. Lines of code written is not unimportant, but matters way less when you look at the big picture
jmull 8mo ago
> The process of writing code helps internalize the context and is easier for my brain to think deeply about it. True, and you really do need to internalize the context to be a good software developer. However, just because coding is how you're used to internalizing context doesn't mean it's the only good way to do it. (I've always had a problem with people jumping into coding when they don't really understand what they are doing. I don't expect LLMs to change that, but the pernicious part of the old way is that the code -- much of it developed in ignorance -- became too entrenched/expensive to change in significant ways. Perhaps that part will change? Hopefully, anyway.)
sho_hn 8mo ago
It doesn't have to be either-or in my experience. I very much enjoy the actively of writing code. For me, programming is pure stress relief. I love the focus and the feeling flow, I love figuring out an elegant solution, I love tastefully structuring things based on my experience of what concerns matter, etc. Despite the AI tools I still do that: I put my effort into the areas of the code that count, or that offer intellectually stimulating challenge, or where I want to make sure to explore manually think my way into the problem space and try out different API or structure ideas. In parallel to that I keep my background queue of AI agents fed with more menial or less interesting tasks. I take the things I learn in my mental "main thread" into the specs I write for the agents. And when I need to take a break on my mental "main thread" I review their results. IMHO this is the way to go for us experienced developers who enjoy writing code. Don't stop doing that, there's still a lot of value in it. Write code consciously and actively, participate in the creation. But learn to utilize and keep busy agents in parallel or when you're off-keyboard. Delegate, basically. There's quite a lot of things they can do already that you really don't need to do because the outcome is completely predictable. I feel that it's possible to actually increase the hours/day focussing on stimulating problems that way. The "you're just mindlessly prompting all day" or "the fun is gone" are choices you don't need to be making.
deaux 8mo ago
Of course. Almost everyone who knows how to ride a horse, is happier riding a horse than driving a car too. Or hell, in decent weather even a bike. In fact, it's even worse - driving a car is one of the least happy modes of getting around there is. And sure, maybe you really enjoy driving one. You're a rare breed when it comes down to it. Yet it's responsible by far for the most people-distance transported every day.
CraftingLinks 8mo ago
I hate typing strings of syntax. So boring. Never saw the appeal. I do like tinkering with ideas, concepts, structure... just not the mechanical interaction part. Im not tbe best typist...then again, its the same with playing factorio. I love the concept of building structures, but fighting the UI to communicate my ideas is such a drag...
keybored 8mo ago
There’s been a new category of writings the last year. The AI Inevitability Soothsaying.[1] There’s talk of war in the state of Nationstan. There are two camps: those who think going to war is good and just, and those who think it is not practical. Clearly not everyone is pro-war. There are two camps. But the Overton Window is defined with the premise that invading another country is a right that Nationstate has and can act on. There are by definition (inside the Overton Window) no one who is anti-war on the principle that the state has no right to do it.[2] Not all articles in this AI category are outright positive. They range from the euphoric to the slightly depressed. But they share the same premise of inevitability; even the most negative will say that, of course I use AI, I’m not some Luddite[3]! It is integral to my work now. But I don’t just let it run the whole game. I copy–paste with judicious care. blah blah blah The point of any Overton Window is to simulate lively debate within the confines of the premises. And it’s impressive how many aspects of “the human” (RIP?) it covers. Emotions, self-esteem, character, identity. We are not[4] marching into irrelevance without a good consoling. Consolation? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159648 [2] You can let real nations come to mind here This was taken from the formerly famous (and controversial among Khmer Rouge obsessed) Chomsky, now living in infamy for obvious reasons. [3] Many paragraphs could be written about this [4] We. Well, maybe me and others, not necessarily you. Depending on your view of whether the elites or the Mensa+ engineers will inherit the machines.
krupan 8mo ago
The most pertinent thought in this is where the author asks, "LLMs can generate decent-ish and correct-ish looking code while I have more time to do what? doomscroll?" LLMs are not good enough for you to set and forget. You have to stay nearby babysitting it, keeping half an eye on it. That's what's so disheartening to many of us. In my career I have mentored junior engineers and seen them rapidly learn new things and increase their capabilities. Watching over them for a shirt while is pretty rewarding. I've also worked with contract developers who were not much better than current LLMs, and like LLMs they seemed incapable of learning directly from me. Unwilling even. They were quick to say nice words like, "ok, I understand, I'll do it differently next time," but then they didn't change at all. Those were some of the most frustrating times in my career. That's the feeling I get when using LLMs for writing code.
- spicyusername 8mo ago
  while I have more time to do what? For work, I regularly have 2-4 agents going simultaneously, churning on 1-3 features, bug fixes, doc updates. I pop between them in the "down time", or am reviewing their output, or am preparing the requirements for the next thing, or am reviewing my coworkers MRs. Plenty to do that isn't doom scrolling.
  - lazyfolder 8mo ago
    Out of curiousity, how do you manage the constant context switching? It's hard for me to manage the context of one coding session, let along 2-4 sessions.
    - spicyusername 8mo ago
      I usually don't find it too bad. I don't need to focus as much on the nitty gritty the whole time, which is where context switching really gets you. Once you get to the review stage is where the focus is really needed and the context switching pauses. That being said, it's definitely a different workflow from just getting in the zone and coding for four straight hours.
- 8mo ago
deleted 8mo ago
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animanoir 8mo ago
[dead]
nextlevelwizard 8mo ago
In other news water is wet
rorylaitila 8mo ago
I've developed at the speed of "vibecoding" long before LLMs by having highly thought-compressed tools, frameworks and snippets. Most of my applications use Model Driven Development where the data model automatically builds the application DAO/controllers/validations/migrations. The data model is the application. I find LLMs help me write procedures upon this data model even a little bit faster than I did before. But the data model is the design. Unless I turnover the entire design to the LLM, I am always the decider on the data model. I will always have more context about where I want to evolve the data model. I enjoy the data modelling aspect and want to remain in the driver seat, with LLMs as my implementer of procedures.
boredemployee 8mo ago
every day there's a thread about this topic and the discussions always circle around the same arguments. I think we should be worrying about more urgent things, like a worker doing the job of three people with ai agents, the mental load that comes with that, how much of the disruption caused by ai will disproportionately benefit owners rather than employees, and so on.
- northfield27 8mo ago
  Agreed but sadly, many people are too optimistic with AI and are completely forgetting that they can be the part of next layoffs. And others are not able to believe the (not extreme) but visible speed boost from pragmatic use of AI. And sadly, whenever the discussion about the collective financial disadvantage of AI to software engineers will start and wherever it goes… The owners and employers will always make the profits.
- xantronix 8mo ago
  We are, after all, in the holy temple of the adherents of the Great Disenfranchisement Machine.
raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
> Even if I generate a 1,000 line PR in 30 minutes I still need to understand and review it. Since I am responsible for the code I ship, this makes me the bottleneck. I am not responsible for choosing whether the code I write using a for loop or while loop. I am responsible for whether my implementation - code, architecture, user experience - meets the functional and non functional requirements. It’s been well over a decade that my responsibilities didn’t require delegation to other developers doing the work or even outsourcing an entire implementation to another company like a SalesForce implementation.
- morshu9001 8mo ago
  When I got my first job long ago, I found that code review does involve arguing over things like for vs while loop, or having proper grammar in comments. Thought about quitting for a sec. Now that I have more experience and manage other SWEs, I was right, that stuff was dumb and I'm glad that nobody cares anymore. I'll spend the time reviewing but only the important things.
  - jpalawaga 8mo ago
    Is there something about LLMs that suddenly make grammar and style irrelevant? Is your take, no human is going to read this ever again, so why bother making it pretty and consistent/readable?
    - morshu9001 8mo ago
      It was never relevant, LLM or not. When reviewing junior SWEs' code pre LLMs, I didn't care about 75% of the style guide. I cared if they were using the DB wrong or had race conditions or wrote code I couldn't read. In other comment, meant that other reviewers who used to nitpick have stopped for whatever reason, maybe because overall people are busier now.
  - raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
    Unfortunately, people do care that the AI agents don’t code just like they do. Once I got to the point where I was delegating complete implementations to seniors with just “this is a high level idea of what Becky’s department wants. You now know as much I do. If you have any business related questions go ask Becky and come back to me with a design and these are our only technical constraints”. Then two weeks later there are things I might have done differently. But it meets all of the functional and non functional requirements. I bite my toungue and move on. His team is going to be responsable for it. Now I don’t treat AI as a senior developer. I treat it as a mid level ticket taker. If their is going to be a feature change, I ain’t doing it any more. The coding agent is. I am just going to keep good documentation in various MD files for context.
arjie 8mo ago
My wife and my dad enjoy assembling furniture (the former free style, the latter off the instructions). I like the furniture assembled but I cannot stand doing it. Some of us are one way and others are the other way. For me, LLMs are joyful experiences. I think of ideas and they make them happen. Remarkable and enjoyable. I can see how someone who would rather assemble the furniture, or perhaps build it, would like to do that. I can’t really relate but I can understand it.
- nonethewiser 8mo ago
  Its a new distinction. Building software used to be the same things as coding software. Now they are different.
  - arjie 8mo ago
    That’s a good point. I suppose one must imagine the complaints from other Internet commenters in bygone times over using libraries vs writing one’s own code. They probably found themselves similarly estranged from a community of library assemblers. And now even those assemblers find themselves estranged from us machine whisperers. But we all were following the way to build software for our time. I wonder who follows. Perhaps it has already happened. I look at the code but there are people who build their businesses as English text in git. I don’t yet have the courage.
  - dalmo3 8mo ago
    Excellent insight. And thanks for addressing the actual subject rather than the analogy.
mekod 8mo ago
Bro discovered that using a calculator makes him happier doing long division by hand and decided the rest of us are just dopamine junkies for enjoying tools that actually scale.
meken 8mo ago
I’m in a similar camp to the OP. For me, my joy doesn’t come from building - it comes from understanding. Which incidentally has actually made SWE not a great career path for me because I get bored building features, but that’s another story… For me, LLMs have been a tremendous boon for me in terms of learning.
queenkjuul 8mo ago
Basically describes how i use Claude Code now. I'll let it do stuff i don't want to do, like setting up mocks for unit tests (boring) or editing GitHub actions yaml (torture). But otherwise, i like to let it show me how to do something I'm not sure how to do, and then I'll just go do it myself. (If i have a clear idea of how i want to go something already, i just do it myself I'm the first place) I almost never agree with the names Claude chooses, i despise the comments it adds every other line despite me telling it over and over and over not to, oftentimes i catch the silly bugs that look fine at first glance when you just let Claude write its output direct to the file. It feels like a good balance, to me. Nobody on my team is working drastically faster than me, with or without AI. It very obviously slows down my boss (who just doesn't pay attention and has to rework everything twice) or some of the juniors (who don't sufficiently understand the problem to begin with). I'll be more productive then them even if i am hand-writing most of the code. So i don't feel threatened by this idea that "hand written code will be something nobody does professionally here soon" -- like the article said, if I'm responsible for the code i submit, I'm still the bottleneck, AI or not. The time i spend writing my own code is time I'm not poring over AI output trying to verify that it's actually correct, and for now that's a good trade.
kittbuilds 8mo ago
[dead]
askonomm 8mo ago
Seems like the author has a case of all or nothing. The real power in agentic programming, to me, is not in extremes, but in that you are still actively present. You don't give it world-size things to do, but byte-sized, and you constantly steer it. It's to be detailed enough to produce quality, and to be aware of everything it produces, but not so detailed that it makes sense to just write the code yourself. It's a delicate balance, but once you've found it, incredibly powerful. Especially mixed with deterministic self-checking tools (like some MCP's). If you "set and forget", then you are vibe coding, and I do not trust for a second that the output is quality, or that you'd even know how that output fits into the larger system. You effectively delegate away the reason you are being paid onto the AI, so why pay you? What are you adding to the mix here? Your prompting skills? Agentic programming to me is just a more efficient use of the tools I already used anyway, but it's not doing the thinking for me, it's just doing the _doing_ for me.
- pdimitar 8mo ago
  I am with you and fully agree with your "it does not have to be an all or nothing" stance. A remark on one part of your comment: > What are you adding to the mix here? Your prompting skills? The answer to that is an unironic and dead-serious "yes!". My colleagues use Claude Opus and it does an okay job but misses important things occasionally. I've had one 18-hour session with it and fixed 3 serious but subtle and difficult to reproduce bugs. And fixed 6-7 flaky tests and our CI has been 100% green ever since. Being a skilled operator is an actual billable skill IMO. And that will continue to be the case for a while unless the LLM companies manage to make another big leap. I've personally witnessed Opus do world-class detective work. I even left it unattended and it churned away on a problem for almost 5h. But I spent an entire hour before that carefully telling it its success criteria, never to delete tests, never to relax requirements X & Y & Z, always to use this exact feedback loop when testing after it iterated on a fix, and a bunch of others. In that ~5h session Opus fixed another extremely annoying bug and found mistakes in tests and corrected them after correcting the production code first and making new tests. Opus can be scary good but you must not handwave anything away. I found love for being an architect ever since I started using the newest generation [of scarily smart-looking] LLMs.
sathish316 8mo ago
> “vibe coding has an addictive nature to it, you write some instructions, and code that looks correct is generated. Bam! Dopamine hit! If the code isn’t correct, then it’s just one prompt away from being correct” The reason Claude code or Cursor feels addictive even if it makes mistakes is better illustrated in this post - https://x.com/cryptocyberia/status/2014380759956471820?s=46 https://x.com/cryptocyberia/status/2014380759956471820?s=46
KronisLV 8mo ago
I like writing code that I don't have time pressure around, as well as the kind where I can afford to fail and use that as a learning experience. Especially the code that I can structure myself. I sometimes dread writing code that's in a state of bad disrepair or is overly complex, think a lot of the "enterprise" code out there - it got so bad that I more or less quit a job over it, though never really stated that publicly, alongside my mind going dark places when you have pressure to succeed but the circumstances are stacked against you. For a while I had a few Markdown files that went into detail exactly why I hated it, in addition to also being able to point my finger at a few people responsible for it. I tried approaching it professionally, but it never changed and the suggestions and complaints largely fell on deaf ears. Obviously I've learnt that while you can try to provide suggestions, some people and circumstances will never change, often it's about culture fit. But yeah, outsource all of that to AI, don't even look back. Your sanity is worth more than that.
- lokar 8mo ago
  I wonder if some of the divide in the LLM-code discourse is between people who have mostly/always worked in jobs where they have the time and freedom to do things correctly, and to go back and fix stuff as they go, vs people who have mostly not (and instead worked under constant unrealistic time pressure, no focus on quality, API design, re-factoring, etc)
  - KronisLV 8mo ago
    I’m pretty sure that the answer to that question is positive: those who have worked with code that sparks joy won’t like interacting with it closely being taken away, whereas the people for whom the code they have to work with inspires misery will be thankful for the opportunity to at least slight free themselves from the shackles of needing to run in circles for two weeks to implement a basic form because everything around it is a mess.
coldtea 8mo ago
>Yes, coding is not software engineering It absolutely is. >Even if I generate a 1,000 line PR in 30 minutes I still need to understand and review it. Since I am responsible for the code I ship, this makes me the bottleneck. You don't ship it, the AI does. You're just the middleman, a middleman they can eventually remove altogether. >Now, I would be lying if I said I didn’t use LLMs to generate code. I still use Claude, but I do so in a more controlled manner. "I can quit if I want" >Manually giving claude the context forces me to be familiar with the codebase myself, rather than tell it to just “cook”. It turns code generation from a passive action to a deliberate thoughtful action. It also keeps my brain engaged and active, which means I can still enter the flow state. I have found this to be the best of both worlds and a way to preserve my happiness at work. And then soon the boss demands more output, like the guys who left it all to Claude and even run 5x in parallel give.
- Ygg2 8mo ago
  > It absolutely is. It isn't. Coding is to software engineering, what calculation is to math. A necessary but insufficient condition. > And then soon the boss demands more output, like the guys who left it all to Claude and even run 5x in parallel give. You can get 100x output for 1/100x the price, if you replace the monthly Claude subscription with a Markov chain. Think of the efficiency gains. Sure, it will be garbage, but think of the velocity.
  - coldtea 8mo ago
    >It isn't. Coding is to software engineering, what calculation is to math. A necessary but insufficient condition. It is that, but to Computer Science, its lofty academic cousin. To Software Engineering coding is an essential part.
    - Ygg2 8mo ago
      Ok, fine, if you gonna be nitpicky, it's a calculation to an electrical engineer. > To Software Engineering coding is an essential part. Not really. You can be a Principal Engineer/Architect/Maintainer and do very little coding, but lots of code review and testing. The point is, if you're just banging out code, then you're a software developer. If you use the engineering design process (research, requirements, design document, feasibility, conceptual design, prototype, detailed design) to solve problems using software, then you're a software engineer.
throw7272855 8mo ago
Coding with AI falls in one of three categories: 1. The thing to be written is available online. AI is a search engine to find it, maybe also translate it to the language of choice. 2. The thing (system or component or function) is genuinely new. The spec has to be very precise and the AI is just doing the typing. This is, at best working around syntax issues, such as some hard-to-remember particular SQL syntax or something like that. The languages should be better. 3. It‘s neither new nor available online but a lot to type out and modify. The AI does all the boilerplate. This is a failure of the frameworks and languages to require so much boilerplate.
- tablatom 8mo ago
  I’m really happy to see this take. It’s not the first time but it’s not said often enough. I once had the thought that anything AI can do really well is probably something that should not be being done at all. That’s an overly broad statement but I think there’s some truth in it. The grand challenge of software engineering is to find beautifully elegant and precise ways to express what we want the computer to do for us. If we can find them, it will be better to express ourselves in those ways than to prompt an AI than do it for us, much in the same way that a blog written by an LLM is not worth reading.
- nijave 8mo ago
  Really I don't think frameworks have kept up and LLMs are the hammer in Law of the Hammer.
- krackers 8mo ago
  There's another category (possibly a subset of 1), the implementation is novel but set of requirements is known and has a set of conformance tests so tight that the LLM can basically brute force its way to a solution. See e.g. the Claude Compiler thing. In this case it's less "search engine + translator" and more of "brute force search".
  - Jensson 8mo ago
    How is a C compiler novel? There are so many open source C compilers. If you can download a bunch of different open source projects and they all work then it is not a novel problem, it is as solved as you can get already.
geldedus 8mo ago
Does you being happier help you writing 200x more code in the same time unit ?
pickleRick243 8mo ago
A lot of this discussion is just sort of moot because the cold hard calculus of economics will dictate the future of AI coding. If it turns out it's just a cognitive burden that makes programmers worse, the bubble will pop and eventually the companies that move away from the technology will come out on top. If it turns out to make software engineering much more efficient, it will become the de factor standard and you will become obsolete as a professional engineer (at least at the vast majority of employers) regardless of how you feel about it. How you wish to code in your free time is up to you and one that doesn't really warrant an argument one way or the other since there is no wrong answer.
gitaarik 8mo ago
I'm also happier riding a horse than driving a car. So I'll take the horse to work from now on.
- sambapa 8mo ago
  Have you seen Wall-e and those fat fucks on robowheelchairs? In other words, it's entirely okay to use a forklift to lift heavy weights, but please go to the gym.
jama211 8mo ago
I suspect this is like the invention of the car. Some people just love riding horses, so they’ll keep doing it as a hobby. The rest of us are fine with a car.
gitprolinux 8mo ago
I like to code then when I resolved the solution to its completeness, I then know what to ask an llm to provide a solution to the same problem. This sometimes provides a different approach to the solution, other times, it provides variations to my solution thus improving upon my solid code solution.
Snacklive 8mo ago
I have a problem vibecoding and frustrating experiences with coworkers that are a little too much into it. I can use AI to help me explore libraries or to replace a search, generate small snippets here and there, or even scripts that i occasionally need. But i can't vibecode, i don't know how to let go, i babysit too much, i read the code and i feel uneasy if I don't understand what I'm building, or why I'm building it in a certain way, i need to understand how the pieces work to make a whole

386 points by lazyfolder 8mo ago

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

I am happy someone else is also talking about addictive nature of vibe coding and its gambling-esque rewards. Would we see agentic programmers begging for tokens on kickstarter in future? That would be funny.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

ramesh31 8mo ago

I also came to a pretty simple understanding over the years. If I'm coding and making progress on a project, I'm happy. If I'm not, or I'm stuck on something, I'm unhappy. This is a profoundly unhealthy way to live because life will pass you by. There is more to our existence than work, or even hobbies. And if AI lets me get more time for that, I am happier than ever.

rpodraza 8mo ago
This is great in theory, but answer me sincerely: are you spending less time at work because of AI? Because I reckon for most programmers here it is not the case at all.
- hirako2000 8mo ago
  There certainly are many who create a bit more PR. Ai generated. So they can roll their thumb for most of the day.
taway1874 8mo ago
Yes but is AI really getting you unstuck or are you playing a game of whack-a-mole where it fixes one bug and generates several others that you are unaware off (just one example)?
- skerit 8mo ago
  > Yes but is AI really getting you unstuck Yes, it really is.

woeirua 8mo ago

This is no different then carpentry. Yes, all furniture can now be built by machines. Some people still choose to build it by hand. Does that make them less productive? Yes. Will they ever carve furniture by hand for a business? Probably not. Can they still enjoy the act of working with the wood? Yes. If you want to code by hand, then do it! No one's stopping you. But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer.

tasuki 8mo ago
> But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer. If the local bakery can sell expensive artisanal brioches, surely the programmers can sell expensive artisanal ones and zeroes!
falloutx 8mo ago
Only cutting of the furniture is automated. Still designed and assembled by humans. There is no machine which spits out a sofa.
- brulard 8mo ago
  That is not a technical constraint and may be automated if it made sense financially. Same with software - for some time software won't be all designed, coded, tested, deployed to production without human supervision or approval. But the pieces in between are more and more filled by AI, as are the logistics of designing, manufacturing and distributing sofas.
  - mrits 8mo ago
    If it wasn't a technical constraint it would make sense financially.
candiddevmike 8mo ago
> If you want to code by hand, then do it! No one's stopping you. But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer. If you can't code by hand professionally anymore, what are you being paid to do? Bring the specs to the LLMs? Deal with the customers so the LLMs don't have to?

acedTrex 8mo ago

I will do what i know gives me the best possible and fastest outcome over the long term, 5-10 year period. And that remains largely neovim and by hand. The process of typing code gives me a deeper understanding of the project that lets me deliver future features FASTER. I'm fundamentally convinced that my investment into deep long term grokking of a project will allow me to surpass primarily LLM projects over the long term in raw velocity. It also stands to reason that any task that i deem to NOT further my goal of learning or deep understanding that can be done by an LLM i will use the LLM for it. And as it turns out there are a TON of those tasks so my LLM usage is incredibly high.

lazyfolder 8mo ago
> I will do what i know gives me the best possible and fastest outcome over the long term, 5-10 year period. And that remains largely neovim and by hand. The process of typing code gives me a deeper understanding of the project that lets me deliver future features FASTER. I'm fundamentally convinced that my deep long term understanding of a project will allow me to surpass primarily LLM projects over the long term. I have never thought of that aspect! This is a solid point!
wazHFsRy 8mo ago
I love that take and sympathise deeply with it. I also have come to the conclusion to focus my manual work on those areas where I can get learning from and try to automate the rest away as much as possible.
chasd00 8mo ago
This is the way. I think we’re in for some rough years at first but then what you described will settle in to the “best practice” (I hate that term). I look forward to the really bizarre bugs and incidents that make the news in the next 2-3 years. …Well as long as they’re not from my teams hah :)
- vdfs 8mo ago
  > really bizarre bugs and incidents that make the news in the next 2-3 years I take it that you are not using Windows 11

testemailfordg2 8mo ago

Feel hand/human written code of an experienced individual should be more valuable for a business than one created by agents. Surely, agents and humans might be using the same underlying frameworks or programming languages, but the value difference depends on the breadth and depth of experience. Agents gives you the breadth but an experienced individuals give you the depth in understanding/problem solving.

rf15 8mo ago

This is pointing out one factor of vibecoding that is talked about too little: that it feels good, and that this feeling often clouds people's judgment on what is actually achieved (i.e. you lost control of the code and are running more and more frictionless on hopes and dreams)

lazyfolder 8mo ago
Definitely. And it’s hard to separate out whether the person is actually more productive or feels more productive.
- division_by_0 8mo ago
  Yes, this (higher perceived vs. lower actual productivity) was probably at least true for early 2025. https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/ https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...
Trasmatta 8mo ago
I'll also say that vibecoding only feels good until it doesn't. And then you realize you don't understand the huge mess of code you've just produced at all. At least when I write by hand, I have a deep and intimate understanding of the system.
xyzzy_plugh 8mo ago
Conversely I feel like this is talked about a lot. I think this is a sort of essential cognitive dissonance that is present in many scenarios we're already beyond comfortable with, such as hiring consultants or off-shoring or adopting the latest hot framework. We are a species that likes things that feel good even if they're bad for us. We don't stand a chance and we know it.
- grayhatter 8mo ago
  > We don't stand a chance and we know it. Drugs, alcoholism, overeating, orgies, doom scrolling, gambling. Addictions are a problem or danger to humans, no doubt. But we don't stand a chance? I'm not sure the evidence supports your argument.

eddythompson80 8mo ago

It really depends on the project for me. For example,I never enjoyed writing react code (or really any UI), just the outcome of my idea materializing in a usable interface. There is nothing creative or fun for me in almost any UX framework. It’s just a ton of predictable typing (now we need a fricking box. And another box. And another stupid box…) I’m more than happy outsourcing that. However, my thoughts are too random and imprecise that actually outsourcing it before to another person always felt disrespectful to them. I don’t have to worry about that with AI. My company is paying it, and when I’m prototyping a react thing every now and then, I burn few thousand dollars a day for the lols. If they don’t like it, take it away. I just won’t do that part because I have no interest in it. Some other parts of the project, I do enjoy working on by hand. At least setting up the patterns I think will result in simple readable flow, reduce potential bugs, etc. AI s not great at that. It’s happy to mix strings, nulls, bad type castings, no separation of concerns, no small understandable functions, no reusable code, etc. which is th part i enjoy thinking about

kelipso 8mo ago
Same with gui. I’m making a web gui that’s very specific for a project that I’m working on. My team finds it very useful but I would never make that thing without AI assistance, combination of I don’t find it interesting or fun, would take too long, I am not familiar with web gui stuff.
- chasd00 8mo ago
  Claude code makes react + tailwindcss + whatever component library actually bearable for me. I can just “make a navbar on the left hand side of the screen like vscode has” and it mostly does it, a few tweaks and I have what I want. I waste so much time on that stuff doing it by hand it drives me crazy. Also “pull records from table X and display them in a data grid. Include a “New” button and associated functionality respecting column constraints in the database. Also add an edit and delete button for each row in the table”. God, it’s really nice to have an LLM get that 85% of the way done in maybe 2 min.
DrewADesign 8mo ago

CurleighBraces 8mo ago

Has anyone got any insights into what hiring software engineers looks like these days? As someone currently with a job and not hiring it is hard to imagine. Has there been any sort of paradigm shift in coding interviews? Is LLM use expected/encouraged or frowned upon? If companies are still looking for people to write code by hand then perhaps the author is onto something, if however we as an industry are moving on, will those who don't adapt be relegated to hobbyists?

falloutx 8mo ago
Most of the hiring is happening in heavy AI coding companies, a lot of mid sized companies have freezed hiring or they are also only hiring people who claim to use AI to be 10x devs. For non-lying devs, only big companies seem to be hiring and their process hasnt changed much. you are still expect to solve leetcode and then also sit through system design.
- hirako2000 8mo ago
  I confirm less hiring and those who do throw more difficult leetcode challenges than ever. The kind of challenge impossible to solve in time without an LLM doing the most part.
woeirua 8mo ago
Most companies haven't recognized that LLM cheating is extremely effective and widespread yet. Hiring practices have not kept up.
doppeldanger 8mo ago
[dead]
chasd00 8mo ago
I haven’t noticed much change yet at my firm. However, I work at a giant organization (700k+ employees) and they’re struggling to keep up. The lawyers aren’t even sure if we own the IP of agent generated code let alone the legal risk of sending client IP to the model providers. It’s going to take a while.

ryan_n 8mo ago

I said something similar in a different thread but the joy of actually physically writing code is the main reason why I became a software developer. I think there is some beauty to writing code. I enjoy typing the syntax, the interaction with my IDE, debugging by hand (and brain) rather than LLM, even if it's less efficient. I still use AI, but I do find it terribly sad that this type of more "manual" programming seems to be being forced out.

sigmoid10 8mo ago
I also enjoy walking more than driving, but if I had to travel 50 miles every day for my job, I would never dream of going on foot. Same goes for AI for me. If I can finish a project in half the time or less, I still feel enough accomplishment and on top of that I will use the gained free time for self actualisation. I like my job and I love coding and solving challenging problems, but I also love tons of other stuff that could use more of my attention. AI has created an insane net positive value for me so far. And I see tons of other people who could also benefit from it the same way, if only they spent a bit more time learning how to use it effectively. Considering how everyone and their uncle thinks they need to chime in on what AI is or is not or what it can or can not do, I find most people have frustratingly little insight into what you can actually do already. Even the people working at companies like Amazon or MS who claim to work on AI integrations sometimes seem to be missing some essentials.
- ryan_n 8mo ago
  I don’t really understand your point about AI freeing up your time to do other stuff at your job. Does your employer let you work less hours since you’re finishing projects sooner? Mine certainly doesn’t, and I’d rather be coding than doing the other parts of my job. But maybe I’m misunderstanding why you were trying to say? I also would rather a project take longer and struggle through it without using AI as I find joy in the process. But as I said in my original post I understand that type of work appears to be coming to an end.
  - sigmoid10 8mo ago

neversupervised 8mo ago

Dev happiness is not the determining factor of how software will be written at scale

Trasmatta 8mo ago
I hate the implication that the happiness of employees is of no consequence and must be sacrificed for...whatever software is being produced. But I guess that's nothing new.
TZubiri 8mo ago
It's one of the factors, especially when you consider it not just as one of the factors ethically, but also because their input is valued and if they are not happy it means something might be operationally wrong (although of course there might be a tradeoff between productivity and worker happiness)
angrydev 8mo ago
Well said
krupan 8mo ago
If you think unhappy devs are going to produce anything good then please let me know the stock ticker of your company so I can short it
- wiredpancake 8mo ago
  [dead]

softwaredoug 8mo ago

Even if Claude writes 100% code, I think there will be a bifurcation between people who are finicky about 10 lines of code. And those finicky about high level product experiences. I think the 10 lines of code people worry their jobs now become obsolete. In cases where the code required googling how to do X with Y technology, that's true. That's just going to be trivially solvable. And it will cause us to not need as many developers. In my experience though, the 10 lines of finicky code use case usually has specific attributes: 1. You don't have well defined requirements. We're discovering correctness as we go. We 'code' to think how to solve the problem, adding / removing / changing tests as we go. 2. The constraints / correctness of this code is extremely multifaceted. It simultaneously matters for it to be fast, correct, secure, easy to use, etc 3. We're adapting a general solution (ie a login flow) to our specific company or domain. And the latter requires us to provide careful guidance to the LLM to get the right output It may be Claude Code around these fewer bits of code, but in these cases its still important to have taste and care with code details itself. We may weirdly be in a case where it's possible to single-shot a slack clone, but taking time to change the 2 small features we care about is time consuming and requires thoughtfulness.

grayhatter 8mo ago
> I think the 10 lines of code people worry their jobs now become obsolete. I'm gonna assume you think you're in the other camp, but please correct me if I'm mistaken. I'd say I'm in the 10 lines of code camp, but I'd say that group is the least afraid of fictionalized career threat. The people that obsess over those 10 lines are the same people who show up to fix the system when prod goes down. They're the ones that change 2 lines of code to get a 35% performance boost. It annoys me a lot when people ship broken code. Vibe coded slop is almost always broken, because of those 10 lines.
- softwaredoug 8mo ago
  I’m probably in the 10 lines of code camp At the same time I make enough silly mistakes hand coding it feels irresponsible to NOT have a coding LLM generate code. But I look at all the code and (gasp) make manual changes :)

jairojair 8mo ago

I understand it’s certainly happier for you, but for most people, it’s more about paying the bills.

moralestapia 8mo ago

[flagged]

drob518 8mo ago

It feels like all of modern society is being reduced to button clicks that produce dopamine hits. And that’s sad. No wonder everything is a mess.

utopiah 8mo ago
When slot machine is the ultimate UX.
- lstodd 8mo ago
  Cf. wirehead, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)

fallat 8mo ago

These are starting to become daily horoscopes

freeopinion 8mo ago

I think it is pretty indisputable that there is a valuable place for AI. I recently had to interact with a very horrible db schema. The best approach I came up with to solve my challenge involved modelling a table with 300 columns. Converting some sql ddl to a Rust struct was simple but tedious work. A prompt with less than 15 words guided an AI to produce the 900+ loc for me. It took a couple seconds to scan it to see that each field had both annotations I needed and the datatypes were sane. That is exactly the type of help that makes me happy to have AI assistance. I have no idea how much electricity it consumed. Somebody more clever than me might have prompted the AI to generate the other 100 loc that used the struct to solve the whole problem. But it would have taken me longer to build the prompt than it took me to write the code. Perhaps an AI might have come up with a more clever solution. Perhaps memorializing a prompt in a comment would be super insightful documentation. But I don't really need or want AI to do everything for me. I use it or not in a way that makes me happy. Right now that means I don't use it very much. Mostly because I haven't spent the time to learn how to use it. But I'm happy.

tomaskafka 8mo ago
You’d have consumed probably 2+ magnitudes of energy or more just for coffee (and its growth and supply chain) to write that piece of code. Not counting the building, food, transportation… Us humans are expensive part of the machine.
lokar 8mo ago
I worry that means the bad code / schema / design never gets improved. I've spent a lot of my career cleaning up stuff like that, I guess with AI we just stop caring?
- onehair 8mo ago
  I wonder just what goes into someone's mind, when they do not care about who in the future is gonna have to maintain what they've crafted. Nor care about the experience of the user. Nor even feel accountable when they haven't done their due diligence to do things right.

shmerl 8mo ago

Programming is a creative work. Replacing human creativity with pseudo parrot code generation impacts this process in bad ways. It's same reason many artists despise using AI for art. Bean counters don't care about creativity and art though, so they'll never get it.

cat_plus_plus 8mo ago
Good for artists I guess, I wouldn't know because I am not one. The best I can manage is drawing a stick figure of a cat. Years back I was working on a Mac app and I needed an icon. So I talked to an artist and she asked for $5K to make one for me. I couldn't justify spending so much on a hobby that I didn't know if it would go anywhere so I wrote a little app that procedurally generated me some basic sucky icon. I am sure Gordon Ramsay is also not impressed with cooking skills of my microwave, I just don't know how his objections practically relate to getting me fed daily.

Isamu 8mo ago

For me writing code is clarifying ideas, it’s an important part of the process. Sometimes you start to see a radical way of simplifying what you want, that only happens if you are willing to transform what your requirements are if they turn out to be overly prescriptive. I think though it is probably better for your career to churn out lines, it takes longer to radically simplify, people don’t always appreciate the effort. Plus instead if you go the other way, increase scope and time and complexity that more likely will result in rewards to you for the greater effort.

mooktakim 8mo ago

Initially I felt like this but now I've changed. Now I realise a lot of grunt work doesn't need to be done by me, i can direct llm to make changes. I can also experiment more as I'm able to build complex features, try it out and delete it without feeling too bad.

kmaitreys 8mo ago
The more I read about things like this more I realize that software engineering today's just bloat and grunt work that people want to escape. It's so ironic because computers/computer programs were literally invented to avoid doing grunt work.
- mooktakim 8mo ago
  I agree. But I do have some concerns. Sometimes the LLM writes code and its a lot of work to go through it. I get lazy and trust LLM too much. I've been doing this for a while so I know how it should write, I go back and try to fix or refactor. But a new dev might direct LLM to write code they might not understand. Like a blackbox. LLM makes a lot of decisions without you realising, decisions which you used to make yourself. Writing code is making thousand decisions.
- dalmo3 8mo ago
  To be fair a lot of bloat and gruntness are safety nets we built for our own benefit. Static typing, linting, test harnesses, visual regressions, CI etc. If AI to do the legwork there while I focus on business logic and UX, it's a win-win.

angrydev 8mo ago

> “What’s the point of it all?” I thought, LLMs can generate decent-ish and correct-ish looking code while I have more time to do what? doomscroll? You could look back throughout human history at the inventions that made labor more efficient and ask the same question. The time-savings could either result in more time to do even more work, or more time to keep projects on pace at a sane and sustainable rate. It's up to us to choose.

qoez 8mo ago

I find it helps me just forced to be focused on a task for a few hours. Just the blocked out attention I spend on it will help refine and discover new problems and angles etc. I don't think just blocking out the time without actually trying to code it (staring at a wall) is as effective.

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cat_plus_plus 8mo ago

I am TL of an Android app with dozens of screens that expose hundreds of different distinct functions. My task is to expose all of these functions as appfunctions that can be called by an LLM in response to free form user requests. My current plan is to build a little LangGraph pipeline where first step is AI documenting all functions in each app's fragment, second step is extracting them into app functions, then refactoring fragment to call app functions etc. And by build I mean Gemini will build it for me and I will ask for some refinement and edit prompts. I also like writing code by hand, I just don't want to maintain other people's code. LMK if you need a job referral to hand refactor 20K lines of code in 2 months. Do you also enjoy working on test coverage?

analog8374 8mo ago

It's a phenomenon you see in a lot of crafts. We enjoy the craft, but when it becomes all about the product and we optimize for that, the fun goes away. Succinctly: process over product.

HPsquared 8mo ago

If you write it by hand you get not only code, but also understanding.

ebhn 8mo ago
Yea my job as a SWE is to have a correct mental model of the code and bing it with me everywhere I go... meetings, feature design, debugging sessions. Lines of code written is not unimportant, but matters way less when you look at the big picture

jmull 8mo ago

> The process of writing code helps internalize the context and is easier for my brain to think deeply about it. True, and you really do need to internalize the context to be a good software developer. However, just because coding is how you're used to internalizing context doesn't mean it's the only good way to do it. (I've always had a problem with people jumping into coding when they don't really understand what they are doing. I don't expect LLMs to change that, but the pernicious part of the old way is that the code -- much of it developed in ignorance -- became too entrenched/expensive to change in significant ways. Perhaps that part will change? Hopefully, anyway.)

sho_hn 8mo ago

It doesn't have to be either-or in my experience. I very much enjoy the actively of writing code. For me, programming is pure stress relief. I love the focus and the feeling flow, I love figuring out an elegant solution, I love tastefully structuring things based on my experience of what concerns matter, etc. Despite the AI tools I still do that: I put my effort into the areas of the code that count, or that offer intellectually stimulating challenge, or where I want to make sure to explore manually think my way into the problem space and try out different API or structure ideas. In parallel to that I keep my background queue of AI agents fed with more menial or less interesting tasks. I take the things I learn in my mental "main thread" into the specs I write for the agents. And when I need to take a break on my mental "main thread" I review their results. IMHO this is the way to go for us experienced developers who enjoy writing code. Don't stop doing that, there's still a lot of value in it. Write code consciously and actively, participate in the creation. But learn to utilize and keep busy agents in parallel or when you're off-keyboard. Delegate, basically. There's quite a lot of things they can do already that you really don't need to do because the outcome is completely predictable. I feel that it's possible to actually increase the hours/day focussing on stimulating problems that way. The "you're just mindlessly prompting all day" or "the fun is gone" are choices you don't need to be making.

deaux 8mo ago

Of course. Almost everyone who knows how to ride a horse, is happier riding a horse than driving a car too. Or hell, in decent weather even a bike. In fact, it's even worse - driving a car is one of the least happy modes of getting around there is. And sure, maybe you really enjoy driving one. You're a rare breed when it comes down to it. Yet it's responsible by far for the most people-distance transported every day.

CraftingLinks 8mo ago

I hate typing strings of syntax. So boring. Never saw the appeal. I do like tinkering with ideas, concepts, structure... just not the mechanical interaction part. Im not tbe best typist...then again, its the same with playing factorio. I love the concept of building structures, but fighting the UI to communicate my ideas is such a drag...

keybored 8mo ago

There’s been a new category of writings the last year. The AI Inevitability Soothsaying.[1] There’s talk of war in the state of Nationstan. There are two camps: those who think going to war is good and just, and those who think it is not practical. Clearly not everyone is pro-war. There are two camps. But the Overton Window is defined with the premise that invading another country is a right that Nationstate has and can act on. There are by definition (inside the Overton Window) no one who is anti-war on the principle that the state has no right to do it.[2] Not all articles in this AI category are outright positive. They range from the euphoric to the slightly depressed. But they share the same premise of inevitability; even the most negative will say that, of course I use AI, I’m not some Luddite[3]! It is integral to my work now. But I don’t just let it run the whole game. I copy–paste with judicious care. blah blah blah The point of any Overton Window is to simulate lively debate within the confines of the premises. And it’s impressive how many aspects of “the human” (RIP?) it covers. Emotions, self-esteem, character, identity. We are not[4] marching into irrelevance without a good consoling. Consolation? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159648 [2] You can let real nations come to mind here This was taken from the formerly famous (and controversial among Khmer Rouge obsessed) Chomsky, now living in infamy for obvious reasons. [3] Many paragraphs could be written about this [4] We. Well, maybe me and others, not necessarily you. Depending on your view of whether the elites or the Mensa+ engineers will inherit the machines.

krupan 8mo ago

The most pertinent thought in this is where the author asks, "LLMs can generate decent-ish and correct-ish looking code while I have more time to do what? doomscroll?" LLMs are not good enough for you to set and forget. You have to stay nearby babysitting it, keeping half an eye on it. That's what's so disheartening to many of us. In my career I have mentored junior engineers and seen them rapidly learn new things and increase their capabilities. Watching over them for a shirt while is pretty rewarding. I've also worked with contract developers who were not much better than current LLMs, and like LLMs they seemed incapable of learning directly from me. Unwilling even. They were quick to say nice words like, "ok, I understand, I'll do it differently next time," but then they didn't change at all. Those were some of the most frustrating times in my career. That's the feeling I get when using LLMs for writing code.

spicyusername 8mo ago
while I have more time to do what? For work, I regularly have 2-4 agents going simultaneously, churning on 1-3 features, bug fixes, doc updates. I pop between them in the "down time", or am reviewing their output, or am preparing the requirements for the next thing, or am reviewing my coworkers MRs. Plenty to do that isn't doom scrolling.
- lazyfolder 8mo ago
  Out of curiousity, how do you manage the constant context switching? It's hard for me to manage the context of one coding session, let along 2-4 sessions.
  - spicyusername 8mo ago
    I usually don't find it too bad. I don't need to focus as much on the nitty gritty the whole time, which is where context switching really gets you. Once you get to the review stage is where the focus is really needed and the context switching pauses. That being said, it's definitely a different workflow from just getting in the zone and coding for four straight hours.
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animanoir 8mo ago

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nextlevelwizard 8mo ago

In other news water is wet

rorylaitila 8mo ago

I've developed at the speed of "vibecoding" long before LLMs by having highly thought-compressed tools, frameworks and snippets. Most of my applications use Model Driven Development where the data model automatically builds the application DAO/controllers/validations/migrations. The data model is the application. I find LLMs help me write procedures upon this data model even a little bit faster than I did before. But the data model is the design. Unless I turnover the entire design to the LLM, I am always the decider on the data model. I will always have more context about where I want to evolve the data model. I enjoy the data modelling aspect and want to remain in the driver seat, with LLMs as my implementer of procedures.

boredemployee 8mo ago

every day there's a thread about this topic and the discussions always circle around the same arguments. I think we should be worrying about more urgent things, like a worker doing the job of three people with ai agents, the mental load that comes with that, how much of the disruption caused by ai will disproportionately benefit owners rather than employees, and so on.

northfield27 8mo ago
Agreed but sadly, many people are too optimistic with AI and are completely forgetting that they can be the part of next layoffs. And others are not able to believe the (not extreme) but visible speed boost from pragmatic use of AI. And sadly, whenever the discussion about the collective financial disadvantage of AI to software engineers will start and wherever it goes… The owners and employers will always make the profits.
xantronix 8mo ago
We are, after all, in the holy temple of the adherents of the Great Disenfranchisement Machine.

raw_anon_1111 8mo ago

> Even if I generate a 1,000 line PR in 30 minutes I still need to understand and review it. Since I am responsible for the code I ship, this makes me the bottleneck. I am not responsible for choosing whether the code I write using a for loop or while loop. I am responsible for whether my implementation - code, architecture, user experience - meets the functional and non functional requirements. It’s been well over a decade that my responsibilities didn’t require delegation to other developers doing the work or even outsourcing an entire implementation to another company like a SalesForce implementation.

morshu9001 8mo ago
When I got my first job long ago, I found that code review does involve arguing over things like for vs while loop, or having proper grammar in comments. Thought about quitting for a sec. Now that I have more experience and manage other SWEs, I was right, that stuff was dumb and I'm glad that nobody cares anymore. I'll spend the time reviewing but only the important things.
- jpalawaga 8mo ago
  Is there something about LLMs that suddenly make grammar and style irrelevant? Is your take, no human is going to read this ever again, so why bother making it pretty and consistent/readable?
  - morshu9001 8mo ago
    It was never relevant, LLM or not. When reviewing junior SWEs' code pre LLMs, I didn't care about 75% of the style guide. I cared if they were using the DB wrong or had race conditions or wrote code I couldn't read. In other comment, meant that other reviewers who used to nitpick have stopped for whatever reason, maybe because overall people are busier now.
- raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
  Unfortunately, people do care that the AI agents don’t code just like they do. Once I got to the point where I was delegating complete implementations to seniors with just “this is a high level idea of what Becky’s department wants. You now know as much I do. If you have any business related questions go ask Becky and come back to me with a design and these are our only technical constraints”. Then two weeks later there are things I might have done differently. But it meets all of the functional and non functional requirements. I bite my toungue and move on. His team is going to be responsable for it. Now I don’t treat AI as a senior developer. I treat it as a mid level ticket taker. If their is going to be a feature change, I ain’t doing it any more. The coding agent is. I am just going to keep good documentation in various MD files for context.

arjie 8mo ago

My wife and my dad enjoy assembling furniture (the former free style, the latter off the instructions). I like the furniture assembled but I cannot stand doing it. Some of us are one way and others are the other way. For me, LLMs are joyful experiences. I think of ideas and they make them happen. Remarkable and enjoyable. I can see how someone who would rather assemble the furniture, or perhaps build it, would like to do that. I can’t really relate but I can understand it.

nonethewiser 8mo ago
Its a new distinction. Building software used to be the same things as coding software. Now they are different.
- arjie 8mo ago
  That’s a good point. I suppose one must imagine the complaints from other Internet commenters in bygone times over using libraries vs writing one’s own code. They probably found themselves similarly estranged from a community of library assemblers. And now even those assemblers find themselves estranged from us machine whisperers. But we all were following the way to build software for our time. I wonder who follows. Perhaps it has already happened. I look at the code but there are people who build their businesses as English text in git. I don’t yet have the courage.
- dalmo3 8mo ago
  Excellent insight. And thanks for addressing the actual subject rather than the analogy.

mekod 8mo ago

Bro discovered that using a calculator makes him happier doing long division by hand and decided the rest of us are just dopamine junkies for enjoying tools that actually scale.

meken 8mo ago

I’m in a similar camp to the OP. For me, my joy doesn’t come from building - it comes from understanding. Which incidentally has actually made SWE not a great career path for me because I get bored building features, but that’s another story… For me, LLMs have been a tremendous boon for me in terms of learning.

queenkjuul 8mo ago

Basically describes how i use Claude Code now. I'll let it do stuff i don't want to do, like setting up mocks for unit tests (boring) or editing GitHub actions yaml (torture). But otherwise, i like to let it show me how to do something I'm not sure how to do, and then I'll just go do it myself. (If i have a clear idea of how i want to go something already, i just do it myself I'm the first place) I almost never agree with the names Claude chooses, i despise the comments it adds every other line despite me telling it over and over and over not to, oftentimes i catch the silly bugs that look fine at first glance when you just let Claude write its output direct to the file. It feels like a good balance, to me. Nobody on my team is working drastically faster than me, with or without AI. It very obviously slows down my boss (who just doesn't pay attention and has to rework everything twice) or some of the juniors (who don't sufficiently understand the problem to begin with). I'll be more productive then them even if i am hand-writing most of the code. So i don't feel threatened by this idea that "hand written code will be something nobody does professionally here soon" -- like the article said, if I'm responsible for the code i submit, I'm still the bottleneck, AI or not. The time i spend writing my own code is time I'm not poring over AI output trying to verify that it's actually correct, and for now that's a good trade.

kittbuilds 8mo ago

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askonomm 8mo ago

Seems like the author has a case of all or nothing. The real power in agentic programming, to me, is not in extremes, but in that you are still actively present. You don't give it world-size things to do, but byte-sized, and you constantly steer it. It's to be detailed enough to produce quality, and to be aware of everything it produces, but not so detailed that it makes sense to just write the code yourself. It's a delicate balance, but once you've found it, incredibly powerful. Especially mixed with deterministic self-checking tools (like some MCP's). If you "set and forget", then you are vibe coding, and I do not trust for a second that the output is quality, or that you'd even know how that output fits into the larger system. You effectively delegate away the reason you are being paid onto the AI, so why pay you? What are you adding to the mix here? Your prompting skills? Agentic programming to me is just a more efficient use of the tools I already used anyway, but it's not doing the thinking for me, it's just doing the _doing_ for me.

pdimitar 8mo ago
I am with you and fully agree with your "it does not have to be an all or nothing" stance. A remark on one part of your comment: > What are you adding to the mix here? Your prompting skills? The answer to that is an unironic and dead-serious "yes!". My colleagues use Claude Opus and it does an okay job but misses important things occasionally. I've had one 18-hour session with it and fixed 3 serious but subtle and difficult to reproduce bugs. And fixed 6-7 flaky tests and our CI has been 100% green ever since. Being a skilled operator is an actual billable skill IMO. And that will continue to be the case for a while unless the LLM companies manage to make another big leap. I've personally witnessed Opus do world-class detective work. I even left it unattended and it churned away on a problem for almost 5h. But I spent an entire hour before that carefully telling it its success criteria, never to delete tests, never to relax requirements X & Y & Z, always to use this exact feedback loop when testing after it iterated on a fix, and a bunch of others. In that ~5h session Opus fixed another extremely annoying bug and found mistakes in tests and corrected them after correcting the production code first and making new tests. Opus can be scary good but you must not handwave anything away. I found love for being an architect ever since I started using the newest generation [of scarily smart-looking] LLMs.

sathish316 8mo ago

> “vibe coding has an addictive nature to it, you write some instructions, and code that looks correct is generated. Bam! Dopamine hit! If the code isn’t correct, then it’s just one prompt away from being correct” The reason Claude code or Cursor feels addictive even if it makes mistakes is better illustrated in this post - https://x.com/cryptocyberia/status/2014380759956471820?s=46 https://x.com/cryptocyberia/status/2014380759956471820?s=46

KronisLV 8mo ago

I like writing code that I don't have time pressure around, as well as the kind where I can afford to fail and use that as a learning experience. Especially the code that I can structure myself. I sometimes dread writing code that's in a state of bad disrepair or is overly complex, think a lot of the "enterprise" code out there - it got so bad that I more or less quit a job over it, though never really stated that publicly, alongside my mind going dark places when you have pressure to succeed but the circumstances are stacked against you. For a while I had a few Markdown files that went into detail exactly why I hated it, in addition to also being able to point my finger at a few people responsible for it. I tried approaching it professionally, but it never changed and the suggestions and complaints largely fell on deaf ears. Obviously I've learnt that while you can try to provide suggestions, some people and circumstances will never change, often it's about culture fit. But yeah, outsource all of that to AI, don't even look back. Your sanity is worth more than that.

lokar 8mo ago
I wonder if some of the divide in the LLM-code discourse is between people who have mostly/always worked in jobs where they have the time and freedom to do things correctly, and to go back and fix stuff as they go, vs people who have mostly not (and instead worked under constant unrealistic time pressure, no focus on quality, API design, re-factoring, etc)
- KronisLV 8mo ago
  I’m pretty sure that the answer to that question is positive: those who have worked with code that sparks joy won’t like interacting with it closely being taken away, whereas the people for whom the code they have to work with inspires misery will be thankful for the opportunity to at least slight free themselves from the shackles of needing to run in circles for two weeks to implement a basic form because everything around it is a mess.

coldtea 8mo ago

>Yes, coding is not software engineering It absolutely is. >Even if I generate a 1,000 line PR in 30 minutes I still need to understand and review it. Since I am responsible for the code I ship, this makes me the bottleneck. You don't ship it, the AI does. You're just the middleman, a middleman they can eventually remove altogether. >Now, I would be lying if I said I didn’t use LLMs to generate code. I still use Claude, but I do so in a more controlled manner. "I can quit if I want" >Manually giving claude the context forces me to be familiar with the codebase myself, rather than tell it to just “cook”. It turns code generation from a passive action to a deliberate thoughtful action. It also keeps my brain engaged and active, which means I can still enter the flow state. I have found this to be the best of both worlds and a way to preserve my happiness at work. And then soon the boss demands more output, like the guys who left it all to Claude and even run 5x in parallel give.

Ygg2 8mo ago
> It absolutely is. It isn't. Coding is to software engineering, what calculation is to math. A necessary but insufficient condition. > And then soon the boss demands more output, like the guys who left it all to Claude and even run 5x in parallel give. You can get 100x output for 1/100x the price, if you replace the monthly Claude subscription with a Markov chain. Think of the efficiency gains. Sure, it will be garbage, but think of the velocity.
- coldtea 8mo ago
  >It isn't. Coding is to software engineering, what calculation is to math. A necessary but insufficient condition. It is that, but to Computer Science, its lofty academic cousin. To Software Engineering coding is an essential part.
  - Ygg2 8mo ago
    Ok, fine, if you gonna be nitpicky, it's a calculation to an electrical engineer. > To Software Engineering coding is an essential part. Not really. You can be a Principal Engineer/Architect/Maintainer and do very little coding, but lots of code review and testing. The point is, if you're just banging out code, then you're a software developer. If you use the engineering design process (research, requirements, design document, feasibility, conceptual design, prototype, detailed design) to solve problems using software, then you're a software engineer.

throw7272855 8mo ago

Coding with AI falls in one of three categories: 1. The thing to be written is available online. AI is a search engine to find it, maybe also translate it to the language of choice. 2. The thing (system or component or function) is genuinely new. The spec has to be very precise and the AI is just doing the typing. This is, at best working around syntax issues, such as some hard-to-remember particular SQL syntax or something like that. The languages should be better. 3. It‘s neither new nor available online but a lot to type out and modify. The AI does all the boilerplate. This is a failure of the frameworks and languages to require so much boilerplate.

tablatom 8mo ago
I’m really happy to see this take. It’s not the first time but it’s not said often enough. I once had the thought that anything AI can do really well is probably something that should not be being done at all. That’s an overly broad statement but I think there’s some truth in it. The grand challenge of software engineering is to find beautifully elegant and precise ways to express what we want the computer to do for us. If we can find them, it will be better to express ourselves in those ways than to prompt an AI than do it for us, much in the same way that a blog written by an LLM is not worth reading.
nijave 8mo ago
Really I don't think frameworks have kept up and LLMs are the hammer in Law of the Hammer.
krackers 8mo ago
There's another category (possibly a subset of 1), the implementation is novel but set of requirements is known and has a set of conformance tests so tight that the LLM can basically brute force its way to a solution. See e.g. the Claude Compiler thing. In this case it's less "search engine + translator" and more of "brute force search".
- Jensson 8mo ago
  How is a C compiler novel? There are so many open source C compilers. If you can download a bunch of different open source projects and they all work then it is not a novel problem, it is as solved as you can get already.

geldedus 8mo ago

Does you being happier help you writing 200x more code in the same time unit ?

pickleRick243 8mo ago

A lot of this discussion is just sort of moot because the cold hard calculus of economics will dictate the future of AI coding. If it turns out it's just a cognitive burden that makes programmers worse, the bubble will pop and eventually the companies that move away from the technology will come out on top. If it turns out to make software engineering much more efficient, it will become the de factor standard and you will become obsolete as a professional engineer (at least at the vast majority of employers) regardless of how you feel about it. How you wish to code in your free time is up to you and one that doesn't really warrant an argument one way or the other since there is no wrong answer.

gitaarik 8mo ago

I'm also happier riding a horse than driving a car. So I'll take the horse to work from now on.

sambapa 8mo ago
Have you seen Wall-e and those fat fucks on robowheelchairs? In other words, it's entirely okay to use a forklift to lift heavy weights, but please go to the gym.

jama211 8mo ago

I suspect this is like the invention of the car. Some people just love riding horses, so they’ll keep doing it as a hobby. The rest of us are fine with a car.

gitprolinux 8mo ago

I like to code then when I resolved the solution to its completeness, I then know what to ask an llm to provide a solution to the same problem. This sometimes provides a different approach to the solution, other times, it provides variations to my solution thus improving upon my solid code solution.

Snacklive 8mo ago

I have a problem vibecoding and frustrating experiences with coworkers that are a little too much into it. I can use AI to help me explore libraries or to replace a search, generate small snippets here and there, or even scripts that i occasionally need. But i can't vibecode, i don't know how to let go, i babysit too much, i read the code and i feel uneasy if I don't understand what I'm building, or why I'm building it in a certain way, i need to understand how the pieces work to make a whole