4 ms·

Because the programming is and was always a means to an end. Obsessing over the specific mechanical act of programming is taking the forest for the trees. I ag

by pdntspa 7mo ago

Because the programming is and was always a means to an end. Obsessing over the specific mechanical act of programming is taking the forest for the trees. I agree with gp that the speed in which I am able to execute my vision is exhilarating. It is making me love programming again. My side projects, which have been hanging on the wall for years, are actually getting done. And quickly! The actual act of keying in code is drudgery for me. I've written so much code in so many languages that it is hard not to hate them all. Why the fuck is it a hash in ruby but a dict in python? How the hell do I get the current unixtime in this language again?!? Why the fuck do I need to learn yet another stupid vocabulary for what is essentially databinding? Who cares, let the AI handle it

mkehrt 7mo ago
None of my side projects are things where I want the output. They're all things where I want to write the code myself so I understand it better. AI is antithetical to this.
- pdntspa 7mo ago
  All of my side projects scratch an itch, so I do want the output. There are not enough hours in the day for me to make all the things I want to make. Code is just the vessel, and one I am happy to outsource if I can maintain a high standard of work. It's a blessing to finally find a workflow that makes me feel like I have a shot at building most of the things I want to.
  - cess11 7mo ago
    Are these things that no one previously built and published, so you can go and take a look at their implementation?
    - pdntspa 7mo ago
      Possibly. Mostly? I wanted a stackable desk tray shelf thing for my desk in literally any size for my clutter. Too lazy to go shopping for one, and couldn't find one on any of the maker sites, so I had claude write me an openSCAD file over lunch break then we iterated on it after-hours. By end of work next day I had three of them sitting on my desk after about 3 hours of back-and-forth the night before (along with about half a dozen tiny prototypes), and thats including the 2hr print time for each shelf. I want a music metadata tool that is essentially TheGodfather but brought into the modern day and incorporates workflows I wish I had for my DJing and music production. And not some stupid web app, a proper desktop app with a proper windowing toolkit. I'd estimate it would take me 12-18 months to get to a beta the old way, to the exclusion of most of my other hobbies and projects, instead first Gemini then Claude and I managed to get a pretty nice alpha out in a few months over the summer while I was unemployed. There's still a lot left I want to add but it already replaced several apps in my music intake workflow. I've had a number of successful DJ gigs making use of the music that I run through this app. Funny enough the skills I learned on that project landed me a pretty great gig that lets me do essentially the same thing, at the same pace, for more pay than I've ever made in my SWE career to-date. A bunch of features for my website, a hand-coded Rails app I wrote a few years ago, went from my TODO pile to deployment in just a couple of hours. Not to mention it handled upgrading Ruby and Rails and ported the whole deployment to docker in an afternoon, which made it easy to migrate to a $3 VPS fronted by cloudflare. I have a ton of ideas for games and multimedia type apps that I would never be able to work on at an acceptable pace and also earn the living that lets me afford these tools in the first place. Most of those ideas are unlike any game I've ever seen or played. I'm not yet ready to start on these yet but when/if I do I expect development to proceed at a comfortably brisk pace. The possibilities for Claude + Unreal + the years and years of free assets I've collected from Epic's Unreal store are exciting! And I haven't even gotten into having AI generate game assets. So idunno, does that count?
      - tovej 7mo ago
        Would you share the music app? Do you have a public repo or demo somewhere? You didn't really describe it very much, so it's hard to say what it actually does. I'm interested in evaluating the quality of vibecoded projects people actually use.
        pdntspa 7mo ago
        At a later date, perhaps. I haven't messed with this project since I got employed and it was written over summer 2025, when the tooling for agentic development was a lot worse. (Very ADD here) There's also the open question of how best to package a python app that makes use of PyTorch and SciPy for distribution to nontechnical users. I want to solve that before I start putting this in other people's hands. Careful with the term 'vibe coded', that does not characterize how I work.
        tovej 7mo ago
        Vibecoding is the term for building software with LLM tools. Did you do something different? I'm just getting tired of hearing claims of incredible software being built with LLM-based tools, but when I ask to see them, I get nothing. Your claim of 12-18 months for a windowed music metadata app seem weird. That seems like about a week with Dear ImGui and some file format reading libraries to me. Am I missing something?
        pdntspa 7mo ago
        > Vibecoding is the term for building software with LLM tools without manual review and guidance. Coasting along purely on vibes. Hence the name. Agentic development is the middle ground where you're actively reviewing and architecting. Dear Imgui isn't a 'proper' windowing toolkit. It's immediate-mode, it doesn't use OS affordances. Its not WinForms or GTK or QT (though to be fair QT isn't quite native but its by far the closest) I never made any claims of 'incredible software'. I am building things that I need and want. I will give them to the world if I so choose and if they are good enough. And its not there yet. And considering that I have almost zero domain knowledge in the area of DSP or audio analysis, that I'd only have a couple hours a day to work on it at best (energy, motivation, and other factors notwithstanding), and the amount of learning it would take to get to the point where something like that would be "about a week" is where most of that 12-18 months goes. And yes the metadata and GUI parts are easy, but the code that generates the metadata that is good enough to perform with? Across every possible container/meta/audio format? That produces quality results on both beatport downloads and 96khz vinyl rips? I'm trying to build something to consolidate my original music library (hundreds of thousands of files) with divergent sublibraries on multiple (proprietary) DJ platforms. Basically cleaning up after 20 years of fucking around without a plan. That's hard.
- hk__2 7mo ago
  All my side projects exist to solve a problem.
- dolebirchwood 7mo ago
  I have three side projects that revolve around taking public access data from shitty, barely usable local government websites, and then using that data to build more intuitive and useful UIs around them. They're portfolio pieces, but also a public service. I already know how to build all of these systems manually, but I have better things to do. So, hell yeah I'm just going to prompt my way to output. If the code works, I don't care how it was written, and neither do the members of my community who use my free sites.
  - duskdozer 7mo ago
    >If the code works, I don't care how it was written This doesn't concern you for something you're presenting as a portfolio piece?
    - kowbell 7mo ago
      Perhaps part of their portfolio is the code they've hand written, and part of it is demonstrating they are able to use this new tool to make something that works (despite how imperfect the tool is, as we see so many people point out)
    - dolebirchwood 7mo ago
      The code is still clean and organized. When I say I don't care "how" the code is written, I mean I don't care how it was generated (i.e., by prompting or by hand -- and I don't do any of it manually anymore). I still care about how it's structured, as a well-structured codebase helps the agents do their job better.
bigstrat2003 7mo ago
> Because the programming is and was always a means to an end. No. Programming is a specific act (writing code), and that act is also a means to an end. But getting to the goal does not mean you did programming. Saying "I'm good at programming" when you are just using LLMs to generate code for you is like saying "I'm good at driving" when you only ever take an Uber and don't ever drive yourself. It's complete nonsense. If you aren't programming (as the OP clearly said he isn't), then you can't be good at programming because you aren't doing it.
- pdntspa 7mo ago
  I'm still reading the code, I'm still correcting the LLM's laughably awful architecture and abstractions, and I'm still spending large chunks of time in the design and planning phase with the LLM. The only thing it does is write the code. But that's not programming because its a natural-language conversation?
  - bakugo 7mo ago
    > But that's not programming because its a natural-language conversation? Correct. Programming is writing code. You are not writing code, therefore you are not programming. I don't understand what's so complicated about this.
    - pdntspa 7mo ago
      I'm literally making a program. Present-progressive of the verb to program. I feel like you're pearl-clutching on semantics. By my read, programming != writing code, but writing code is most definitely programming. Oxford defines 'to program' as both.
      - bakugo 7mo ago
        You're not making a program. You're managing the AI that is making a program. You're a manager, maybe a designer or architect too, but not a programmer. These are well defined roles that existed well before AI. You don't get to redefine them just because you feel like you should get to be part of some imaginary "programmers' club" without doing the actual thing that defines the "programmer" role.
hk__2 7mo ago
> The actual act of keying in code is drudgery for me. I've written so much code in so many languages that it is hard not to hate them all. Why the fuck is it a hash in ruby but a dict in python? How the hell do I get the current unixtime in this language again?!? Why the fuck do I need to learn yet another stupid vocabulary for what is essentially databinding? These are the downsides, but there are also upsides like in human languages: “wow I can express this complex idea with just these three words? I never though about that!”. Try a new programming paradigm and that opens your mind and changes your way of programming in _any_ language forever.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
beepbooptheory 7mo ago
"I really really love cooking. In fact, I have optimized my cooking completely, I go out to restaurants every night!" I believe gp and others just like food instead of cooking. Which is fine, but if that's the case, why go around telling everyone you're a cook?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7mo ago
  But are you doing real food preparation unless you are hunting and dressing the animals and foraging for your own food?
  - r-w 7mo ago
    Yes. You are doing any of the work yourself rather than instructing someone else on how to do it.
    - sebzim4500 7mo ago
      You are doing something, but 99% of the work has been done for you. I guess it's like vibe coding and telling the model to fix issues when you see them.
  - dorkrawk 7mo ago
    I like making pizza ( https://dinosaurseateverybody.com/blog/making-pizza https://dinosaurseateverybody.com/blog/making-pizza )...
  - beepbooptheory 7mo ago
    Ah geeze. I am utterly destroyed by this comment. Will need to sit and think now.
- pdntspa 7mo ago
  "I thought using loops was cheating, so I programmed my own using samples. I thought using samples was cheating, so I recorded real drums. I thought that was cheating, so I learned to play. I thought using purchased drums was cheating, so I made my own. I thought using pre-made skins was cheating, so I killed a goat and skinned it. I thought that was cheating too, so I raised my own goats from birth. I haven't made any music lately, what with the goat farming and all."
bakugo 7mo ago
Sounds like you just don't like programming. And that's okay! It's okay to not like things. But "I love programming now that I don't do any programming" is an utterly nonsensical statement. Please stop and reflect over what you said for a moment.
- pdntspa 7mo ago
  Substitute it with "the mechanical act of writing code" and maybe it will make more sense. I have been clumsy with my vocabulary here, forgive me.

by pdntspa 7mo ago

mkehrt 7mo ago

None of my side projects are things where I want the output. They're all things where I want to write the code myself so I understand it better. AI is antithetical to this.

pdntspa 7mo ago
All of my side projects scratch an itch, so I do want the output. There are not enough hours in the day for me to make all the things I want to make. Code is just the vessel, and one I am happy to outsource if I can maintain a high standard of work. It's a blessing to finally find a workflow that makes me feel like I have a shot at building most of the things I want to.
- cess11 7mo ago
  Are these things that no one previously built and published, so you can go and take a look at their implementation?
  - pdntspa 7mo ago
    Possibly. Mostly? I wanted a stackable desk tray shelf thing for my desk in literally any size for my clutter. Too lazy to go shopping for one, and couldn't find one on any of the maker sites, so I had claude write me an openSCAD file over lunch break then we iterated on it after-hours. By end of work next day I had three of them sitting on my desk after about 3 hours of back-and-forth the night before (along with about half a dozen tiny prototypes), and thats including the 2hr print time for each shelf. I want a music metadata tool that is essentially TheGodfather but brought into the modern day and incorporates workflows I wish I had for my DJing and music production. And not some stupid web app, a proper desktop app with a proper windowing toolkit. I'd estimate it would take me 12-18 months to get to a beta the old way, to the exclusion of most of my other hobbies and projects, instead first Gemini then Claude and I managed to get a pretty nice alpha out in a few months over the summer while I was unemployed. There's still a lot left I want to add but it already replaced several apps in my music intake workflow. I've had a number of successful DJ gigs making use of the music that I run through this app. Funny enough the skills I learned on that project landed me a pretty great gig that lets me do essentially the same thing, at the same pace, for more pay than I've ever made in my SWE career to-date. A bunch of features for my website, a hand-coded Rails app I wrote a few years ago, went from my TODO pile to deployment in just a couple of hours. Not to mention it handled upgrading Ruby and Rails and ported the whole deployment to docker in an afternoon, which made it easy to migrate to a $3 VPS fronted by cloudflare. I have a ton of ideas for games and multimedia type apps that I would never be able to work on at an acceptable pace and also earn the living that lets me afford these tools in the first place. Most of those ideas are unlike any game I've ever seen or played. I'm not yet ready to start on these yet but when/if I do I expect development to proceed at a comfortably brisk pace. The possibilities for Claude + Unreal + the years and years of free assets I've collected from Epic's Unreal store are exciting! And I haven't even gotten into having AI generate game assets. So idunno, does that count?
    - tovej 7mo ago
      Would you share the music app? Do you have a public repo or demo somewhere? You didn't really describe it very much, so it's hard to say what it actually does. I'm interested in evaluating the quality of vibecoded projects people actually use.
      - pdntspa 7mo ago
        At a later date, perhaps. I haven't messed with this project since I got employed and it was written over summer 2025, when the tooling for agentic development was a lot worse. (Very ADD here) There's also the open question of how best to package a python app that makes use of PyTorch and SciPy for distribution to nontechnical users. I want to solve that before I start putting this in other people's hands. Careful with the term 'vibe coded', that does not characterize how I work.
        tovej 7mo ago
        Vibecoding is the term for building software with LLM tools. Did you do something different? I'm just getting tired of hearing claims of incredible software being built with LLM-based tools, but when I ask to see them, I get nothing. Your claim of 12-18 months for a windowed music metadata app seem weird. That seems like about a week with Dear ImGui and some file format reading libraries to me. Am I missing something?
        pdntspa 7mo ago
        > Vibecoding is the term for building software with LLM tools without manual review and guidance. Coasting along purely on vibes. Hence the name. Agentic development is the middle ground where you're actively reviewing and architecting. Dear Imgui isn't a 'proper' windowing toolkit. It's immediate-mode, it doesn't use OS affordances. Its not WinForms or GTK or QT (though to be fair QT isn't quite native but its by far the closest) I never made any claims of 'incredible software'. I am building things that I need and want. I will give them to the world if I so choose and if they are good enough. And its not there yet. And considering that I have almost zero domain knowledge in the area of DSP or audio analysis, that I'd only have a couple hours a day to work on it at best (energy, motivation, and other factors notwithstanding), and the amount of learning it would take to get to the point where something like that would be "about a week" is where most of that 12-18 months goes. And yes the metadata and GUI parts are easy, but the code that generates the metadata that is good enough to perform with? Across every possible container/meta/audio format? That produces quality results on both beatport downloads and 96khz vinyl rips? I'm trying to build something to consolidate my original music library (hundreds of thousands of files) with divergent sublibraries on multiple (proprietary) DJ platforms. Basically cleaning up after 20 years of fucking around without a plan. That's hard.
hk__2 7mo ago
All my side projects exist to solve a problem.
dolebirchwood 7mo ago
I have three side projects that revolve around taking public access data from shitty, barely usable local government websites, and then using that data to build more intuitive and useful UIs around them. They're portfolio pieces, but also a public service. I already know how to build all of these systems manually, but I have better things to do. So, hell yeah I'm just going to prompt my way to output. If the code works, I don't care how it was written, and neither do the members of my community who use my free sites.
- duskdozer 7mo ago
  >If the code works, I don't care how it was written This doesn't concern you for something you're presenting as a portfolio piece?
  - kowbell 7mo ago
    Perhaps part of their portfolio is the code they've hand written, and part of it is demonstrating they are able to use this new tool to make something that works (despite how imperfect the tool is, as we see so many people point out)
  - dolebirchwood 7mo ago
    The code is still clean and organized. When I say I don't care "how" the code is written, I mean I don't care how it was generated (i.e., by prompting or by hand -- and I don't do any of it manually anymore). I still care about how it's structured, as a well-structured codebase helps the agents do their job better.

bigstrat2003 7mo ago

> Because the programming is and was always a means to an end. No. Programming is a specific act (writing code), and that act is also a means to an end. But getting to the goal does not mean you did programming. Saying "I'm good at programming" when you are just using LLMs to generate code for you is like saying "I'm good at driving" when you only ever take an Uber and don't ever drive yourself. It's complete nonsense. If you aren't programming (as the OP clearly said he isn't), then you can't be good at programming because you aren't doing it.

pdntspa 7mo ago
I'm still reading the code, I'm still correcting the LLM's laughably awful architecture and abstractions, and I'm still spending large chunks of time in the design and planning phase with the LLM. The only thing it does is write the code. But that's not programming because its a natural-language conversation?
- bakugo 7mo ago
  > But that's not programming because its a natural-language conversation? Correct. Programming is writing code. You are not writing code, therefore you are not programming. I don't understand what's so complicated about this.
  - pdntspa 7mo ago
    I'm literally making a program. Present-progressive of the verb to program. I feel like you're pearl-clutching on semantics. By my read, programming != writing code, but writing code is most definitely programming. Oxford defines 'to program' as both.
    - bakugo 7mo ago
      You're not making a program. You're managing the AI that is making a program. You're a manager, maybe a designer or architect too, but not a programmer. These are well defined roles that existed well before AI. You don't get to redefine them just because you feel like you should get to be part of some imaginary "programmers' club" without doing the actual thing that defines the "programmer" role.

hk__2 7mo ago

> The actual act of keying in code is drudgery for me. I've written so much code in so many languages that it is hard not to hate them all. Why the fuck is it a hash in ruby but a dict in python? How the hell do I get the current unixtime in this language again?!? Why the fuck do I need to learn yet another stupid vocabulary for what is essentially databinding? These are the downsides, but there are also upsides like in human languages: “wow I can express this complex idea with just these three words? I never though about that!”. Try a new programming paradigm and that opens your mind and changes your way of programming in _any_ language forever.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

beepbooptheory 7mo ago

"I really really love cooking. In fact, I have optimized my cooking completely, I go out to restaurants every night!" I believe gp and others just like food instead of cooking. Which is fine, but if that's the case, why go around telling everyone you're a cook?

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7mo ago
But are you doing real food preparation unless you are hunting and dressing the animals and foraging for your own food?
- r-w 7mo ago
  Yes. You are doing any of the work yourself rather than instructing someone else on how to do it.
  - sebzim4500 7mo ago
    You are doing something, but 99% of the work has been done for you. I guess it's like vibe coding and telling the model to fix issues when you see them.
- dorkrawk 7mo ago
  I like making pizza ( https://dinosaurseateverybody.com/blog/making-pizza https://dinosaurseateverybody.com/blog/making-pizza )...
- beepbooptheory 7mo ago
  Ah geeze. I am utterly destroyed by this comment. Will need to sit and think now.
pdntspa 7mo ago
"I thought using loops was cheating, so I programmed my own using samples. I thought using samples was cheating, so I recorded real drums. I thought that was cheating, so I learned to play. I thought using purchased drums was cheating, so I made my own. I thought using pre-made skins was cheating, so I killed a goat and skinned it. I thought that was cheating too, so I raised my own goats from birth. I haven't made any music lately, what with the goat farming and all."

bakugo 7mo ago

Sounds like you just don't like programming. And that's okay! It's okay to not like things. But "I love programming now that I don't do any programming" is an utterly nonsensical statement. Please stop and reflect over what you said for a moment.

pdntspa 7mo ago
Substitute it with "the mechanical act of writing code" and maybe it will make more sense. I have been clumsy with my vocabulary here, forgive me.