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My feeling is that AI is not real coding; it is coding-adjacent. Project Management, Sales, Marketing, Writing Books About KanBan, AI Programming, User Interfac

My feeling is that AI is not real coding; it is coding-adjacent. Project Management, Sales, Marketing, Writing Books About KanBan, AI Programming, User Interface Design, Installing Routers are coding-adjacent. AI is not real coding any more than The Sims is homemaking. You can use AI and hang with the tech guys and get your check but you are going to be treading water and trying to be liked personally to stay where you are. No question it's a job, but no, it's not coding.

mikkupikku 6mo ago
My thinking is that high level languages like C aren't real coding. If you don't even know what ISA the software will be run on, then you need to get the fuck off my lawn! Attitude as old as time itself.
- hyperhello 6mo ago
  You mock, but not very persuasively. You seem to be relying on a silly idea you don't even believe in: that someone, once, made fun of C programming.
  - operatingthetan 6mo ago
    >AI is not real coding any more than The Sims is homemaking. Your analogy is bad. The programmer and the AI both produce working code. The other poster's response was correct.
    - bigstrat2003 6mo ago
      The AI does not, in fact, produce working code.
    - recursive 6mo ago
      I believe that someone can get it to produce working code. Whenever I press the button though, I'm not getting great results.
  - napsec 6mo ago
    I can't speak personally to what it was like to be a C developer in the early days of that language, but when I started out as a Ruby on Rails developer over a decade ago I was definitely told by some people that it didn't count as 'real programing' because of how much was abstracted away by the framework.
    - SpaceNoodled 6mo ago
      I have some bad news for you
  - mikkupikku 6mo ago
    Mocking? I'm quoting exactly the sort of thing that used to be said in earnest in the 80s and 90s. What you're doing now is exactly the same thing, there's no difference at all. Its the same reaction borne from the same old man instinct to bitch about the kids going soft. Yawn.
    - skydhash 6mo ago
      Both Algol and Lisp were from the 60s. I think programmers and computers scientists were already acquainted with high level programming languages enough to not equate using C as going soft. Also software was always about domain knowledge and formal reasoning. Coding is just notation. Someone may like paper and pen, and someone may like a typewriter, but ultimately it’s the writing that matters. Correctness of a program does not depends on the language (and the cpu only manipulate electric flow). I argue against AI because most of its users don’t care about the correctness of their code. They just want to produce lots of it (the resurgence of the flawed LoC metric as a badge of honor).
      - signatoremo 6mo ago
        > I argue against AI because most of its users don’t care about the correctness of their code. This is remarkably sloppy for someone who codes. No facts, just opinion, claimed with confidence.
        skydhash 6mo ago
        > No facts, just opinion, claimed with confidence Strong opinions, loosely held. What I’ve seen seems to confirm that opinion, so I’m still holding on to it.
        mikkupikku 6mo ago
        > Strong opinions, loosely held. Yes doctor, but enough about my stool.
      - mikkupikku 6mo ago
- Chinjut 6mo ago
  Yes, "An LLM is just a new higher level programming language", sure. A new programming language with no tractable guarantees about the behavior of any particular program, including in practice no guarantees that the same source code (in this new programming language) will reliably produce the same behavior. This is very different from traditional programming languages and how we can reason about them. (Yes, one can write C programs with undefined behavior, but C does also have many well-defined properties which allow people to reason about well-defined C programs logically reliably.)
  - bitwize 6mo ago
    (And the behavior of any given C implementation is completely defined.)
  - mikkupikku 6mo ago
    It used to be that old farts made a big deal out of knowing the ins and outs of assembly programming and sneered at the kids who only knew "high level" languages like C, why, those damn kids didn't even understand the machine code their compilers emitted, didn't even know or care that it was so obviously suboptimal. Really, your attitude is not new. Including even your "this is why it's different this time", its just a mirror reflecting the past.
- dtagames 6mo ago
  Right? Some of us used to read hex digits off printed paper dumps to debug mainframe memory (like me), but we can be excited about AI and embrace it, too. From my perspective, knowing how it gets down to machine code makes it more useful and easier to control, but that doesn't mean I want to stop writing English now that we can.
qsera 6mo ago
I think it should be called dice-coding, not vibe-coding. You roll the LLM dice, and sometimes it comes with the right looking program on the top. Since the dice is loaded heavily, this happens quite often. This makes people think that the dice can program.
martin-t 6mo ago
Sorry to see you're getting mocked. I hate both the (current) low quality and the exploitation aspects of AI more than anyone. However, I don't understand your post. What is real coding according to you?
- hyperhello 6mo ago
  Learning to code (I don't require it to be machine code) involves mastering a level of abstract thinking that is sufficient to make the computer do what you want. It's more than pushing A to make Mario jump, it's more than learning how to put a SUM() on an excel column, and it's more than typing "make a program that does this" into ChatGPT. I don't know exactly where the line is, but it's going to involve some level of the kind of suffering and brain lock that higher level thought involves. I'm not a purist on a mountaintop saying tools can't be used effectively during coding. Everyone googles for API parameters, you can just ask ChatGPT how to fix syntax in an unfamiliar language, and you can copy anything you have access to and paste it in, that's all okay. It just isn't what makes you a coder any more than wearing a uniform makes you a cop.
  - martin-t 6mo ago
    That makes sense and I think everyone should learn to code regardless if a machine can automate it because it makes the person better at thinking - which is what really differentiates us from other animals. But I think people object to you saying LLMs are not coding. Using them certainly does not help the person using them think the same way making all the decisions while writing the code. But even if LLMs are a Chinese room, if they could produce the same output as a human (given the same goal and information context), they IMO would be coding.

mikkupikku 6mo ago

My thinking is that high level languages like C aren't real coding. If you don't even know what ISA the software will be run on, then you need to get the fuck off my lawn! Attitude as old as time itself.

hyperhello 6mo ago
You mock, but not very persuasively. You seem to be relying on a silly idea you don't even believe in: that someone, once, made fun of C programming.
- operatingthetan 6mo ago
  >AI is not real coding any more than The Sims is homemaking. Your analogy is bad. The programmer and the AI both produce working code. The other poster's response was correct.
  - bigstrat2003 6mo ago
    The AI does not, in fact, produce working code.
  - recursive 6mo ago
    I believe that someone can get it to produce working code. Whenever I press the button though, I'm not getting great results.
- napsec 6mo ago
  I can't speak personally to what it was like to be a C developer in the early days of that language, but when I started out as a Ruby on Rails developer over a decade ago I was definitely told by some people that it didn't count as 'real programing' because of how much was abstracted away by the framework.
  - SpaceNoodled 6mo ago
    I have some bad news for you
- mikkupikku 6mo ago
  Mocking? I'm quoting exactly the sort of thing that used to be said in earnest in the 80s and 90s. What you're doing now is exactly the same thing, there's no difference at all. Its the same reaction borne from the same old man instinct to bitch about the kids going soft. Yawn.
  - skydhash 6mo ago
    Both Algol and Lisp were from the 60s. I think programmers and computers scientists were already acquainted with high level programming languages enough to not equate using C as going soft. Also software was always about domain knowledge and formal reasoning. Coding is just notation. Someone may like paper and pen, and someone may like a typewriter, but ultimately it’s the writing that matters. Correctness of a program does not depends on the language (and the cpu only manipulate electric flow). I argue against AI because most of its users don’t care about the correctness of their code. They just want to produce lots of it (the resurgence of the flawed LoC metric as a badge of honor).
    - signatoremo 6mo ago
      > I argue against AI because most of its users don’t care about the correctness of their code. This is remarkably sloppy for someone who codes. No facts, just opinion, claimed with confidence.
      - skydhash 6mo ago
        > No facts, just opinion, claimed with confidence Strong opinions, loosely held. What I’ve seen seems to confirm that opinion, so I’m still holding on to it.
        mikkupikku 6mo ago
        > Strong opinions, loosely held. Yes doctor, but enough about my stool.
    - mikkupikku 6mo ago
Chinjut 6mo ago
Yes, "An LLM is just a new higher level programming language", sure. A new programming language with no tractable guarantees about the behavior of any particular program, including in practice no guarantees that the same source code (in this new programming language) will reliably produce the same behavior. This is very different from traditional programming languages and how we can reason about them. (Yes, one can write C programs with undefined behavior, but C does also have many well-defined properties which allow people to reason about well-defined C programs logically reliably.)
- bitwize 6mo ago
  (And the behavior of any given C implementation is completely defined.)
- mikkupikku 6mo ago
  It used to be that old farts made a big deal out of knowing the ins and outs of assembly programming and sneered at the kids who only knew "high level" languages like C, why, those damn kids didn't even understand the machine code their compilers emitted, didn't even know or care that it was so obviously suboptimal. Really, your attitude is not new. Including even your "this is why it's different this time", its just a mirror reflecting the past.
dtagames 6mo ago
Right? Some of us used to read hex digits off printed paper dumps to debug mainframe memory (like me), but we can be excited about AI and embrace it, too. From my perspective, knowing how it gets down to machine code makes it more useful and easier to control, but that doesn't mean I want to stop writing English now that we can.

qsera 6mo ago

I think it should be called dice-coding, not vibe-coding. You roll the LLM dice, and sometimes it comes with the right looking program on the top. Since the dice is loaded heavily, this happens quite often. This makes people think that the dice can program.

martin-t 6mo ago

Sorry to see you're getting mocked. I hate both the (current) low quality and the exploitation aspects of AI more than anyone. However, I don't understand your post. What is real coding according to you?

hyperhello 6mo ago
Learning to code (I don't require it to be machine code) involves mastering a level of abstract thinking that is sufficient to make the computer do what you want. It's more than pushing A to make Mario jump, it's more than learning how to put a SUM() on an excel column, and it's more than typing "make a program that does this" into ChatGPT. I don't know exactly where the line is, but it's going to involve some level of the kind of suffering and brain lock that higher level thought involves. I'm not a purist on a mountaintop saying tools can't be used effectively during coding. Everyone googles for API parameters, you can just ask ChatGPT how to fix syntax in an unfamiliar language, and you can copy anything you have access to and paste it in, that's all okay. It just isn't what makes you a coder any more than wearing a uniform makes you a cop.
- martin-t 6mo ago
  That makes sense and I think everyone should learn to code regardless if a machine can automate it because it makes the person better at thinking - which is what really differentiates us from other animals. But I think people object to you saying LLMs are not coding. Using them certainly does not help the person using them think the same way making all the decisions while writing the code. But even if LLMs are a Chinese room, if they could produce the same output as a human (given the same goal and information context), they IMO would be coding.