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I somewhat agree with this... but what is the long-term viability of vibe-coding? Of paying someone/something else for intelligence? Do you feel that you have s

I somewhat agree with this... but what is the long-term viability of vibe-coding? Of paying someone/something else for intelligence? Do you feel that you have stopped learning or could not create software now without the tool? Is it all just going to be local models? I'm not as confident that long term, we will be happy that the knowledge of software building itself might be broadly lost. Happy to hear thoughts of those who are writing code daily.

cmrdporcupine 22d ago
What we're really speaking about here is software developers being thrown into the same automation/de-skilling downward escalator that every other trade has suffered through, and it was frankly amazing that we lasted this long without getting hit with it. The consequences aren't great, no. However it was always inevitable because of the way our economy runs. So the finger should not be pointed at AI, but instead the forces that will harness it in certain ways. That might be impossible to tackle at an individual level, and might feel futile... but so is blaming AI.
- brazukadev 22d ago
  > What we're really speaking about here is software developers being thrown into the same automation/de-skilling downward escalator that every other trade has suffered through Many of those trades still exist and some got even in higher demand, they just use software.
simonw 22d ago
> Do you feel that you have stopped learning or could not create software now without the tool? The rate at which I'm learning has gone up. I'm becoming a much more proficient software engineer, I'm learning how to operate in new ecosystems, I'm getting better at all sorts of higher level aspects of my work. I am however getting worse at sitting down and crunching out code by hand, mainly because I find it frustrating to work that way now. As a result I'm out of practice at it. I expect if someone waved a magic wand and eliminated all forms of LLM and coding agents from the world I would have a couple of less productive months spinning back up on my hand-crafted coding skills again.
- deleted 22d ago
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mike_hearn 22d ago
But it was ever thus. The knowledge of writing assembly language has largely been lost. The vast majority of working programmers today could not write a whole program in assembly, without looking up nearly everything. In the early years, when compilers were quite bad, it was common for people to write whole programs in assembly even when they could have written C because their output was higher quality. And there were in fact die-hards who just refused to use a compiler in principle, even long after that became irrational. Rollercoaster Tycoon was totally written in assembly, not a single line of C or C++ anywhere. In the mid 90s! But now only a small number of people need to know it and learn it. For everyone else we let the "artificial intelligence" of the compiler work it out. And whereas it was once worse than humans at writing assembly, these days it's usually better. Does anyone care? No. It wasn't important.

cmrdporcupine 22d ago

What we're really speaking about here is software developers being thrown into the same automation/de-skilling downward escalator that every other trade has suffered through, and it was frankly amazing that we lasted this long without getting hit with it. The consequences aren't great, no. However it was always inevitable because of the way our economy runs. So the finger should not be pointed at AI, but instead the forces that will harness it in certain ways. That might be impossible to tackle at an individual level, and might feel futile... but so is blaming AI.

brazukadev 22d ago
> What we're really speaking about here is software developers being thrown into the same automation/de-skilling downward escalator that every other trade has suffered through Many of those trades still exist and some got even in higher demand, they just use software.

simonw 22d ago

> Do you feel that you have stopped learning or could not create software now without the tool? The rate at which I'm learning has gone up. I'm becoming a much more proficient software engineer, I'm learning how to operate in new ecosystems, I'm getting better at all sorts of higher level aspects of my work. I am however getting worse at sitting down and crunching out code by hand, mainly because I find it frustrating to work that way now. As a result I'm out of practice at it. I expect if someone waved a magic wand and eliminated all forms of LLM and coding agents from the world I would have a couple of less productive months spinning back up on my hand-crafted coding skills again.

deleted 22d ago
[deleted]

mike_hearn 22d ago

But it was ever thus. The knowledge of writing assembly language has largely been lost. The vast majority of working programmers today could not write a whole program in assembly, without looking up nearly everything. In the early years, when compilers were quite bad, it was common for people to write whole programs in assembly even when they could have written C because their output was higher quality. And there were in fact die-hards who just refused to use a compiler in principle, even long after that became irrational. Rollercoaster Tycoon was totally written in assembly, not a single line of C or C++ anywhere. In the mid 90s! But now only a small number of people need to know it and learn it. For everyone else we let the "artificial intelligence" of the compiler work it out. And whereas it was once worse than humans at writing assembly, these days it's usually better. Does anyone care? No. It wasn't important.