I love the one guy on that thread who is defending vibe coding, and is “about to launch his first application,” and anyone who tells him how dumb he is is only doing so because they feel threatened.
Nah I’m on that guy’s side. His experience lines up with my own, namely that vibe coding is not useful for people who don’t know how to program, but it can be useful for people who do know how to program, and simply aren’t familiar with the specific syntax used in a language they’re not an expert in.
In that case, the queries to the AI model aren’t, “write me a program that can do X”, it’s more like “write me a function in this language that can take A, B, and C as inputs, do operation Y with them, and return Z”, or “what’s the best way to find all of the unique elements in an array and sort it alphabetically in this language”. Then the programmer can take those pieces and build up a proper application with them. The AI isn’t actually writing the program for you, it’s more like a customized Stack Overflow generator, without having to wade through a decade of people arguing back and forth in the comments about inane bullshit.
Does it save a ton of time? No, but it’s still helpful, and can get you up and running in a new language much faster than the alternative.
I really like the description of AI coding as ‘custom stack overflow generator’ because it really sells the flaws as well, to an experienced dev. We go to stack overflow for help with some weird quirk of a language or find an obscure library that solves our specific need.
I think vibe coding is cobbling together a project from a bunch of stack overflow posts – and they only use the question part of the post.
I’m just using AI to get me the damn standard library function I want to use but can’t remember. Way faster than clicking through a couple links of a search result for it.
Sure, it can be useful for people who do know how to program, though I find it usually takes more effort to get it to create what I want and make sure it works than it takes to just do it myself.
This guy explicitly says he doesn’t know how to program though. He says he took an HTML (not a programming language, a markdown language) class a decade ago. He probably doesn’t remember shit from it, not that it’d be helpful anyway because writing HTML has nothing to do with writing a program to perform a task.
Does it save a ton of time? No, but it’s still helpful, and can get you up and running in a new language much faster than the alternative.
You obviously aren’t a programmer. You either know how to program or you don’t. The language is just syntax, which is trivial to learn. It doesn’t help you get running in a new language because you still need to learn the syntax to make sure it’s writing something reasonable. That time has to be spent no matter what.
Don’t be a dick, the example is a perfectly reasonable one, and it’s something ppl would’ve used Rosetta code or learnxiny or stack overflow for in the past.
I’m currently doing this with an angular project that’s a bit of a clusterfuck. So many layers.
I’m still having to break it down into much, much smaller chunks and it’s not able to do much, but it is helpful. Most useful thing was that I started with writing a pure SQL query with several joins and told it “turn this into linq using existing entities”.
An HtML class ten years ago isn’t anything close to knowing how to program. It’s like saying “I wrote a bullet point lost years ago so I know how to write a novel.”
Are you saying the comment is fake, or the sentiment? This was actually posted to reddit: https://archive.is/U9ntj
Fake in that it’s almost assuredly written and posted by someone who is actively anti-vibe coding and this is a troll on the true believers.
Correct.
I love the one guy on that thread who is defending vibe coding, and is “about to launch his first application,” and anyone who tells him how dumb he is is only doing so because they feel threatened.
Nah I’m on that guy’s side. His experience lines up with my own, namely that vibe coding is not useful for people who don’t know how to program, but it can be useful for people who do know how to program, and simply aren’t familiar with the specific syntax used in a language they’re not an expert in.
In that case, the queries to the AI model aren’t, “write me a program that can do X”, it’s more like “write me a function in this language that can take A, B, and C as inputs, do operation Y with them, and return Z”, or “what’s the best way to find all of the unique elements in an array and sort it alphabetically in this language”. Then the programmer can take those pieces and build up a proper application with them. The AI isn’t actually writing the program for you, it’s more like a customized Stack Overflow generator, without having to wade through a decade of people arguing back and forth in the comments about inane bullshit.
Does it save a ton of time? No, but it’s still helpful, and can get you up and running in a new language much faster than the alternative.
I really like the description of AI coding as ‘custom stack overflow generator’ because it really sells the flaws as well, to an experienced dev. We go to stack overflow for help with some weird quirk of a language or find an obscure library that solves our specific need.
I think vibe coding is cobbling together a project from a bunch of stack overflow posts – and they only use the question part of the post.
I’m just using AI to get me the damn standard library function I want to use but can’t remember. Way faster than clicking through a couple links of a search result for it.
Sure, it can be useful for people who do know how to program, though I find it usually takes more effort to get it to create what I want and make sure it works than it takes to just do it myself.
This guy explicitly says he doesn’t know how to program though. He says he took an HTML (not a programming language, a markdown language) class a decade ago. He probably doesn’t remember shit from it, not that it’d be helpful anyway because writing HTML has nothing to do with writing a program to perform a task.
You obviously aren’t a programmer. You either know how to program or you don’t. The language is just syntax, which is trivial to learn. It doesn’t help you get running in a new language because you still need to learn the syntax to make sure it’s writing something reasonable. That time has to be spent no matter what.
Don’t be a dick, the example is a perfectly reasonable one, and it’s something ppl would’ve used Rosetta code or learnxiny or stack overflow for in the past.
I’m currently doing this with an angular project that’s a bit of a clusterfuck. So many layers.
I’m still having to break it down into much, much smaller chunks and it’s not able to do much, but it is helpful. Most useful thing was that I started with writing a pure SQL query with several joins and told it “turn this into linq using existing entities”.
I think they’ll completely replace ORMs.
An HtML class ten years ago isn’t anything close to knowing how to program. It’s like saying “I wrote a bullet point lost years ago so I know how to write a novel.”