jorl17

I learned MIPS assembly and there were brief references to x86 assembly, and I know most of my friends would do fine with assembly, but, alas, most engineers I've known barely even know what memory management is, so being able to create proper abstractions with assembly would definitely be out of their league.

It's vaguely similar to how JS and Node enable so many people to flood the market without really knowing the underlying technology. Many of those would definitely not pick up assembly (which is the entire point I was trying to make)

*Many* devs would be completely incapable of learning assembly. Heck, many would be unable to learn C.

Likewise, *many* vibecoders would absolutely fail to adapt, and some would adapt, with this being their first experience. Just think of how many people started coding by using old gamemaker tools or scratch, or playing silly games. It is not the same as an LLM, but the idea that it is a gateway is definitely there. I wouldn't call LLMs "programming", because they're doing more: they're building products, which involves a lot more than programming -- hence why the skills to really thrive with LLMs are not just those of a good developer or engineer.

But weeks? I'd say less than 10% of the devs I've known my entire life would develop properly in assembly (and I'm being quite generous). Memory management, pointers, registers...just to name a few.

I think far too many people fail to realize that, with LLMs, the brain of a good problem solver, especially one with engineering background, gets much better results than someone with different characteristics. Similarly, the mind of a good product developer (and even someone with good UX inclination) does a much better job and building usable products.

This idea that LLMs are doing all of the work is frankly mind-boggling to me. It must stem from vastly different experiences of what LLMs do or whomever is using them around who says these claims. Obviously they do a lot of work, especially in the development prototyping, architecture and even ideation parts. But they only do (almost) "all of the work" in very simple or bad apps.

I've seen loads of terrible vibe-coding jobs: UX is terrible, bugs everywhere, clearly no consideration at any point for architecture (and thus the product is barely holding on). And I've seen the opposite: products that feel and act like premium stuff, because they were built by people with true love for what they do, sometimes even with a very good problem solving mind to add to that (leading to a not-so-terrible-albeit-still-barely-holding-on-but-thats-clearly-good-enough-for-the-product architecture). For every good app there are maybe 100 lovable apps that all look the same and break the second you do the wrong sequence of clicks, but the good ones do exist.

It's a tool that enables mediocrity to exist where it didn't previously, but it also empowers so many people in incredible ways. Still, you definitely need to be good at using the tool, and it definitely doesn't just happen overnight.

Sure, many do and fail. I wonder why?

I am starting to believe this as well.

But I'm not mad that we can reverse engineer stuff (well, reverse engineer is too nice, in a way: we can sort of clone). In fact, I love it. A friend recently shared that it feels illegal, but I find it to be a dream. The teenager in me who loved open-source would be celebrating intensely for the fact that now we can "open-source" other software. Or modify it. I've got mods in one way or another for almost every game I've been playing recently, it's truly a dream come true. I haven't open-sourced most of it, but mostly because I imagine the world is filled with vibed stuff.

I may make money by building software, and that certainly has included keeping things proprietary, but I don't ideologically love that. If the world progresses towards this, I think we're better off.

(But I'll admit I think I'm in the minority here).

Hard disagree. At least for now, there is a world of difference between the product that comes out of a good product builder with Cc/codex and that which comes out of a mediocre one. And obviously a good software engineer and a good product builder need not be the same person.

Maybe the models with level this difference but right now it’s quite obvious the more you look around at products being built around you and by also just looking at what people around you can build with these tools.

This is sort of a rehash of the debate between product people and actual builders. I have always seen immense value in both sides.

This is something I keep asking myself: why am I not scared for my job? Do I really believe I'll just manage to survive? Maybe I do?...

I can't honestly say so, though.

Yet, I can say I am so excited for the future! For once, I don't want to wake up in the future — I'm loving being at the heart of it, seeing it progress and watching it allow people to be more creative and more empowered.

One might also notice that the internet did come to dominate our modern world, in spite of the dot com crash. A crash does not equate the end of these tools.

I really cannot wrap my mind around the idea that LLMs will just not be a part of everyday life in the future — in tech and everywhere else...

This is something that genuinely baffles me.

Some people I know also seem to believe this? Like all the AI providers are going to go bankrupt and we'll just go back to what there was before? Do they not realize that indeed the productivity gains are there?

Sure, there's a lot to be debated about how this fell on many people's laps, on how they are being asked to do more, with the same pay and sometimes putting in more hours. These are pressing issues that have emerged as a natural (or, well, maybe forced for some) consequence of a complete shakeup in the world in general. But I don't think society (i.e. most people) will go back to what was before unless we actually have some form of devastation that really physically prevents us from doing so.

If OpenAI and Anthropic and what have you go bankrupt, others will continue. Maybe the economics will look a bit different, but to think we will just go back to what it was seems, to me, completely nonsensical. But maybe I'm the one spouting nonsense. We'll see in a few years...

I agree a lot with this part

> What scares me most is how they allow people who don't fully know what they're doing to deploy software, especially corporate software.

Which is why I also think some people get such disparate experiences. If your organization is allowing clueless people to confidently throw stuff built by LLMs at mission-critical problems, that does seem more like an organizational problem than an LLM problem. (A related problem: the amount of people who keep shoving claude shit in front of us, thinking they've "edited" it enough to not sound like it came from it. I can spot it from a mile away and usually make myself loud about it if I have the power to stop it. AI is not an excuse for mediocrity.)

There's so much to hate about LLMs, and there's so much to love. And since we've sort of ended up in this world of constant false dichotomies, this kind of nuance gets lost in the trenches.

Of course LLMs in the wrong of clueless people are bad. Of course the way in which these models were trained is shameful and it's criminal that people are having their work stolen. Of course we need to find ways of dealing with slop. Of course it's bad for the environment at the moment (and so on). The list goes on and on, I know that.

But on either side of this debate (which SHOULD NOT HAVE TWO SIDES -- that's THE problem), people just tend to lump everything together. Your example is one some acquaintances repeatedly throw my way, and I'm left wondering if they have even thought that they're just showing me how broken their org is, not how bad the tech is? But, nope, they turn to me and go "AI bad bad"...

To each their own, I guess.

(I will say, though, the people around me I mentioned getting immense benefits from AI outside of tech are most definitely not addicted to it)

Regardless of the answer (which I don't claim to actually know, but I'll bite), I've heard a related question as well: "Well, all you did was vibe-code it, anyone can do that!"

To which the obvious answer is often: then why didn't you think of it? And if you thought of it, why didn't you iterate on it and polish it to achieve a proper product that actually matched your vision?

For some people, they seem to believe that an idea isn't worth anything, and only the building is. And, even then, they don't really understand that building a proper product (even with vibecoding) takes a lot of effort to get right, because as you build you find more about the domain, about how the product should work, etc. Sure, loads of people vibecode crap, but many don't. They build things with real care over the course of many many many hours.

It's not that I love agile, but this is one of the reasons it exists. I wonder if the people who so openly bash solving a problem through vibecoding (with multiple iterations) also fail to see this value of agile?

To answer your question (acknowledging I don't really know): If all you had to do was get Claude/Codex to work and it came out perfectly very fast, then I believe you did commission it (and I have no problem with that), but, more often that that, you will have built it by iterating on product decisions.

When I "build" products for clients, I am not doing commission development work. In fact, I'm not building it for them -- we are building it together, learning requirements, failing, iterating. Otherwise, I would have just been a code monkey, and that I have sincerely despised for years.

Lastly: at least for now, the impact of knowing how to guide the AI is still very relevant. Good problem solvers who embrace AI completely blow "regular guys" out of the water. Maybe, as models get better, this will not be as prevalent, but you can clearly tell when someone "knows" what they're doing with the AI, even if they NEVER look at the code. The knowledge from the coding days is definitely partly transferable.

Been working for a little over 10 years, but coding for double that time.

Building things with LLMs is the closest I can get (perhaps even surpass?) the feeling I had as a kid, learning to code.

I feel rather sad that most (though luckily not all) of my friends despise AI, as I feel a (small, but relevant) part of the connective tissue we had is sort of gone. I'm in love with what I can do, I've re-gained the superpowers I had back in college (and even before that) and I can't really share that with them (and they can't really share their concerns and frustrations with me). In two weeks of vacation (actually: in 1 week of those) I finally got around to tackling 5 different projects I had in the back of my mind, mostly for fun (but one of them is genuinely generating some income as well) -- this is amazing, but I have actively avoided talking about this with them, bar sharing a link to some of the things (and even that I'm feeling some regret over)

It's so fun to tinker around with everything! Modding a game, revitalizing abandonware with custom patches, building a harness to know how it works or just...you know...building what is in my mind, whenever, wherever, without it taking foreeeveeeeeeer.

I used to think what I loved was coding, but I have really come to realize I liked both building and coding. The latter I haven't really done much of in more than a year and....it doesn't annoy me at all? I know for a fact I loved doing it, but I can't really say I _miss_ doing it? Maybe after 20 years it just wasn't the same? Maybe the rush from watching my mind materialize into real things so fast is camouflaging it? Who knows...

Not to mention that most everyone else in my surroundings outside of the tech bubble is doing amazing things with AI. Cool websites, music that moves me to tears, random fun games and just, in general, clearly managing to focus more on what they want, on their goals, on their imagination and less on their work. There are exceptions, but the trend is that AI has enabled them to do more of what they want and less of what they have to, and I love that.

I completely accept that, for some people, the fun is/was in coding by hand. And that it's terrible that they'll likely not be able to earn a living just doing that relatively soon. What I have difficulty accepting is the outright bashing and hating on everything AI-related (and, yes, I hate hype too, but have you LOOKED AROUND AND SEEN THIS NEW WORLD?!). I can sort of accept it based on ethical grounds, but very rarely is it actually that. I guess people are just venting and firing in all directions due to how much this has shaken their lives and livelihood (and that, indeed, I can understand).

Anyway, this world is AMAZING! I am 100% with you. Especially because I don't even type (to the agents) anymore. I just voice-to-text, with barely any filter. I've often described it as the closest I've ever felt to truly controlling the computer with my mind, because I don't have to slow down my thoughts to write them. Sort of incredibly liberating.

In research paper form.