Submitted 1 day ago by xia@lemmy.sdf.org to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
People always talk about it in relation to programmers, but what about us non-programmers that have been able to code things only becuase of chatgpt?
I have some python, sysadmin, and computer security knowledge. I actually obtained the security+ cert a few years ago.
I do not work in tech anymore, and chatgpt has helped me so much, by basically coding stuff for me to do random work tasks that I was either unqualified to do or didn;t have the time to do.
AI coding is actually a very powerful tool, almost like a light saber. Do you notice how many amputations and artificial limbs there are in that galaxy far far away?
It’s a neat tool, but be careful what you do with it. I wouldn’t make anything web-connected or otherwise requiring security considerations, for example.
It’s an interesting tool.
It can shave hours off of experienced programmers work if they use it in the right scenarios. You can use it in places where you need to do something that’s mundane but fiddly. It’s suboptimal for crapping out a large project, But it’s super effective at generating a single function or module to do a task. It might even come up with a better idea than you would use for some things. The key is if it does something that’s not quite right or not the best idea You need to be able to read it to understand that it’s going a little off the rails.
If you’re a spreadsheet junkie, It’s capable of writing really really complicated rules without getting lost in the minutia.
For non-developers that don’t know anything it’s a dicer proposition. After a couple thousand lines of code You might start running into interesting problems. When it starts having to go and do problem solving mode, and you’re just feeding it back The errors and asking it to fix the problem You can get bogged down pretty quickly.
For DevOps it’s the diggity bomb. Practically everything in that profession is either a one-off quick emergency script or a well thought out plan of templates.
Here are my five Amazon accounts give me a shell script that goes into every account in every availability zone, enumerate every security group and give me a tool to add remove or replace a given IP with a description and port based on the existence of other IPs descriptions or ports. Or write me an ansible script to install zabix monitoring playbooks with these templates.
You need to be able to read it to understand that it’s going a little off the rails.
At least 2/3 of the time I spend with AI coding is getting it to compile without errors - that’s more than a little off the rails, but it’s also much more helpful when you finally do get to a working example that you can look at, instead of beating your own head against the Stack Exchange archives hoping for inspiration, let it try for you.
This is what I’m talking about. So many people talk about it in white or black.
I was able to “code” a front end that my contractors can log into to view the files they are authorized to see.
It helped me write so many different things that all work together to solve my problem.
It may or may not be the most efficient code, but in terms of overall business operation, it’s extremely efficient.
That’s perfectly fine though. And I say that as a professional dev. The problem is when people assume you can actually build an entire software/service architecture of any complexity just through vibe coding.
Currently LLMs are great for helping me pick out the curtains or even to help me assemble some furniture, but I would NEVER let them build the entire house, if that makes sense.
The problem is when people assume you can actually build an entire software/service architecture of any complexity just through vibe coding.
Welcome to CEO handling 101. It’s an art, a very soft skill, and not for the faint of heart. I worked for a mid sized (50 employee) company once where I’d “speak truth to power” in our weekly meeting, get shot down rather enthusiastically by the CEO during the meeting, then after I and the rest of R&D left his office, he’d go out to production and have them start implementing all the concepts of my pitch - as his own ideas, naturally.
Sure, I get it. Once my business is in a more profitable place I’ll bring someone on to fix up the code, but for now it’s more than enough.
What’s the largest program, in line count (wc -l will be close enough, or open the file in Notepad++ and scroll to the end), that you’ve created this way?
I got one up around 500 lines before it started falling apart when trying to add new features. That was a mix of Rust and HTML, total source file size was around 14kB, with what I might call a “normal amount” of comments in the code.
If you count only 100% vibed code, it’s probably a 20 lines long script.
Usually, I tweak the code to fit my needs, so it’s not 100% vibes at that point. This way, I have built a bunch of scripts, each about 200 lines long, but that arbitrary limit is just my personal preference. I could put them all together into a single horribly unreadable file, which could be like 1000 lines per project. However, vast majority of them were modified by me, so that doesn’t count.
If you ask something longer than 20 lines, there’s a very high probability that it won’t work on the 15th round of corrections. Either GPT just can’t handle things that complicated, or maybe my needs are so obscure and bizarre that the training data just didn’t cover those cases.
Using a tool as a tool to solve a problem?! Blasphemy, hectic, you shall bring about the end times!
But to be serious ai is here, it exists, you can’t put things back in the box. Bitching about ai at this point is like bitching the sun is bright and hot.
People need to just get the fuck over it and move on. Focus on regulating and updating laws to the new status quo. Not just bitching like some child having a tantrum because people are using a fucking tool.
I have been doing this stuff for over 40 years, the tools get faster and the ecosystems get more complex.
What would be really nice is a return to simplicity, using the fast tools to make simple stuff fast-squared, but nobody seems to want that.
I’m not bitching about the existence of code agents in general, I’m bitching about the general attitude of “Code Agents will replace programmers” because no the fuck they are not.
They can produce one-off apps and scripts fairly well to the point where non-programmers can solve their problems (great!) but they lack the necessary sophistication and context to build long-lasting, maintainable and scalable applications, which is what you are hiring developers for in the first place
I’m with you on this. The only legit concern I hear is its environmental impact.
But things will become more efficient over time and it had led to increased interest in nuclear energy, so i think it’s a problem that will take care of itself.
Pfft. Computer Science ain’t about coding
Code AI is to programming as a microwave is to cooking
Microwaves are useful cooking tools and can be used to make many things.
Exactly how AI is a useful programming tool when used correctly by a professional.
correct, but if you’re paying someone to make you a dish you wouldn’t want them to just slap a frozen fish in the microwave and serve it to you. That’s what using AI to build enterprise applications for customers is like.
Funny. I dislike vibe coding because it takes away the “art”.
Implicit in these remarks is the notion that there is something undesirable about an area of human activity that is classified as an “art”; it has to be a Science before it has any real stature. On the other hand, I have been working for more than 12 years on a series of books called “The Art of Computer Programming.”
it can be both artless and scienceless
Yay! 😰
I dislike it because it encourages shit code
I kind of see the relationship between computer science and programming as parallel to the relationship between linguistics and speaking foreign languages. You don’t need to learn linguistics to speak another language—so AI translation isn’t taking the linguistics out of translating because it wasn’t a necessary element to begin with.
Computer vibence
People who use AI frequently are the ones who don’t understand the fundamentals.
Taking the black hat off the AI and putting it where it belongs? That’s crazy talk!
I think it depends on who you ask. Some people who "vibe code" definitely use it as a crutch for a lack of understanding. But others (often more senior) tend to use it as just a really really complex auto-complete. Mostly it generates chunks and patterns but the ideas and how those pieces connect come from the dev
I feel like not knowing what you’re doing is a critical piece of the vibe coding definition tho. If a sr developer is using AI, understands the code generated, and can manipulate it in a secure, industry standard way, then that’s just a developer.
Vibe coding is shit, and will always be shit no matter who is doing it.
Totally disagree. Your position is way too overly simplistic and naive.
An engineer only builds a bridge as strong as it needs to be, and likewise I “vibe code” things based on how few fucks I need to give.
I’m experienced and can review the output for sanity and completion. I can test it, I can rewrite it, etc.
Stop looking at vibe coding as doing the whole thing, it’s more valuable as the glue between things, or to create scripts tools that make you more efficient.
And you can vibe code entire apps that basically just work these days. You probably don’t want to maintain those apps but thats a question of lifecycle planning.
It is so much faster to vibe code an API integration and a suite of tests than I can write. It’s faster to write a functional jq or bash script.
But it’s also much much much worse at doing data viz or writing pandas code because it’s trained on 10,000 shitty medium blogs.
You really have to know what you’re doing and what the model is doing, but it is not universally trash.
And if you don’t believe me, put $20 into the Claude API and install Claude Code and ask it to build something.
Since when are programmers the same thing as computer scientists?
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No, it doesn’t, because the need for programmers has not changed one single iota.
Vibe Coders do not replace them at any level. They are not computer scientists, they are not engineers, they cannot even program any more than a regular person could (possibly much worse).
I’m a comp science web designer. Because of my dyslexia. I never could get hired as a real dev. Ai does a bit of the cleaning up I have trouble with and helps me speed up my development. I appreciate it for that. But you still need to know the code for the programs to work. There is still a need for humans. So far. But for how much longer?
But for how much longer?
How much longer will we need people who understand how things work?
Well I drive a car and I do know how it works, but I don’t need to.
One day the AI will be a powerful tool for making software, not 100% of all software, but enough to make those cheap stuffs like most websites for example, laying off lots of those people doing it today IMO.
How much longer until the bots are capable of knowing the code better than the developers.
It will take at least until they take a wholly different approach to “AI”. Until they make something that has some concept of what it is saying, you’ll continue to get things much like you get today–a probability-based response that amounts to a series of symbols it thinks are a good reply to the series of symbols you entered. It has no way to validate itself nor even a concept of validation of output, so its validity will always be in question and the complexity of what it can do limited.
it’s all computer!
JackbyDev@programming.dev 3 hours ago
Most programming already didn’t use computer science.
bhamlin@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Yeah, I never needed an AI to write poor, inefficient, and ineffective code. I’ve always had a tremendous personal capacity for that. Why should I give a company money to do something that I’m already good at?
MangoCats@feddit.it 1 hour ago
Because: for $20 per month to the AI company, you can output poor code much much faster.