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Comment by borzi | Hacker News Reader

I can't relate to this anymore and honestly after embracing vibe coding, I'm sick of reading posts like this (and I don't want to personally attack the write who I sympathize with to some degree). Being able to code doesn't make you better than the "plebs" who are creating massive value with a vibe coded tool. I also remember the brief moment of disbelief when I noticed AI could really code better than me, until I realized that the amount of problems and projects I could solve now basically exploded, while the stuff I was previously forced to deal with is now a waste of time - on to better things, as was always the case in human history.

A programmer is someone telling machines what to do - we will be doing more of that than ever in human history. That said, "coders" not so much - maybe its better to identify as a "person trying to help and care for others" than a profession, since the former will always have a place in society.

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> who are creating massive value with a vibe coded tool

We've been seeing this claim for months and yet I don't know any vibe-coded ventures worth a lot of money.

Along with value, an amature non-developer can create liabilities and technical debt if they decide to distribute something that "works." When reviewing hundreds of printed pages of LLM generated software architecture and code from ChatGPT generated in the business sphere of an org, it remains the programmer's job to advise and lead.

it's not about "better"

it's about enjoyment

someone else on here analogized this perfectly: coding with AI is like solving a solved puzzle. you engage other neural pathways to get the result you want, but "the thing" that made me love doing this for work is completely removed.

Being able to write a paper does not make you any better than someone copying it.

  > Being able to code doesn't make you better than the "plebs" who are creating massive value with a vibe coded tool.
  > [...] I noticed AI could really code better than me [...]

AI code output is generally considered mediocre (in the sense of "on the median"). If it codes better than you, it might be that your code output is generally below average.

Might it be the case that you don't grasp how good one can get with computers and thus not realize that one could be much better than you are at programming them? Did you consider for a moment the possibility that you were missing something?

Notice how I said "coding", not "programming". Coding to me is "should I do an early return or use an if/else? Should I extract that variable into a function to make it cleaner?". It's about focusing on the trivialities that come with insisting on meticulously hand typing and reviewing every line instead of focusing on software quality, design and user needs.

If we want to make that distinction, then we should also acknowledge that "vibecoding" is a misnomer and should be called "vibeprogramming", because it delegates the whole act of programming to the LLM, leaving you with fleshing out the specs (which is not programming).

If that is so, then your whole comment is inconsistent and akin to "I do all my poetry with LLMs now and I don't see what people have against it: it's often better than me at punctuation!"

> software quality

If you think software quality isn't tied to readable (clean) code...

Soooo many times in my career I've had to come back and "extract that variable into a function" that I just do it right away by force of habit.

Point is, this isn't trivial, it is the kind of thing that ends up saving work over the long haul.

Or include this in my agent 'rules' files.

GOOD EXAMPLE

query=f""" SELECT foo FROM {sometable} WHERE {condition} """ answer=spark.sql(query).toPandas()

BAD EXAMPLE

answer=spark.sql(f""" SELECT foo FROM {sometable} WHERE {condition} """).toPandas()

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