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Comment by gyomu | Hacker News Reader

> Almost nobody programs computers in machine language. Mostly, programmers work in high-level programming languages that simplify many aspects of the job. Thanks to AI, I realized, English is just an extraordinarily high-level programming language. And vibe coding is coding.

It's funny how people feel the need to repeat that last mantra. Kind of similar to the "listening to audiobooks is reading" crowd.

Compare two high schoolers: one who vibe codes a game in English and generates the graphics with Nano Banana; vs one who actually learns how to program and draw to make the game.

Are they doing the same kind of activity? Getting the same kind of cognitive development out of it?

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> Kind of similar to the "listening to audiobooks is reading" crowd.

Is this supposed to be an implicit dig at audiobooks? The scientific consensus seems to be that there's no difference to comprehension or retention.

https://time.com/5388681/audiobooks-reading-books/

Well, we don’t say that “seeing” a theater play is the same as “reading” a theater play - regardless of comprehension or retention - so why should we say that “listening” to a book is the same as “reading” a book?

Drawing these distinctions is complicated by multi-modal consumption. As an avid lifelong reader (nearly a book per week for about 50 years) I greatly enjoy reading on my kindle and seamlessly switching to listening while driving or doing the dishes. With most books these days it's probably 80% reading -- but in the past, when I had a long commute, it was closer to 50/50. When discussing a given book with others, it's practically irrelevant whether I read or listened to the audiobook narration.

As for theater plays, attending a live performance with actors is fundamentally different from reading the script.

Yet it is not the same. The person who has read a thousand books is better at reading than the person who instead listened to them.

Better at reading yes but not necessarily better at comprehension which is what I believe people are getting at in these discussions. I read and listen. Initially my comprehension and memory while listening was inferior, but you can learn the skill of deep concentration on audio (or some may have it natively).

You’re proving the exact point of the OP arguing against the “And vibe coding is coding.” statement.

You’re focusing only on the results, and not the difference in cognitive function necessary to achieve those results.

An illiterate person can “read” an audiobook.

Just like a person that knows zero about coding could (theoretically) vibe code a program with similar/same results.

So yes, if you focus 100% on only the results, then it could be argued they’re the same.

But the OP is saying there’s more to doing something than just the results.

The medium feels wholly immaterial in this case. The words reach your brain, and then it's up to you to think about them, imagine the scene, process ideas. Audiobooks let the narrator add inflection, which maybe takes a slight load off you, but I don't see the big deal. I've read lots of fiction, and listened to a lot on road trips, and I don't feel like my comprehension suffered in either case compared to the other. The important thing is you can have the same level of conversation about the material - I don't believe all this woo about reading being the only pure and intellectual way to process information.

>Is this supposed to be an implicit dig at audiobooks? The scientific consensus seems to be that there's no difference to comprehension or retention

I wouldn't trust that "scientific consensus" if my life dependent on it.

For starters, there's no scientific consensus.

The linked post refers to merely 2 studies, both of doubtful quality. And one says "it's no different", the other says it's worse.

The one that says "it's no different" asked them to read/listen to mere two chapters of total ~ 3000 words.

That's a Substack essay or New Yorker article level, not a book, and only of one text type (non-fiction historical account. How does it translate to literature, technical, theoritical, philosophical, and so on?). The test to check retention was multiple choice - not qualitative comprehension. And several other issues besides.

And on the other study in the post, the audio group performed much worse.

I think GP is making a subtler point, not that listening to audio books is worse than reading books with your eyes, but that it's telling that people who listen to audio books themselves go out of their way to emphasize that it's equivalent to reading, thus betraying that in their own value system they put a higher value on (actual) reading.

I mean no one is listening to an audiobook of an Eternal Golden Braid - even if one existed it couldn't lead to an equivalent outcome compared to reading it. Let's not even get started on the impact on literary devices like Wordplay and Neologisms.

There doesn't need to be an implicit dig; audiobooks are explicitly a different medium, and in the Marshall McLuhan sense obviously thus impact comprehension, retention, and the overall grok.

I'm pretty sure it will vary a LOT from person to person... I remember what I see very well.. what I hear, not nearly as much. I say this as when I was commuting I'd listing to a lot of audio books and podcasts... I didn't retain much at all. But I can skim a written article and retain a lot more. Further still, if I literally copy something I see while writing it down, it's hard for me not to remember. That last bit got me through high school as I never did any homework, but always aced tests.

Everyone is definitely different in terms of how they learn best. That's not to say that listening to non-fiction is or isn't better for oneself than nothing, or even different forms of music may be different. There's nothing wrong with entertainment or factual knowledge... (See "Fat Electrician" on YouTube/Pepperbox for a lot of both.)

> Are they doing the same kind of activity? Getting the same kind of cognitive development out of it?

Who cares as long as the game is good? There is no inherent moral value in the how with artistic creation. What matters is the end result.

And if people are happy with what they produce, who am I to judge them? I will happily give my opinion on the game but the act of creation is them.

Same with audiobook. You are adding value judgment where there doesn't need to be one. Is the Odyssey less significant because it used to be an oral story?

Sure but you could be saying that about calculators vs pen and paper math. At some point you will need to abandon this position.

I think it’s more like solving a math problem yourself (whether with tools like pen & paper, or a calculator), vs asking an AI agent to solve the problem for you.

Right but only because you've mentally tagged using a calculator with "doing it by yourself" and using AI as "not doing it by yourself". In both cases you are doing it by yourself in one sense and not doing it by yourself in another.

In the AI case the "not doing it by yourself" sense is much much much much much much more correct.

It's also valid for calculators vs pen and paper math.

Calculators make calculation much easier, but people doing math with them lose a sizable part of their mathematic skills.

To the point of kids not being able to do a simple addition or multiplication or percentage calculation (never mind division) with a calculator, even when someone used to pen and paper can trivially doing with just their mind.

I think grade school kids learning arithmatics shouldn't use a calculator & highscool pupils/collegue students/junior devs learning to program shouldn't use AI to generate code until they learned how to do it manually for the same reason (the temptation to let the machine do it for you & thus not learn is too great).

Digitally painting an image is completely different from asking an AI to make one. Writing a short story is very different from asking an AI to write it. Same with arithmetics, problem solving, coding.

> Are they doing the same kind of activity? Getting the same kind of cognitive development out of it?

Definitely not, but one activity isn't necessarily better than the other. A carpenter and an architect don't do the same activities either.

Even if we accept this metaphor of English as a programming language, it’s used in a highly unusual way.

With regular programming, you have a full specification of the program (the code) and it gets turned into an executable. When you want to change some behavior, you change the code parts that relate to the behavior and the whole thing is compiled again.

With agentic programming, there’s no full spec, no “codebase in English”. You write instructions but they are discarded as soon as you close your session, and what’s left is this lower level thing (the code written in a traditional programming language).

It’s almost like a difference between declarative and imperative paradigm for the process of creating software.

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