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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

>And why wouldn’t writing software be a skill issue

You've missed the point. Nobody doubts writing code well or badly is indeed a skill issue.

The question is that "once you account for all of the things you need to do to make the code very high quality, did vibe coding actually provide any real value?"

I'm certain there are guardrails that help bolster vibe coding but I'm equally certain that when ive prompted something important I usually have to redo it enough times that just writing it manually myself usually would have been quicker.

Then I watch other people who code who dump on that opinion and I see total slop. They just can't tell the difference.

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I hate typing and like reading

That seems to be the primary difference I’ve found between people who embrace gen code and those who dont

The ones who dont, seem to like the physical act of typing, and that tends to cluster with people who write software all day

high quality code means boiling down code to its bare essentials, not spewing boilerplate. that means deleting code where you can and crafting good abstractions while leaving functionality intact.

if you find the ratio between typing and thinking to be very high then you're probably producing a lot of slop.

This is a common theme I find when I hear about people's AI coding success stories. Where they say "its good at X" where X might be "backfilling unit tests" or "writing boilerplate" I usually think "if you find you need to do X a lot youre definitely doing programming wrong.

Ive actually yet to hear an X applied to production code that doesnt make me think that.

> Ive actually yet to hear an X applied to production code that doesnt make me think that.

This is one of those things we value in theory in engineering but not in practice. Reducing code as an artifact might mean coming up with clever ways or compressing data, like making code that generalizes and abstracts. This is fine if you're experienced and clever. But a lot of organizations don't have that many clever or experienced engineers and those tools cause more harm in the hands of those people. Hence compromises must be reached and verbosity is valued because it is explicit.

I used to believe otherwise but then I worked in larger orgs with a lot of mediocre people who still provided value but needed to be given the means to add value.

My experience is that most people don't enjoy code review, which is why it must usually be actively encouraged and not just something that happens naturally.

Mechanically writing boilerplate is not enjoyable, and unfortunately in some languages and domains most of the coding is writing boilerplate. Machines can help with that no problem.

What is presumably enjoyable to most programmers is writing the parts where the actual magic happens. The translation of informal ideas into formal representation has beauty, like mathematics has beauty. Designing and implementing structures of code and data that are as simple as possible, but not simpler, is rewarded with a feeling of artisanal satisfaction and pride. Few things in life are as satisfactory as figuring out an elegant solution to a challenging problem.

None of the above are necessarily bound to the actual typing of words and symbols. AIs can help with all of them, and act as a genuine force multiplier. I would describe that as "responsible use of AI". Unfortunately, it seems that incentives are often against such use.

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