I agree. This seems more like an excitement or joy after getting a new toy more that actual process of creating something. Particularly when person uses LLM in a pure vibe code approach where they have no idea what's happening in the code.

Really? To me it seems that quite the opposite is true - people who were never very good at writing code are excited about LLMs because suddenly they can pretend to be architects without understanding what's happening in the codebase.

Same as with AI-art, where people without much drawing skills were excited about being able to make "art".

Perhaps you are both right. People who see coding as a means to an end enjoy LLMs while people who saw it as the most enjoyable part don’t.

This is more accurate, I've written enough code in my life to never really want to do it again ....but I still love creating (code was merely the way to do it) so LLMs help with my underlying passion.

> Do not fall for the AI agent hype.

Problem is, it's the people in higher positions who should be aware of that, except they don't care. All they would see is how much more profit company can make if it reduces workforce.

Plenty of engineers do realize that AI is not some magical solution to everything - but the money and hype tends to overshadow cooler heads on HN.

This is exactly it. The junior and mids on my team produce Junior and mid quality level vibe code.

Too generic prompts, unaccounted edge casez, inattentive code reviews...

How would this affect future generations of ... well anyone, when they have 24/7 access to extremely smart mentor who will find solution to pretty much any problem they might face?

Can't just offload all the hard things to the AI and let your brain waste away. There's a reason brain is equated to a muscle - you have to actively use it to grow it (not physically in size, obviously).

I agree with you about using our brains. I honestly have no idea.

But I can tell you that, just like with most things in life, this is yet another area where we are increasingly getting to do just the things we WANT to do (like think about code or features and have it appear, pixel pushing, smoothing out the actual UX, porting to faster languages) and not have to do things most people don't want to do, like drudgery (writing tests, formatting code, refactoring manually, updating documentation, manually moving tickets around like a caveman). Or to use a non tech example, having to spend hours fixing word document formatting.

So we're getting more spoiled. For example, kids have never waited for a table at a restaurant for more than 20 mins (which most people used to do all the time before abundant food delivery or reservation systems). Not that we ever enjoyed it, but learning to be bored, learning to not just get instant gratification is something that's happening all over in life.

Now it's happening even with work. So I honestly don't know how it'll affect society.

Just because you have every instruction manual doesn't mean you can follow and perform the steps or have time to or can adapt to a real world situation.

Same here, although hopefully won't be retiring soon.

What's missing from this is that iconic phrase that all the AI fans love to use: "I'm just having fun!"

This AI craze reminds me of a friend. He was always artistic but because of the way life goes he never really had opportunity to actively pursue art and drawing skills. When AI first came out, and specifically MidJourney he was super excited about it, used it a lot to make tons and tons of pictures for everything that his mind could think of. However, after awhile this excitement waned and he realized that he didn't actually learn anything at all. At that point he decided to find some time and spend more time practicing drawing to be able to make things by himself with his own skills, not by some chip on the other side of the world and he greatly improved in the past couple of years.

So, AI can certainly help create all the "fun!!!" projects for people who just want to see the end result, but in the end would they actually learn anything?

I mean. Sounds like the guy had existing long term goals, needed to overcome an activation threshold, and used AI as a catalyst to just get started. Seems like, behaviorally, AI was pivotal for him to learn things, even if the things he learned came from elsewhere / his own effort.

I suppose, yes, AI was like a kickstart. But the point is - he didn't just stick to AI, he realized that in terms of skill and fulfillment it's a no-go direction. Because you neither learn anything, nor create anything yourself.

I feel the same way. But this is a new economy now, software is cheap, and regarding the skill and fulfillment you derive writing it yourself, to quote Chris Farley: "that and a nickel will get you a nice hot cup of JACK SQUAT!!!"

AI got to him awhile ago, I'm afraid. Been telling stories about these gastowns, zero code review and thousands of lines of code and thousands of dollars in burned tokens since last year.

I've tried using Codex and ChatGPT while working on a small SwiftUI app. It's not very good when it comes to newer APIs and features - I imagine due to lack of data about these things. Very often it would rather push something AppKit-based instead of SwiftUI.

It works, but feels really janky and messy.

I had one very annoying bug with file export API where extra view on export window would appear with a delay. No matter what I tried it didn't manage to fix it. Instead it would go on to try and completely rewrite whole file export class in various ways... which still didn't work as it claimed it would. Ended up fixing it manually by caching instance view locally.

> Fun!!!!!

I noticed that AI evangelists really love to use word "fun" to describe anything they do with AI.

Claw people particularly seem really love to use that word when answering what practical or useful they do with AI agents. It's always something absurdly trivial followed by "and it's just fun!"

Don't really have any conclusion to this - just thought to share this observation.

Whenever someone says “Fun!!!!” when it comes to LLMs/Claws I can only imagine the author having that obnoxious face: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/soy-boy-face-soyjak

It's probably on the script they've been given

Weird take. Coding is fun (and has been since before AI). And vibe coding is fun in an entirely different way.

What's weird about it? I'm not disputing that it might be fun for vibe coders. Just that they seem to really like using that particular word.

I love coding and it is fun for me. Vibe coding on the other hand - not fun at all. It feels to me like playing slots.

But then again, I never liked gambling.

Not weird at all. It's a common motte & bailey tactic, when your defence of the utility of something fails you can just say you do it for fun!!!!!!!.

When your only defense is “I’m just having fun!!!!” after dumping your toxic waste in the net, it’s not a weird take.

A bit unrelated to the article, more of a commentary about how many engineers at this point barely write any code or even do code review.

It seems to me like a huge amount of engineers/developers in comments are turning into Tom Smykowski from The Office. Remember that guy?

His job was to be a liaison between customers and engineers because he had "people skills":

"I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"

Except now, based on comments here it, some engineers are passing instructions from customers to AI because they have "AI skills". While AI is doing coding, helps with spec clarification, reviewing code and writing tests.

That's scary and depressing. This field in a few years will be impossible to recognize.

Would have to be quite a few years - last time price bump was in 2022 by 10% due to increase in energy costs because of the war in Ukraine. Naturally prices didn't go down.