Hello programmers! I’ve been making a living for a couple of decades figuring out stuff for people and coding whatever will make them happy. It’s fun. I’ve grown to prefer the people to the coding but I still get a kick out of the whole thing.
The problem is: at the job we’re being asked to pivot to vibe coding. At this point the order is to use it for all code, read the slop carefully, argue with the machine for way too long and only then open that PR. Massive productivity gains are expected. I’m appalled from an ethical, philosophical and professional standpoint. We’re a non-profit ngo ffs. My colleagues are fine with it. If I get even slightly critical the group goes awkwardly silent and I get comments on how all the programmers they know from other places don’t code anymore.
If this is how it goes from now on, I’m out. Is it really though? Are all businesses switching to vibe coding? Have some of you started switching career? I think I want to go to meatspace. Hand-made coding could make a cute hobby.
What are your thoughts for using AI to colour in & do the tedious bits? So you plan out the structure of what you’re trying to do, work out the individual pieces and get the AI to do a bunch of the (well specified) leg work. I’ve found it fairly reliable like this, especially for things that involve looking up function parameters in unfamiliar APIs. But this does depend on a thorough look over what comes out as well. No doubt there’s still issues that can pop up but generally have found it to be useful overall
If the API is unfamiliar how do you know what it puts out is the best way to use the API without going and reading the docs anyway?
Sure if you need it to work with that level of detail/efficiency then you’ll need to understand the code thoroughly as well. If you need it to draw a dashed line and you get a dashed line then that is fine by me. Looking up the argument differences between matplotlib plt.plot and plt.scatter for example can take quite a bit of time for fairly trivial things
Personally I don’t allow the AI to write any code. I do use AI but I mainly use it for debugging and as a sort of glorified rubber duck that I can bounce problems off. check my code, see what’s wrong with it, see what it recommends, and based on my own knowledge know the right direction to proceed. It still gets things wrong most of the time but at least it can point me down a path that I know will be the correct one.
I used to use it to craft boilerplates/bootstraps and at first it did it well enough but lately it even fucks that up. so I don’t bother. I honestly don’t even trust it to do the tedious writing. It’s a useful idiot at this point.