One of my coworkers was excited to tell me about the vibe coding workshop he did over the summer. He's not a programmer much at all, and I think he just... enjoyed programming. I tried to hide the deep horror from my face but I don't know if it worked.

I think he did learn some things but I am not convinced it had anything to do with having an LLM giving him code to fix and modify instead of simply copying and pasting bits of code from message boards as we did in olden times.

@futurebird I've been mentoring one of my coworkers in going and he told me about his success in learning bits of Python via Copilot. He's an en engineer not a programmer but he modified some of my test automation scripts to run production cases so I've been very supportive. I believe it's critical that the people doing the work build and own their automation and that my role is to provide inspiration, guidance, and mentoring.
When he mentioned using Copilot, I had to tamp down my initial reaction of "NOOOOOO!" and asked how it worked for him, and gave a gentle reminder that it's often unreliable and everything it produces needs to be independently checked. Ultimately, I want him to be as comfortable and in charge of his own technology as he wants to be and encourage exploration so it's both engaging and useful. He's not a programmer but he's interested and I don't want to quash that. I also want him to understand the limitations of LLMs and, if he uses one, he knows how to use it safely and responsibly.

@arclight @futurebird I’ve been struggling with a similar dynamic at work: project managers are using LLMs for generating at-desk-style automation code, and I am happy that they are solving their problems, but I can also see that they are not learning from application to application of this approach.

Each time, I have to consciously force myself not to horse-stomps-on-snake react to it. I want to be supportive, but I also feel the urge to tell them to stop skating on thinner and thinner ice.