Dr Sam Morrell
Casey LissThis is perhaps a bit overly dramatic, but it rings very, very true to me.
James Thomson@caseyliss Whenever I have tried these tools on the actual problems I have difficulty with, they invent APIs, fail and lie about it, and generally fuck things up in subtle ways. So I push on and do it myself. I dont think they make you a better programmer any more than using AI art tools make you a better artist. You actually have to do the work to learn your craft.
Wylan@jamesthomson @caseyliss Agreed. We’re encouraged to use Claude as one of our tools at work. I just don’t see how it’s supposedly replacing entire workflows.
Given a problem it will confidently return “problem solved and ready for PR 🚀” with a pile of garbage that doesn’t work & unit tests that pass because they don’t actually test the functionality.
I do see how it’s a problem for hiring & training juniors. Makes me wonder who will maintain things in the future😔. Maybe I just getting old? 😂
Pedro Fernandes
Timo Grün@jamesthomson @caseyliss
I’ve had reasonable results with very specific, clearly delineated tasks where I already understand the code nd can correct the mistakes. They’re potentially dangerous in the hands of beginners who don’t understand the code being generated. All the vendors are making the situation much worse by doing everything they can to encourage the illusion of genuine understanding and reasoning on the part of the models. All the text in the responses is specifically designed to that end, and I’m sure lots of beginners are falling for it.
I’ve had reasonable results with very specific, clearly delineated tasks where I already understand the code nd can correct the mistakes. They’re potentially dangerous in the hands of beginners who don’t understand the code being generated. All the vendors are making the situation much worse by doing everything they can to encourage the illusion of genuine understanding and reasoning on the part of the models. All the text in the responses is specifically designed to that end, and I’m sure lots of beginners are falling for it.
Eric Schultz@jamesthomson @caseyliss ya, that's my experience too. It's not career eliminating stuff.
beasom@jamesthomson @caseyliss This has been my experience with language translation. My non-native Japanese writing is better than any of the tools I’ve tried, and I am definitely not a pro.
J>E translation is even worse because information is elided in Japanese that you then have to add back for the English to make sense.
Either way, I have to do the work myself and understand what I’m doing. The result of running something through a translator is 100% unusable without knowledgeable editing.
Nick Honko@caseyliss As a doctor, I somewhat share this sentiment (but am buoyed by hoping overall care and access to care will improve)
Dayton Lowell@caseyliss overly dramatic is Nolan Lawson’s shtick.
Jan Lehnardt 
@caseyliss I’m not mourning our craft, I mourn the intellect of my peers that got sucked into the biggest scam of our time (and that’s before we get to the atrocious ethics).
TheEJJ 🇨🇦@caseyliss If it’s any comfort, I’ve had an inverted journey with “vibe coding” and I am now working on my first real app where I am actually learning the craft.
After using LLMs to edit a Blender plug in, then work on a small personal app, the debugging process really demystified development for me to the point where I feel confident in noodling around with basic things, and I’ve felt enabled to learn.
It’s been five months of development, but I’m trying to learn everything the right way.
@TheEjj That’s awesome! Good luck! 😃
Matthias 
@caseyliss I remember when IDEs like visual studio became a thing and the seniors back then still wanted a „simple“ text editor.
Feels similar
Feels similar
Jimmy@caseyliss I wonder if there’s a similar essay from the pre-printing-press scribes.
It’s scary when a skill you’ve spent your whole life building is replaced by technology, even if the technology isn’t nearly as good.
ChancerubbageI very nearly made a commentary about DTP vs traditional pre-press as being a similar analog. I had to do both- it was cheaper and faster to do halftones (and large layouts) traditionally. Hi-res imagesetters still had to be sneaker net, walk in, unless you had leased lines to the service bureau.
laotang@caseyliss It might be the end of indie developers - but for a different reason. If everyone can tell an LLM what to code and nobody has a clue what they are doing, software quality in the app store and elsewhere will go down. And with that people (rightfully) will loose trust in individual developers.
Rhett Rogers@caseyliss I feel this.
I recognize the new tech and it is necessary.
But it was fun writing code.
But I’ll also say, I’ve been able to code so much faster with it.
It’s hard. In the end I believe that hand coding will become a hobby. Professional coding or any coding of any amount of significance will require extra computer coding.
It’s a brave new world
@caseyliss
I have mixed feelings. Part of me wants to say this is just the new version of moving from mallocing everything to managed code. But it’s clearly more than that. Much more. At the same time, these models are still pattern-matching, not reasoning. The pattern-matching is now on such a high level that we are as oblivious to it as we would be to a shell game played with 10,000 shells by a supercomputer, because that is what it is. But I still have the strong feeling that pattern-matching without aware reasoning must run up against a wall. Because pattern matching without reasoning is exactly what the worst programmers have always done.
I have mixed feelings. Part of me wants to say this is just the new version of moving from mallocing everything to managed code. But it’s clearly more than that. Much more. At the same time, these models are still pattern-matching, not reasoning. The pattern-matching is now on such a high level that we are as oblivious to it as we would be to a shell game played with 10,000 shells by a supercomputer, because that is what it is. But I still have the strong feeling that pattern-matching without aware reasoning must run up against a wall. Because pattern matching without reasoning is exactly what the worst programmers have always done.
Son of a Sailor@caseyliss Same. I'm glad I'm out of the coding game.
Russell Ivanovic@caseyliss “They can write code better than you or I can” 😄
Pull the other one. It’s got bells on.
Huw RowlandsYou have to pay large monthly for the privilege of it! And they promise super duper vewwy much not to put ads in it… for now…