Lucie / minuteMar 4
for whoever needs to hear this: you're not alone. i'm not vibecoding any of the software i write. i'm writing it by hand, but i've leveled up my emacs with eglot/lsp. i'm modernizing my stacks and use languages with excellent compilers. i think about how to do more with less. i'm trying to combine the best human-written libraries and modules and assemble them with minimal boilerplate. i enjoy reading your manuals and references. i believe in robust, secure, human-written software.
Show threadnicolaottomanoMar 4
@mntmn
My 2 cents. As a former programmer and fountain pens collector, manually written code will be a thing of the past in, maybe, 5 years. Those manually writing code will do it for the pleasure of doing it, not for productivity. The same way we switched to PC to literally (no pun intended 🙂) write anything, relegating pens to the role of collector's items.
Show threadMagnus AhltorpMar 4
@nicolaottomano @mntmn Just because you’ve outsourced your coding to people you’ve never had direct contact with doesn’t mean that ”manually written code will be a thing of the past”. Growing food didn’t stop being a thing just because you invaded countries and forced the people there to grow the food for you.
Show threaddegenerating degenerateMar 4

@ahltorp @nicolaottomano @mntmn

99.9% of people are not subsisting off their own-grown food any more... they might supplement what they buy in seasonally is all.

Similarly while some in the 99.9% do hand-write SIMD code or assember, they don't write whole apps in that or machine code.

There are still horse-drawn carriages, farriers, stables and so on, but they are not used by the 99.9%.

Even the people diddling themselves about gemini (the protocol) gave up, the 99.9% didn't notice.

Show threadMagnus Ahltorp
@hopeless @nicolaottomano @mntmn Building compilers doesn’t require armies of lowpayed workers writing and reviewing huge amounts of assembler. All the time.
Mar 4 at 8:20amWeb
Show threaddegenerating degenerateMar 4

@ahltorp @nicolaottomano @mntmn ... yeah except OP said "excellent compilers"... that's a huge amount of work for nontrivial languages no matter who ends up doing it.

It's worth bearing in mind 1) different contexts will get different rides, and 2) we are in a transition with stuff changing rapidly underneath us, the pricing will not stay still either. So we all have to keep an open mind about what the future will bring, whether currently approving of AI from our context or not.

Show threadMagnus AhltorpMar 4
@hopeless @nicolaottomano @mntmn Are you seriously saying we should ”keep an open mind” about #colonialism?
Show threaddegenerating degenerateMar 4

@ahltorp @nicolaottomano @mntmn

:-) It's OK bro, you can keep your mind closed against the scary strawmen. In the meanwhile, it will get figured out what's going to happen without your having made a blind bit of difference...

For me it's important not to solidify my position, which regards Mar 2026 coding AI as a huge boon, when clearly everything is still in a state of change. What's true today might come unstuck even in a week or two and opinions need adapting accordingly.

Show threadMagnus AhltorpMar 4
@hopeless Then we at least know that you’re fine with stepping on people just to get a small benefit for yourself.