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.

@mntmn

Hi Lucie, I love the sentiment. I do think it is important to understand what good coding is, and coding is enjoyable.

But... sorry, I have a "but"

I am an experieced 30 year coder. The truth is that the best human coder cannot keep up with what AI coding can do. I was shocked when I realized this but it's true.

AI can keep the entire code base in its buffer and scan and find things instantly that I would not know. It can refactor, debug and redeploy. It can generate documentation instantly. Any API, even ones I have never seen to some esoteric endpoint, it can master instantly. it has been trained billions and billions of lines of code. That is more than I have by a factor of over 100,00 million.

It is like having a team of 10 cross-disciplinary developers working with you plus a documentation writer , a QA person and project manager.

If I have a question about how something works, I can ask it, and it describes it and gives me links to the relevant section.

It is only getting better. Every few months its capabilities leap incredibly.

It still needs a team leader. It needs someone to guide what it can do. That is the role to embrace. You will be a much better team leader if you understand the fundamentals.

Believe me, I understand that there are plenty of downsides to this. And .. it scares the hell out of me. But wishing it were not so will not make it go away.

I dont know if you have tried the most recent releases - I use Claude Code -- but you owe it to yourself to try it if only to gauge what you are up against.

And by all means -- keep learning to code on your own -- but if that is the only tool in your quiver, it should be a hobby, not a means to make a living.

@vashbear @mntmn This post reply received at least one unjust, impolite response. The posts' authors are kindly sharing insightful and useful summary of a human experience. Such attacks by humans on this post reply is an example of AI winning: it does not do what rude people do here. There is fear of reporting the transformative effect of IT, of which AI-like tools are an apotheosis, because humans are rude and confrontational and grossly unfair in response. Thanks for the post.