Mastodawn

Matt Owens Mar 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.

Devine Lu Linvega Mar 4

HAWT

The Orange Theme Mar 4

@mntmn Hell yeah, Emacs gang! 🤙😎 Been remapping caps lock since 2014. Thank you, it's nice to see that some people are still out there slinging bits the old-fashioned way. 🖤❤️💛

ben.biddington (NZ)Mar 4

@mntmn Thank you. I really need to hear it.

@mntmn PREACH <3

@mntmn spoken like a true programmer 👏

Bogdan Buduroiu Mar 4

@mntmn not to toot my own horn but I'm doing a 40 day AI Lent to keep my brain sharp, it's probably the most intellectually rewarding (and frustrating) thing I've done recently

https://buduroiu.com/blog/announcing-ai-lent/

40 days of AI Lent - Bogdan Buduroiu

A tongue-in-cheek take on 'fasting' from AI-assisted coding, reflecting on engineering, and honing one's engineering skills through manual coding

Bogdan Buduroiu

Wade McGillis Mar 4

@budududuroiu not to toot my own horn but I'm doing an almost 13,038 day fast from vibe coding.

@budududuroiu @mntmn https://infosec.exchange/@mttaggart/116163565875479590

Jackson Mostoller Mar 4

@budududuroiu Insightful read so far, thanks for recording and sharing it!

ed(1) conference Mar 4

For whomever needs to hear this: you are not alone. I am not vibecoding any of the software I write. I write it all by hand. I have leveled up to using ed(1) on a glass TTY rather than a hardcopy-output device. I am modernizing my stacks and using languages with excellent compilers like C89. I think about how to do more with less. I am trying to combine the best human-written libraries and modules and assemble them with minimal boilerplate. I enjoy reading manuals and references. I believe in robust, secure, human-written software.

Thalia Archibald Mar 4

@ed1conf @mntmn Smh, I prefer writing C74 in UNIX V4 with ed(1) on my Teletype Model 43. Though, I'd love to upgrade to a Teletype Model 37.

Graham Sutherland / Polynomial Mar 4

honestly, we need as many people as possible who actually give a shit about the quality of the things they make.

Micdan 💾Mar 4

@mntmn SAY IT LOUDER FOR THOSE IN THE BACK ❤️‍🔥

@mntmn oh thank God. I *was* feeling alone.

∴ esoterik ∴Mar 4

@mntmn 💪 fuck yeah emacs 🐐

@mntmn Same here. Tried vibe coding and then intentionally stay away from it. Also an Emacs user. Can't say I am doing the right thing, just what I feel like to do.

@mntmn instafollow

Anyia, geeky 🏳️‍⚧️ girl Mar 4

@mntmn I feel like we're in a drowning minority

Lona Theartlav Mar 4

@mntmn Thank you, i needed to hear this. 💜

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.

Magnus Ahltorp Mar 4

@vashbear @mntmn If what you’re saying is true, and not cherrypicked, there is no excuse whatsoever to not move on to better programming languages. Are you? Are other vibecoders?

To languages and toolchains where the ”compilation process” isn’t using an unconstrained random number generator, but where you describe your problem formally and succinctly and get the same result every time.

> If what you’re saying is true, and not cherry-picked, there is no excuse whatsoever to not move on to better programming languages.

The main constraint on this is where the application is deployed. The code that is generated still needs to be deployed and run somewhere, and it depends on the hosting provider and what is available under the client's paid plan. So in practice, that limits the language and libraries that can be used, and what I have tried.

But outside of client work, you make a good point. It would be interesting to experiment with other languages, like Rust for example.

@vashbear @mntmn wow, this is amazing! They didn’t ask. You acknowledged that they didn’t ask. And yet you still couldn’t stop yourself to come in and post an essay proselytizing AI at a person who, once again, did not ask.

Is there something about using AI that makes people unable to help themselves? I mean, do you really think a person who runs an open source hardware company needed you to mansplain AI at them?

@eadanila @mntmn

My intent is not to "proselytize AI". As I said, it scares the hell out of me.

Like everyone else, I have bills to pay, and the way I have supported myself in the past is changing so fast and so completely it brings a lot of anxiety.

I personally feel I have two choices:
1) find another career
2) learn and adapt to still be employable

@vashbear @mntmn look, I get it. I feel the same worries. I’m not judging you for doing what you need to make a living.

What I take exception with is the assumption that someone who resists AI must be an amateur who needs you to advertise it to them.

@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.

Nick Bathum Mar 4

@vashbear paraphrasing your words:

"if you dont use AI you cant program for money"

fuck right off. this is a capitalist fallacy argument. there will always be those who uphold human values moreso than the drive to be "more"

>fuck right off

well, thank you for that.

> "if you dont use AI you cant program for money"

I think that gets right to the heart of the matter.

I think that is a topic worthy of serious discussion. My concern, and it fills me with anxiety, is that this is the direction we are headed.

Nick Bathum Mar 4

@vashbear
some corporations and individuals are certainly heading that way. i dont suffer the belief in the inevitability of that path. maybe im delusional idk

as a programmer my experience with human language is that words are fluid. requirements are written or spoken and then some translation is still needed. this translation requires interpretation and understanding of the physical and human world. this activity is beyond the capability of a large language model.

:EA DATA. SF:Mar 4

The automation platform I spend most of my time in let's me use in-line Python, jq, and JSONPath. They have little AI boxes so it can do it for you. I refuse to use them and quite enjoy writing my own, reading stackoverflow, reading documentation, and doing iterative testing.

I used to hate jq and found it unintuitive. Now it's one of my favorite things to hack around in and I get really excited when I find a novel solution that lets me replace ten steps and two loops with one carefully crafted command.

And I'm finally taking a Python class after a decade of always meaning to.

I want to know why and how the things I put name on actually work.

@mntmn This makes everything you do even more enjoyable for me :)

mahadevank Mar 4

@mntmn Same club. I only use AI for snippets of code - which of course, I have to then edit quite a bit to bring it to good shape.

I mostly use it for stuff I'm new to, like Vimscript. Speaking of which Vim here - it has been my editor of choice for more than 20 years now, so the habit runs deep.

nicolaottomano Mar 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.

@nicolaottomano @mntmn I listen this since 30 years... If no human write code what code will AI steal, and with which energy ? I still use pens, and still write code with Vim (who would say that Vim and emacs will still be the most used editors 30 years ago ?) !

Catherine Mar 4

@nicolaottomano @mntmn Interesting take. I rarely use a pen these days - but I handwrite a LOT. My Remarkable gets constant use for so many things. I often write and doodle out ideas when programming too before turning the result into type.

Magnus Ahltorp Mar 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.

degenerating degenerate Mar 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.

Magnus Ahltorp Mar 4

@hopeless @nicolaottomano @mntmn Building compilers doesn’t require armies of lowpayed workers writing and reviewing huge amounts of assembler. All the time.

degenerating degenerate Mar 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.

Magnus Ahltorp Mar 4

@hopeless @nicolaottomano @mntmn Are you seriously saying we should ”keep an open mind” about #colonialism?

degenerating degenerate Mar 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.

Magnus Ahltorp Mar 4

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

Ariaflame Mar 4

@nicolaottomano @mntmn How many fusion reactors are out there? They were just around the corner too. Why do you want to rely on something that is intrinsically insecure?

Johan Nyström-Persson Mar 4

@mntmn Amen.

Sero Tonin Mar 4

@mntmn thank you! I appreciate every good documentation, every tutorial, blog article and problem discussion I can find!
This motivates me to write better documentation and to keep resisting the slop, too.

ᛋᛁᚵᛁᛋᛘᚢᚾᛑ ᚾᛁᚾᛃᛅ Mar 4

@mntmn One of the best use cases for LLMs is to produce tools for deterministic automation. One does not have to be irrational about this issue. Follow the example of Torvalds. Stay adult, stay sane and be open-minded. Every person (or moral subject) is responsible for the code they commit or text they publish. If you don't want that responsibility, you pay someone or stay anonymous. That has and will always be the case. You can never be certain about how information was produced.

ᛋᛁᚵᛁᛋᛘᚢᚾᛑ ᚾᛁᚾᛃᛅ Mar 4

@mntmn And I don't vibe code. But that's because I simply haven't had the time to try it out.

Ember is so tired of people.

@sigismundninja @mntmn piss off

ᛋᛁᚵᛁᛋᛘᚢᚾᛑ ᚾᛁᚾᛃᛅ Mar 4

@Ember @mntmn piss

@mntmn you are a treasure. <3

Serghei Pogor Mar 4

process beats talent in sales more than most founders want to admit. a mediocre rep with a tight ICP list outperforms a great rep with a bloated one

@mntmn Hear hear.

@mntmn Thank you. i'm really disheartened on how many people throw their skills and agency to the dumpster fire.

@mntmn Thank you for your inspiring words. Happy to not feel alone indeed.

@mntmn thank you <3

@mntmn We are not allowed to vibe code at work and I am so happy that my employer forbids it.

Thank you that you are not using llms for your code.

Are you using treesitter with eglot together?

Fluchtkapsel Mar 4

@mntmn A true manufacturer!

José Manuel (Chema) Solís Mar 4

@mntmn We are the resistance.