for whoever needs to hear this: you're not alone.
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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 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?
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@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 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.
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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 Thank you. i'm really disheartened on how many people throw their skills and agency to the dumpster fire.
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T tofticles@helvede.net shared this topic
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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 Thank you for your inspiring words. Happy to not feel alone indeed.
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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 thank you
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@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.
@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.
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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 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?
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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 A true manufacturer!
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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 We are the resistance.
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@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.
@hopeless @nicolaottomano @mntmn Building compilers doesn’t require armies of lowpayed workers writing and reviewing huge amounts of assembler. All the time.
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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@mastodon.social Welcome to the Church of Emacs
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@hopeless @nicolaottomano @mntmn Building compilers doesn’t require armies of lowpayed workers writing and reviewing huge amounts of assembler. All the time.
@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.
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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.
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@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.
@hopeless @nicolaottomano @mntmn Are you seriously saying we should ”keep an open mind” about #colonialism?
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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 we should start a club
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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 because you are fighting with river will flow anyway. It is inevitable in this moment. Point is using it for sunnum bonum. Anything can be good or bad. AI itself replication of human capabilities. Question you should ask is this how is all happening? Where we come from? And interestingly answer was always open still Is. You need to look deeper.
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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 This is the way! Keeping the craft alive!
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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
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@mntmn because you are fighting with river will flow anyway. It is inevitable in this moment. Point is using it for sunnum bonum. Anything can be good or bad. AI itself replication of human capabilities. Question you should ask is this how is all happening? Where we come from? And interestingly answer was always open still Is. You need to look deeper.
@Betelgeus3 @mntmn Resistance is futile you say? I don't want to be a borg. I plan to outlive the bastards.
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@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 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?
