for whoever needs to hear this: you're not alone.
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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 I feel like we're in a drowning minority
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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 needed to hear this.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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 makes everything you do even more enjoyable for me
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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 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.
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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
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. -
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.
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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 Amen.
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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 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. -
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 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.
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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 you are a treasure.
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@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.
@mntmn And I don't vibe code. But that's because I simply haven't had the time to try it out.
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@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
@budududuroiu Insightful read so far, thanks for recording and sharing it!
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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.
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
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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 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 ?) !
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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 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.
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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 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.
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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.
