If you give it the right task, it’s super helpful. But you can’t ask it to write anything with any real complexity.

Where it thrives is being given pseudo code for something simple and asking for the specific language code for it. Or translate between two languages.

That’s… about it. And even that it fucks up.

I bet it slows down the idiot software developers more than anything.

Everything can be broken into smaller easily defined chunks and for that AI is amazing.

Give me a function in Python that if I provide it a string of XYZ it will provide me an array of ABC.

The trick is knowing how it fits in your larger codebase. That's where your developer skill is. It's no different now than it was when coding was offshored to India. We replaced Ravinder with ChatGPT.

Edit - what I hate about AI is the blatant lying. I asked it for some ServiceNow code Friday and it told me to use the sys_audit_report table which doesn't exist. I told it so and then it gave me the sys_audit table.

The future will be those who are smart enough to know when AI is lying and know how to fix it when it is. Ideally you are using AI for code you can do, you just don't want to. At least that's my experience. In that, it's invaluable.

I work for an adtech company and im pretty much the only developer for the javascript library that runs on client sites and shows our ads. I dont use AI at all because it keeps generating crap

Sure, but it still built out a full-featured webapp, not just a bit of greenfielding here or there.

This was the case a year or two ago but now if you have an MCP server for docs and your project and goals outlined properly it's pretty good.

I actively hate the term "vibe coding." The fact is, while using an LLM for certain tasks is helpful, trying to build out an entire, production-ready application just by prompts is a huge waste of time and is guaranteed to produce garbage code.

At some point, people like your coworker are going to have to look at the code and work on it, and if they don't know what they're doing, they'll fail.

I commend them for giving it a shot, but I also commend them for recognizing it wasn't working.

FreedomAdvocate is right, IMO the best use case of ai is things you have an understanding of, but need some assistance. You need to understand enough to catch atleast impactful errors by the llm

LLMs are very good In the correct context, forcing people to use them for things they are already great at is not the correct context.

From the article: "Even after completing the tasks with AI, the developers believed that they had decreased task times by 20%. But the study found that using AI did the opposite: it increased task completion time by 19%."

I'm not saying you didn't save time, but it's remarkable that the research shows that this perception can be false.

Yeah but I find code generation stuff I've used in the past takes a significant amount of configuration, and will often generate a bunch of code I don't want it to, and not in the way I want it. Many times it's more trouble than it's worth. Having an LLM do it means I don't have to deal with configuring anything and it's generating code for the specific thing I want it to so I can quickly validate it did things right and make any additions I want because it's only generating the thing I'm working on that moment. Also it's the same tool for the various languages I'm using so that adds more convenience.

Yeah if you have your IDE setup with tools to analyze the datasource and does what you want it to do, that may work better for you. But with the number of DBs I deal with, I'd be spending more time setting up code generation than actually writing code.

Not to sound like one of the ads or articles but I vice coded an iOS app in like 6 hours, it's not so complex I don't understand it, it's multifeatured, I learned a LOT and got a useful thing instead of doing a tutorial with sample project. I don't regret having that tool. I do regret the lack of any control and oversight and public ownership of this technology but that's the timeline we're on, let's not pretend it's gay space communism (sigh) but, since AI is probably driving my medical care decisions at the insurance company level, might as well get something to play with.

I...think that's their point. The only reason it seems good is because you're bad and can't spot that is bad, too.

and the only reason it's not slowing you down on other things is that you don't know enough about those other things to recognize all the stuff you need to fix

I think the term pretty accurately describes what is going on: they don't know how to code, but they do know what correct output for a given input looks like, so they iterate with the LLM until they get what they want. The coding here is based on vibes (does the output feel correct?) instead of logic.

I don't think there's any problem with the term, the problem is with what's going on.

Yeah... It's useful for summarizing searches but I'm tempted to disable it in VSCode because it's been getting in the way more than helping lately.

Always keep an open mind. I stuck around in my first job until the sad and pathetic end for everyone, and when I finally did start looking the economy was worse than it had been when the writing was first on the wall.

To be fair, when you're in Gambukistan and you don't even know what languages are spoken, a smart phone can bail you out and get you communicating basic needs much faster and better than waving your hands and speaking English LOUDLY AND S L O W L Y . A good human translator, you can trust, should be better - depending on their grasp of English, but there's another point... who do you choose to pick your hotel for you? Google, or a local kid who spotted you from across the street and ran over to "help you out"? That's a tossup, both are out to make a profit out of you, but which one is likely to hurt you more?

I have to use it for work by mandate, and overall hate it. Sometimes it can speed up certain aspects of development, especially if the domain is new or project is small, but these gains are temporary. They steal time from the learning that I would be doing during development and push that back to later in the process, and they are no where near good enough to make it so that I never have to do the learning at all

That's fair. I guess what I hate is what the term represents, rather than the term itself.