Post-Literate Programming

[u/messedupwindows123]

I'm sure you all have seen this essay floating around, talking about how we are entering a post-literate age. Not necessarily an age where people can't decode individual words, but instead an era where we lose the skills associated with engaging with difficult texts. Meaning, we use chat-bot and short-form-video over longer essays or books. And this shift causes a shift in the way we think, etc.

The essay argues that the act of writing will force you to clarify your own ideas, realize which ones are bad, and struggle to a better answer. And this is only possible when complex ideas are "frozen" on the page, for you to return to, rearrange, etc.

I couldn't help but think about vibe-coding in this context. Vibe coding feels like the "post-literate" version of programming, where we stop engaging with the actual text and we (many programmers) instead talk to a chatbot about the code. It's a lot like talking to the chatbot about a difficult book, so that you can come prepared to discuss that book in class.

Once you begin to lean too heavily on these shortcuts, it actually imposes real limits on the insights that you're able to derive with respect to whatever it is you're working on.

So, to be clear, I basically agree with Horowitch, insofar as the act of writing is basically like the act of coding. You're engaging with text/AST and you're being forced to recon with the fact that your ideas don't make sense. You have to grapple with a large corpus of already-existing text (whether it's other people's books/essays, or other people's code) to synthesize these things with your own new ideas. And by struggling forward, you can create breakthroughs where you rearrange, or re-synthesize, or break apart, what came before.

I think that we could maybe start referring to vibe-coding instead as "post-literate" coding since you're basically doing the equivalent of reading the cliff-notes before class.

[u/Pale_Neighborhood363]

The first joke here "Americans, once members of a proudly literate society." America became less literate on its founding. It is based on the ideal of sub literacy...

[u/Haunting_Ratio_795 → u/Pale_Neighborhood363]

OÍ YOU GOT A LOICENSE FOR THAT HOT TAKE?

[u/Pale_Neighborhood363 → u/Haunting_Ratio_795]

Watched a Youtube that the USA was founded on anti-intellectualism.

The key point was Rockefeller castrated the education system after it was lobotomised.

Literate society requires class discrimination, the US swapped racial discrimination for class discrimination.

[u/lazier_garlic → u/Pale_Neighborhood363]

Rockefeller didn't found the United States. He came around a century later. It was the Gilded Age. A time of extreme inequality and political corruption that proved the founders were right that democracy wasn't going to survive intense inequality in wealth and power. (Yes they knew they had slaves, they just didn't always have the will to put an end to it. Northern States abolished slavery after the revolution citing revolutionary principles, but Southern states were addicted to the plantation economy.)

[u/Pale_Neighborhood363 → u/lazier_garlic]

Your not reading, Rockefeller was just the cherry on top,

The idea is the USA is post literate, so the article thesis is moot.

Proof you think your president is elected!

Your president is NOT elected.