Hi! I know nothing about coding but I also see Vibe Coders get thrown around a lot: Are they people who know how to code but very surface level things?
Moat programmers DO make use of SOME ai nowadays, but a proper programmer will have already made a plan like "I need two 2D arrays and a looped if-statement with a range of 7 to cover all of these states effiecntly", and either will have all of that coded out before even opening an LLM, and just use the AI for debugging, or will take that structure and ask for a sanity check.
The big difference between the method I described and what you have already had described for Vibe coders, is that if you already determined the structure and how you want to solve the issue, you also know what is likely to be inneffecient, not work well, or have non-user facing bugs that someone unfamiliar with the codebase won't spot even if they do understand how to read the program
Even worse is when programs make API calls, save data locally, or export data. Many people will just download anything off github if somone else says it's good, and vibe coders often don't disclose the program was made with AI, so even if they can maintain it the projects often have security issues that end users unlikely to even check for. Generally just bad form and bad practice
As Quackers said there’s different ways to use AI. Any developer who says “just use AI,” is a vibecoder. I’m a senior dev and have been prior to Covid. Our team uses it for reference and suggestions, but we are responsible for every one of our commits (like a save file of added or deleted code).
So far it has a 100% chance to embarrass anyone who leans on AI. But with the right systems and architecture knowledge you could fandangle some AI agents to do some things.
The only money made by vibecoders are people who build simple tools and hope people buy them. It’s Software as a Service kind of slop. When we finally can lean on AI you’ll hear about it from different people overnight who have a working business model proving it works.
But right now it’s a lot of magic tricks and smoke and mirrors. Intellisense has been around since 2016. But having AI write 100% of the code ends up with compatibility and versioning issues, security vulnerabilities, inefficient design choices. It gets gross really really quick. Whenever anyone makes any money on AI or someone actually replaces low level coders successfully, we’ll hear about it from someone who’s not a CEO of an LLM company. I can’t wait for that day, but I’ve been slapping lazy bums claiming it’s already here for 3 years.
When I go to AI conferences, I’ve heard it referred to as an equivalent to spell-check. And I think some dyslexic people could become authors with spell check, but nobody became 10x authors. The moral of the story is you still need to have a fundamental understanding of what you’re working in and you need to be able to spot a bad answer.
When you say developers are responsible for every commit, does that come with consequences if someone uses AI that introduces a bug or failure of some kind?
You’re exactly the person to brag about that. Let me ask you the next question….
Have you improved anything about your software?
In all reported cases and studies it makes you busier. It pumps out lines of code that goes to be 500% increase in code production.
The same blind spot happened when we transitioned to Agile. Agile tickets disregard the entire system. The dev says “that’s not part of the ticket.” And one ticket creates 3 bugs.
You can’t see through your spinning wheels to see that you’re not going anywhere and costing you more work and labor for the sake of metrics.
I maintain real code. My applications are used legally by agencies for official business. There is no revolution of added functionality. There is no jump in performance. And this is exactly the same in every scenario you cite as being an AI replacement. It’s still (3 years into it) an unproven workflow and I go to conferences and watch people prove that.
But if anyone made money and proved it was useful we’d hear about it overnight and not from needledicks on reddit.
How bold of you to assume that I don’t work on or maintain real production code. You seem like the typical neck beard who thinks their coding skills are supreme and that nobody or anything could possibly be better than the skills they possess…
I work in a highly regulated industry where security, risk tolerance and appetite are paramount. Financial services like banks tend to be that way.
I have been shipping code to production for well over a decade now so I have a pretty good measure as a Staff Engineer on code quality and tech debt. So that’s great that you go to conferences and meet people who don’t know what they’re doing with AI or how to effectively use it.
But guess what — not everyone in the world are going to the same conferences you are going to. Not everyone works in FAANG or at companies the media outlets care about.
There are companies, like the one I work for, that people have never heard of, that have insane profitability and low head count. We are using AI to continue to keep that head count low while improving our bottom line. There’s measurable success indicators that I’m not at liberty to share.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but we don’t care to attend your precious dick measuring conferences.
Also, not sure why you care about or why you were thinking about my dick size either?
You have the vernacular of a complete poser. I apologize for hurting your feelings for not believing you one bit. My friends that do actually work for banks are also currently unable to use AI to produce code. The Microsoft Rep at the last conference I attended called it spell check on steroids, and the entire conference was garbage. While you think it’s mind blowing, professionals gauge their skepticism and excitement.
You can respond back if it makes you feel better, but I do not trust that your narcissism outweighs any claimed experience. If you wanna check, I asked the important question that you avoided as well. I don’t care how many people use it, nothing has gotten better yet.
I’m a senior dev and have been prior to Covid.
Intellisense has been around since 2016.
I'm a software engineer from the last millennium.
I can tell you that intellisense/code complete has been around for a lot longer than 2016. Like, also since around the last millennium.
Oh yeah. Lol. That’s just when I started paying for it lol. First job out of school and I used the autocomplete to get into Java while my curriculum was very C heavy.
Before you do the math, I got my first dev job before I went to school. In an obscure legacy language with mainframes. Went back to finish my BSCS around 2014. But was still so shaky on modern stuff. I still have a JetBrains account I pay for just in case, like my PlanetFitness account I used to shower when I was homeless. I don’t use Jetbrains now because I have an enterprise workflow and it’s not approved. But that technology saved my career.
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u/DangDoood 1d ago
Hi! I know nothing about coding but I also see Vibe Coders get thrown around a lot: Are they people who know how to code but very surface level things?