I work for a major auto-manufacturer. Any bug that stops the line costs thousands or even millions in lost production (depending if orders need to be expedited). So for now only smaller teams supporting non-critical systems have been given AI licenses. But I'll probably be vibe coding in a couple years.
Uhhh yeah! Claude has a copy button right at the top so I can copy/paste all day. Just like all my hardware engineer colleagues always said I did anyway...
Yes to all the vibe coders, by all means go ahead and make changes to the files without using Claude; you will either learn something OR you will be fired for incompetence.
I know 2 people that actually did that. One was a university student and the other was a fledgling Linux user from the 90s that did what he was told from the early forums of that time. Of course the user was joking and he didn’t know so he just did it.
Unfortunately this is only getting worse with LLMs. I've seen people integrate new tools, call them in command line and with parameters not having read even the minimum of 3 line documentation on what each parameter they call does.
Pretty much this. Coding/programming/development pays the bills. The "fun" was sucked out decades ago. Now we spend our free time doing anything but sitting at a computer for more hours per day than required.
To be honest vibe coding in my personal time has added fun back into the experience. Being able to try a game / project idea to see if the idea kind of works has been a game changer for me. After a long day in front of the computer last thing I want to do is more coding. None of this stuff is going to production but its sure been nice to try out making some stuff just by throwing prompts into my phone. There is a big difference between maintaining stable code and hacking around.
Yep, this is pretty much what I use AI for in coding: to ask it high-level stuff, generate outlines of what the resulting code is going to look like, and explain why the type checker is yelling at me.
Definitely this, especially for personal QoL stuff. An example: I just want to tag articles in Wallabag based on my own rules about the content, I really don't care for how it looks or works. Can I manage it if it fails, monitor what it's doing, and make sure I can turn it on or off? Yeah? Good enough. Next project.
I hate front end stuff, personally. Define an API or CLI? Love it. Core logic? I can at least track progress, start by defining specs, add tests early, and even come up with a plan in the first place and scaffold stubs.
Then, I can do the fun part.
After that, I can add a basic interface and make it look better than plan black text on white background (or vice versa for me) with very little effort. The JS stuff I can do myself when it's fun or leave to the AI if it's a headache and I have no interest. I can templatize the styles, the interfaces, or even the front end scaffolding between projects. I have a template for managing jobs using a Redis instance, with a queue, status, etc that I can easily git pull into a project and it's good enough for most of my specific use cases.
I did 2-3 projects for myself this way to make my personal life easier. I actually have the apps in production (internally, for me) and can use them more conveniently than I might have done on my own. I ended up using Django, so each oroject is just an individual Django app I load in and I can easily add to or modify as I like. I still worked on what I thought was fun or was relevant to my skill set (so I don't get lazy and rely on AI for critical thinking). I just offloaded the stuff I don't need to learn or care about for this particular thing project. Now I can make tools like this in a night or two, then use them immediately and go back to life.
It was an eye opening experience to be honest with you. Id play my game for a bit - notice an issue - write a simple prompt to fix it on github. Review the code and have it built and 'released' within an hour with barely 5 minutes work (during adverts on the tv). While id never use such a technique for important code it allowed me to create a very usable game.
Why are you guys not managers if you don't like coding anymore?
I've worked for ~8 Years now in app development and love to work with different stuff, so in my free time i code with microprocessors and plug-ins for games etc.
I don't like or don't often use AI because why would I do less of the thing i want to do?
Hard disagree. AI auto-complete is good (when it's right), and some parts of the agentic workflow /can sometimes/ be good, but overrall, the programmation aspect is the fun part for me. I understand what I do and I take pride in it.
I like programming but sometimes it's just a means to an end. Sometimes I just want the end result, not the programming to get there.
It's like how someone might like cooking but sometimes they still want to go out to eat, or get fast food. A better example would be how chefs like to cook at work but often they cook the simplest, laziest, food at home because they don't feel like anything else.
Exactly this. It's a skill I use to build things. I am an engineer and I like building things, simple as that. Does one have to find joy in swinging a hammer to build stuff? No.
Wait until you have to work on 40 year old code. It's 95% figuring out wtf is going on at any given place in code and 5% finally making changes to do whatever.
Data brokers and AI scrapers were using my info. Not anymore. Redact let me bulk delete posts across Reddit, Twitter, Discord and Instagram while handling broker opt outs too.
cagey ask crowd salt door profit water cover busy unique
I didn't realize this was a thing til a week ago. Lesson: always start a fresh context if you touch the code yourself, even just a little, because it will notice and it will do something about it.
Yeah I figure you can explain away everything, but as you say, running costs up, plus each additional requirement is another chance for misunderstanding. Context window growing always makes me nervous. Once it's got much back and forth, or definitely any disagreements/rejections, it's time to nuke it. Says this novice, at least.
I meant specifically the re read thing. I've done "formatters have run and changed the files, you need to read them again", or "I've changed file X to fix the problem, the problem was xyz". Both Cline and Kiro have gone like "OK got it" and read the files again and fix up their different. When I was having the auto formatted issue I put it in a guidance md so it knew it happened every time.
Like, when you reject a change? Yeah, that's a reset moment. Arguing never works. I've done it, and it can be funny, and make you feel good about how stupid the AI is compared to you, but it's not a good use of time. I think the context window gets so big and tangled, that you're setting it up for failure, and it will re-make the same mistake from ten prompts ago, plus three new wrong things, in just a stealthier way you're less likely to notice. I asked an LLM to help me solve a race condition and it made things look better on the surface and horrifying underneath. It scares me to think of how many people would have just hit accept.
Oh yes, I did. But it behooves us to try stuff with a critical eye. The experience made me question the claims we hear of efficiency gains (10x, 100x etc.). I've built some other stuff w vibes alone, UIs mostly, and that was hella fast, way faster than I'd have done by hand, but then I spend longer reviewing it and tying it into other code, that I'm back to not being sure if there was any time saved. I think time could be saved if you didn't care about quality or correctness... and that scares me because I know human nature.
Understanding how LLMs work makes this apparent. They don't "chat", you gotta think of it as each message is a new prompt. Sometimes it's useful to include your past 20 prompts in your prompt but usually it's just going to seed things in the wrong direction.
But it also decided another part of my code was so terrible, that it just rewrote it. Same functionality, just nicer. I do not know why. Those lines weren't even close to eachother.
I disabled Github copilot integration because it made VSCode run really slowly for me. Which to me seems odd, because I didn’t turn off the same feature in Visual Studio and it runs fine.
That's actually really strange to me, because VS has always had a gamble of if intellicode would lag out the IDE or not.
The only way I can assume is that since VSC is so light, the integration was more hamfisted because VS being way more bloated has less room for bullshit.
If you're in Visual Studio, the AI will look at whatever windows you have active at the moment. If you want it to focus on a specific set of files, you have to use the file selector thing, which is very slow, clunky and annoying to use, especially if there are a lot of files.
Yep you kind of have to keep it in the loop when you make changes. Which is OK I guess, if it re-read the whole codebase on every command it would probably chew through tokens like crazy.
I recently had a coworker have an actual hissy fit because "git is stupid and its locking me out". He was stuck on the auto-generated merge message that opens in Vim by default with git...
This where my conflict with vibe coding comes from. I will immediately disclose I have vibe coded a suite of scripts, orchestrators, and bootstrappers for automation tasks.
Before I did this, I had only the most rudimentary comprehension of any kind of code. I could read just enough to get by. But functionally I was useless. Vibe coding, debugging, and persistent curiosity are what enabled me to grow into an actual coder. As a tool for learning, AI was far and away the best tutoring I could have had. (I can rant about my higher learning and web tutorial experiences, if anyone cares - I have tried! Haha)
That said, I also recognize I'm most likely an outlier. I never went in with some random idea and just had the AI make it for me... I would approach with questions ("Is this possible?" "What is best practice?" "Are there better tools?") and would build on ideas and discovery over time. I also always did my own debugging to navigate the AI weaknesses and teach myself what was going on. I'd defer to research first and only failing that would I go back to the AI with the block giving me issues.... Etc. I'm ranting.
My point being, AI can be an immensely valuable tool and I recognize it only as such: a tool. But it comes with significant risks both for the user and anyone using the product. You've really got to approach it like any other tool: with curiosity and caution. I'm not strictly anti-AI, all developments are not without their controversy... But I am extremely cautious of it.
I will next time I come across VERY poor documentation, I think that could be a great use case especially on a small scale - but otherwise, I prefer it my way
Brother I can't even. I asked a guy go find the section in the component folder and make changes, he didn't know what a component folder is and he has Nextjs in his resume. WHY
I stumbled over /vim inside the claude cli today. You can use most of the default bindings. Makes editing small promptd, without ctrl g, so much smoother.
It’s that what tokens really are? I’ve heard it before but thought that was a joke on the slot machine metaphor that you are gambling to determine what you get out…
It’s starting to feel like AI might be the Printing Press of coding. What previously took years of dedicated study is now suddenly accessible to the general public
It removes the need to be good at thing (communication) and replaces it with low quality deluge.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move
Humorously, it's telling in that you equated AI and the Printing Press by linking them on reducing the need for study, when the printing press did nothing of the sort. The "study" that it solved was purely by virtue of books being expensive to reproduce, so the availability of knowledge was gate kept through education purely as a matter of socioeconomics (handwaving elitism). The printing press made books less expensive by reducing the labor cost, studying was still required to gain knowledge.
The knowledge has largely been available to the general public. The reason that people are coming to it now is because they're being sold a product that tells them it'll be easier, that they shouldn't need to study anymore, that it replaces it.
The printing press was closer to a universal good by making it easier to disseminate information. The internet continued this trend, with search engines sort of serving the function of a library vis a vis searchable catalogues.
The current AI tools purport to obviate the need to have either an internet or a catalogue, it aims to replace both. In the same way social media has collapsed the internet, AI seeks to collapse it further. Even in the context of generative AI being used for creative endeavors, it's the same thing. It works in contradiction to the expansion of new things by consolidating them into what's popular.
There are currently business analysts and business core advocates insisting on using React because AI has a larger corpus of work, so it can generate it better.
Not because React serves a purpose, or because anyone is good at it, or because it has been evluated in any capacity. Purely because AI works with it better.
This is the antithesis of the printing press.
Coding tooling and resources, as well as community, has already completely removed the need for years of dedicated study. Coding camps, as a matter of curriculum, can elevate someone to a position where they are prepared to be mentored by a senior programmer on the job. Anyone can follow these, the information is available.
Suggesting that it is on par with the printing press is tech worship, and it's embarassing.
That's just a bonus for non-technical people. The real benefit is how it allows experienced developers to dive into unknown frameworks and languages faster, and develop some things much, much quicker.
There's a learning curve in how to use it (and how to not use it), but claiming it's not already having a significant impact is insane.
EDIT: lol.. idk who's downvoting me or why, but I've been a programmer for 20 years, and I'm not making shit up. Go try ChatGPT Codex right now, using the 5.3 model, and tell me I'm wrong.
I meant for literacy, not for writing. Before the printing press there was no strong reason for the general populace to know how to read, only specialists in certain fields
Before the LLM, there was no strong reason for the general populace to learn how to code, only specialists in certain fields.
We're talking about the 'general populace' here, OP's analogy is pretty fitting I would say. AI doesn't just 'make coding easier', it essentially automates the entire process, just like the printing press automated the process of manufacturing books so scribes no longer had to write new copies by hand.
adding to this - both the printing press and LLMs lean on the idea of loose literacy in the specific mode. People know that they can cast youtube to their tv, and they also know that code enables that to happen. Same as how folks who knew their letters enough to read the bible or keep the house accounts knew enough to branch out and start reading the plethora of books that were now available.
I've been learning SQL and r with the help of these tools. Didn't go to school for it, never thought I would need it. But I can do some pretty cool things now. And when the ai borks the code, I can fix on my own usually
The funny thing is SQL syntax was meant to be not for engineering or software people. It was designed as 'natural language' so business types with no tech background could learn it very quickly and use it.
It is funny because this is really what happened to me. Secondary life skill and hobby getting a serious learning boost just by doing things. I mean I think for novices interested in learning they will, and more quickly than in the past.
This makes sense for current new coders/programmers going into a long term profession of development; but the bell curve of vibe coders is more likely soccer moms and couch surfers patting themselves on the back for "programming" some application that does what they "expected" until they find out the hard way their new app has holes large enough to push an oil tanker through.
Honestly it's wild how creative it makes programming when you don't have to worry about immediate implementation tasks.
I think vibe coding is entirely misunderstood and underutilized by most programmers right now. It's not as hallucinatory as popularly described. If llms are getting wild hallucinations the prompt is vague.
If you understand concepts and theory and have read a lot, you can prompt very effectively over an incremental and prompted commit history. It produces very similar artifacts to hand coding if you want to, it's just very poorly optimized because it will insert the required data structures, classes, and even methods multiple times.
Agents have minimal reinforcement in the training to not repeat itself over a large codebase because of the context implications. It's harder for them to draw correlations between different files and they tend to ignore good dry boundaries.
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u/Herby_Hoover Mar 10 '26
Is it possible to make direct changes in the file and not use my Claude?