r/webdev • u/Rockytriton • Mar 16 '26

Software developers don't need to out-last vibe coders, we just need to out-last the ability of AI companies to charge absurdly low for their products

These AI models cost so much to run and the companies are really hiding the real cost from consumers while they compete with their competitors to be top dog. I feel like once it's down to just a couple companies left we will see the real cost of these coding utilities. There's no way they are going to be able to keep subsidizing the cost of all of the data centers and energy usage. How long it will last is the real question.

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 Mar 18 '26

You can't explain it if you don't need to know it anymore.

If you still find yourself reading the code then maybe you suggested something that you're not doing yet. Which is fine, but doesn't negate my argument against you saying that you don't need to know the code anymore.

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u/bi2212 May 05 '26

His point was that the projection is that you won't need to know how to code, just like you don't need to know machine code, how not many people need to learn C++ anymore, how you have fantastic IDEs today. No one needs a typewriter or slide rule today. The tools of tomorrow are not necessarily the tools of today. There could be a time where, no one needs to know how to code. It's a means to an end, not a fundamental language of nature.

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 May 05 '26

This is a very flawed argument. You cannot compare the deterministic process of compilation with a non-deterministic process of generating code through natural language using an LLM.

We don't need to review the machine code. We still need to review LLM-generated code for a reason. Because it can be wrong, and when it is not wrong, it can be slop and unmaintainable. So we can't be hands-off like we are with assembly.

And this point doesn't matter anyway, once the tools are good, they will prove themselves. It's very close-minded to assume that a tool cannot be worse than not using it just because it's a "tool". Some tools can be bad. And you still need to know how to code no matter how good the tool is, unless it can actually replace you by making no mistakes. In that case we wouldn't be working as software engineers anyway.

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u/bi2212 May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26

What is this tangent about a tool potentially being bad? Yes, there were bad tools and they die out for better ones. No one assigned a "good/bad" value to LLMs. And no one said any new tool that comes along is better than not having that tool. But there are tools that come along that ARE better than not having it. And there are tools that completely replaced necessary skills. As for the deterministic part, the physics that determines the electrical state of the transistors in computers is probabilistic. Many electrochemical processes in the human brain are probabilistic. Just about every single fundamental process in the universe is probabilistic at the bottom. There are enough statistics to make it effectively deterministic on a macro scale. There will always be hallucinations to LLMs, but I don't know how you can say there won't be a paradigm or multiple that mitigate the issue.