[anonymous908213]

> I would never have written my own sorting algorithm to sort a list in the past. I would instead rely on abstractions left for me by those with more experience.

And by doing so, never gain experience of your own. It is a truly alien mindset to me to take pride in never understanding what code does, to be comfortable relying entirely on magic words provided to you by others. For me, the simple existence of a bug in the magic word wasting hours of my time, a failure that is not my fault but a failure for which I bear the negative consequences of, is infuriating enough that I am always compelled to have more understanding and eventually more control of everything I write.

[jerpint]

Author here - I agree that to learn the best thing is to implement and fail along the way. My point was I would never professionally opt to write a sorting algorithm instead of using the builtin sort() most languages come equipped with

[lifetimerubyist]

People get really defensive when I point out that they are proud of the things that they don’t know. Willful ignorance and anti-intellectualism is a cancer in anything it infiltrates and SWE is no different.

[furyofantares]

There was a snarky comment earlier saying, try implementing something that's too hard for you, THEN try going back to writing code by hand - implying agents are indispensable.

And I thought to myself that the most memorable parts of my career, the most rewarding parts, were when I took some task that was too hard for me, then, with great effort, became a developer for whom that task was no longer too hard for me.

[CuriouslyC]

All the times I told someone I could do something I didn't know how to do but believed was possible then had to figure it out filled me with existential dread. There was a good feeling after I succeeded, but I get a good feeling from just building something big and functional with AI, as long as I feel like I was the driving force behind the ideas in the thing, so maybe I don't need the stress?

[bitwize]

That kind of stress is how you grow. It's good for you. None of that stress means no growth.

[CuriouslyC]

There's an inverted U curve with stress benefit, and I think you can still find the optimum by reaching higher on the shoulders of giants.

[bitwize]

Newton studied his forebears and understood their findings before contributing his own. He was stressed with the knowledge of his own ignorance, but then he learned and set himself up to make more profound discoveries. That's what it means to "stand on the shoulders of giants". Not to be a perpetual idea guy, outsource the hard part to someone else's computer with little to no effort or learning on your part, and roll on HN like "bitches mad 'cause I found the royal road to geometry".

[furyofantares]

Yeah, but LLMs are not giants in terms of capabilities (depth). They are medium sized at best, despite being superhuman in other ways (breadth, speed).

You can use these to help you learn but, at least if you're a developer, letting it stunt your growth seems like a mistake.

[eduardogarza]

Why do you sound so petty? Do you understand every single layer of the stack below you? Do you understand how your code gets translated down to C, assembly, machine code? How all that becomes electrical signals on a PCB? How the material properties work at the physical level and how its manufactured? Because if you don't, aren't you, myself and basically everyone relying on the 'magic' words of others?

If you're trying to accomplish X, how much does all this matter directly related to X? There's always infinite number of things to learn about and depth in every dimension. We explore depth where we are each personally curious or where its necessary.

I liked the post. It was short and concise and presents a unique way to view this new coding paradigm.

"If I have seen further than others, it is only because I was standing on the shoulders of giants," Isaac Newton

[vbezhenar]

I don't understand every single layer of the stack below me, but I consider it a weakness, not a strength.

[andy99]

The comparison is false anyway, even if one just understands a high level language, there is no magic, you’re working in a closed system where you can understand and explain what your code is doing. There may be edge case, performance things, etc where understanding at a lower level is important but you can work completely in the abstraction.

Vibe coding, certainly as an “abstraction”, is nothing like that, you’re hoping you can get across the behavior you want, and have no visibility into what choices are actually being made with regard to how it’s specified. It’s the same as being a manager that can’t code, you’re entirely at the mercy of the people doing the actual work. That’s not true when you code without knowing semiconductor physics.

[ggregoryarms]

I suspect Newton is rolling in his grave at your words. Standing on the shoulders of giants also means respecting the giants. That means dedicating time to learning what they have to teach. Not treating them as a black box with no credit or consent, in the name of your own "glory".

[ryan_n]

I dont think parent comment was being petty. Not understanding what agents write, especially in larger and/or more complex code bases is a valid thing to be concerned about. It's not really about understanding assembly or machine code, and I think more about really understanding your code and how things fit together. That way when something goes wrong you have an idea of how to fix it.

"I dont write code anymore I just review what Claude Code writes" is, unfortunately, not a unique way to view coding with agents. About a million people have discussed it like this in the past year or so.

[andrekandre]

  > Do you understand how your code gets translated down to C, assembly, machine code?

yes, actually, and thats why i can debug and fix shit most people cant (and why i get paid what i get paid)

  > How all that becomes electrical signals on a PCB? How the material properties work at the physical level and how its manufactured? 

this is a non-sequitur imo, but you should def be aware of material properties and limitations (for example cpu throttling and bottlenecks caused by manufacturing process/cpu bandwidth or battery limitations help inform what is going on at a high level many times)

  > "If I have seen further than others, it is only because I was standing on the shoulders of giants," Isaac Newton

by standing, he means understanding and building upon what others discovered

[captain_coffee]

Don't waste your time with valid arguments, that guy is somewhere between a troll and a willful ignorant

[purple_turtle]

There is difference in taking pride of not knowing things and considering it as regrettable necessity.

[anonymous908213]

> Do you understand how your code gets translated down to C, assembly, machine code? How all that becomes electrical signals on a PCB? How the material properties work at the physical level and how its manufactured?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and not really but I would absolutely learn about it if I had any ability to control it. As it is, knowing more about material properties would not allow me to improve my programs, and I do not have a hardware foundry so it would not allow me to improve the hardware either. If I happened upon 1 trillion dollars or so, though, I would certainly invest time in learning all of the technical details of hardware manufacturing with the goal of creating a better hardware stack than the ones that we currently have available to us.

I didn't understand nearly as much from the start of my programming journey, of course. But as others mentioned, that was a weakness, not a strength. The lack of understanding bothered me, and I was able to learn all of the things that I did because I was continuously pushing myself to learn and understand more. If I had settled for never trying to understand, to just accept my current knowledge as the limits of my knowledge forevermore, then obviously I never would have been able to. Over months and years, I was able to continuously expand my knowledge little by little until eventually knowing a lot, rather than stagnating in the same place forever. There are still things I don't understand, of course, and my learning journey continues even today.

[captain_coffee]

> Do you understand every single layer of the stack below you?

False comparison. Nice try, though