[bambax]

The quote from Douglas Adams is perfectly consistent with using AI for programming. The difficulty of programming, indeed the whole point, is to understand the problem; it's not typing if-then-else cases for the millionth time.

Explaining the problem to an LLM and having it ask pointed questions is helpful IMHO, as well as being able to iterate fast (output new versions fast).

As an example, I'm currently making simple Windows utilities with the help of AI. Parsing config files in C is something the AI does perfectly. But an interesting part of the process is: what should go into a config file, or not, what are the best defaults, what should not be configurable: questions that don't have a perfect answer and that can only be solved by using each program for weeks, on different machines / in different contexts.

[zimpenfish]

> The difficulty of programming, indeed the whole point, is to understand the problem

I'd dispute "the whole point" - there's a whole bunch of problems I can understand but would struggle to implement effectively in code (which is another big point - there's little use in a solution that takes, e.g., two months to calculate last week's numbers when your revenue/profit/planning depends on those numbers.)

At a minimum, for me, the difficulties of programming are many stepped: understanding the problem -> converting that understanding to algorithms/whatnot -> implementing that understanding -> making it efficient (if required) -> verifying the solution.

Trying to boil it down to "ONE COOL TRICK!" that justifies vibe-coding is daft.

[There's also a whole bunch of things I can implement but don't really understand (business logic, sales/tax rules, that kind of thing) but that's why we have project managers, domain experts, etc.]

[anthk]

> is to understand the problem; it's not typing if-then-else cases for the millionth time.

Edit macros and awk+grep solved that.