[bluefirebrand]

> but I finally feel like I'm _good_ at programming, which is insane, because I literally haven't written a line of code myself in months

This is exactly the sort of mentality that makes me hate this technology

You finally feel good at programming despite admitting that you aren't actually doing it

Please explain why anyone should take this seriously?

[pdntspa]

Because the programming is and was always a means to an end. Obsessing over the specific mechanical act of programming is taking the forest for the trees.

I agree with gp that the speed in which I am able to execute my vision is exhilarating. It is making me love programming again. My side projects, which have been hanging on the wall for years, are actually getting done. And quickly!

The actual act of keying in code is drudgery for me. I've written so much code in so many languages that it is hard not to hate them all. Why the fuck is it a hash in ruby but a dict in python? How the hell do I get the current unixtime in this language again?!? Why the fuck do I need to learn yet another stupid vocabulary for what is essentially databinding? Who cares, let the AI handle it

[mkehrt]

None of my side projects are things where I want the output. They're all things where I want to write the code myself so I understand it better. AI is antithetical to this.

[dolebirchwood]

I have three side projects that revolve around taking public access data from shitty, barely usable local government websites, and then using that data to build more intuitive and useful UIs around them. They're portfolio pieces, but also a public service. I already know how to build all of these systems manually, but I have better things to do. So, hell yeah I'm just going to prompt my way to output. If the code works, I don't care how it was written, and neither do the members of my community who use my free sites.

[duskdozer]

>If the code works, I don't care how it was written

This doesn't concern you for something you're presenting as a portfolio piece?

[dolebirchwood]

The code is still clean and organized. When I say I don't care "how" the code is written, I mean I don't care how it was generated (i.e., by prompting or by hand -- and I don't do any of it manually anymore). I still care about how it's structured, as a well-structured codebase helps the agents do their job better.

[kowbell]

Perhaps part of their portfolio is the code they've hand written, and part of it is demonstrating they are able to use this new tool to make something that works (despite how imperfect the tool is, as we see so many people point out)

[pdntspa]

All of my side projects scratch an itch, so I do want the output. There are not enough hours in the day for me to make all the things I want to make. Code is just the vessel, and one I am happy to outsource if I can maintain a high standard of work. It's a blessing to finally find a workflow that makes me feel like I have a shot at building most of the things I want to.

[cess11]

Are these things that no one previously built and published, so you can go and take a look at their implementation?

[pdntspa]

Possibly. Mostly?

I wanted a stackable desk tray shelf thing for my desk in literally any size for my clutter. Too lazy to go shopping for one, and couldn't find one on any of the maker sites, so I had claude write me an openSCAD file over lunch break then we iterated on it after-hours. By end of work next day I had three of them sitting on my desk after about 3 hours of back-and-forth the night before (along with about half a dozen tiny prototypes), and thats including the 2hr print time for each shelf.

I want a music metadata tool that is essentially TheGodfather but brought into the modern day and incorporates workflows I wish I had for my DJing and music production. And not some stupid web app, a proper desktop app with a proper windowing toolkit. I'd estimate it would take me 12-18 months to get to a beta the old way, to the exclusion of most of my other hobbies and projects, instead first Gemini then Claude and I managed to get a pretty nice alpha out in a few months over the summer while I was unemployed. There's still a lot left I want to add but it already replaced several apps in my music intake workflow. I've had a number of successful DJ gigs making use of the music that I run through this app. Funny enough the skills I learned on that project landed me a pretty great gig that lets me do essentially the same thing, at the same pace, for more pay than I've ever made in my SWE career to-date.

A bunch of features for my website, a hand-coded Rails app I wrote a few years ago, went from my TODO pile to deployment in just a couple of hours. Not to mention it handled upgrading Ruby and Rails and ported the whole deployment to docker in an afternoon, which made it easy to migrate to a $3 VPS fronted by cloudflare.

I have a ton of ideas for games and multimedia type apps that I would never be able to work on at an acceptable pace and also earn the living that lets me afford these tools in the first place. Most of those ideas are unlike any game I've ever seen or played. I'm not yet ready to start on these yet but when/if I do I expect development to proceed at a comfortably brisk pace. The possibilities for Claude + Unreal + the years and years of free assets I've collected from Epic's Unreal store are exciting! And I haven't even gotten into having AI generate game assets.

So idunno, does that count?

[tovej]

Would you share the music app? Do you have a public repo or demo somewhere?

You didn't really describe it very much, so it's hard to say what it actually does. I'm interested in evaluating the quality of vibecoded projects people actually use.

[cess11]

Yeah, sure.

[hk__2]

All my side projects exist to solve a problem.

[hk__2]

> The actual act of keying in code is drudgery for me. I've written so much code in so many languages that it is hard not to hate them all. Why the fuck is it a hash in ruby but a dict in python? How the hell do I get the current unixtime in this language again?!? Why the fuck do I need to learn yet another stupid vocabulary for what is essentially databinding?

These are the downsides, but there are also upsides like in human languages: “wow I can express this complex idea with just these three words? I never though about that!”. Try a new programming paradigm and that opens your mind and changes your way of programming in _any_ language forever.

[beepbooptheory]

"I really really love cooking. In fact, I have optimized my cooking completely, I go out to restaurants every night!"

I believe gp and others just like food instead of cooking. Which is fine, but if that's the case, why go around telling everyone you're a cook?

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

But are you doing real food preparation unless you are hunting and dressing the animals and foraging for your own food?

[r-w]

Yes. You are doing any of the work yourself rather than instructing someone else on how to do it.

[sebzim4500]

You are doing something, but 99% of the work has been done for you. I guess it's like vibe coding and telling the model to fix issues when you see them.

[dorkrawk]

I like making pizza ( https://dinosaurseateverybody.com/blog/making-pizza )...

[beepbooptheory]

Ah geeze. I am utterly destroyed by this comment. Will need to sit and think now.

[pdntspa]

"I thought using loops was cheating, so I programmed my own using samples. I thought using samples was cheating, so I recorded real drums. I thought that was cheating, so I learned to play. I thought using purchased drums was cheating, so I made my own. I thought using pre-made skins was cheating, so I killed a goat and skinned it. I thought that was cheating too, so I raised my own goats from birth. I haven't made any music lately, what with the goat farming and all."

[beepbooptheory]

Yeah, yeah we get it. Does anyone have a different response? Or, equally acceptable, can anyone unpack this one and its siblings?

As far as I can tell, my implicit argument doesn't really rest on some kind fallacious threshold on really doing the thing, or not, right? I never said anything about "cheating." I'm just asking why we got a lot chefs who don't wanna cook.

Like would yall be happy if we maybe just come up with a different word? Why do you need to be an AI user and also "programmer"? What about: "no I don't like coding, but I do love generating apps.."?

Like following the (presumed) logic here we should say that all visual artists are just wannabe photographers. Or we'd might discover an abandoned house in the woods and then feel legitimized to say we built it, because really, the end product is the same right?

AI guys, I implore you, the world is literally yours. Mountains will be moved for your cause. You are the winner, the hegemonic force for the forseeable future. Why can't yall just be happy being what you are? Why cling to titles from an obsolete world? Where you really want to be "programmer" and "artist"? These things have nothing for you, if you believe in this radically different future so much, why even be concerned as being the same kinds of things as us dumb luddites?

I think you should just use your agential blahblah to start a one-person B2B SaaS, make a lot of money, and move on. At no point will it matter what you called yourself!

[bigstrat2003]

> Because the programming is and was always a means to an end.

No. Programming is a specific act (writing code), and that act is also a means to an end. But getting to the goal does not mean you did programming. Saying "I'm good at programming" when you are just using LLMs to generate code for you is like saying "I'm good at driving" when you only ever take an Uber and don't ever drive yourself. It's complete nonsense. If you aren't programming (as the OP clearly said he isn't), then you can't be good at programming because you aren't doing it.

[NewsaHackO]

I guess I agree with you, but I think the GP may have mispoke and meant he loves building software. It's sort of like the difference between knitting and making clothes. The GP likely loves making clothes on an abstract basis and realized that he won't have to knit anymore to do so. And he really never liked knitting in the first place, as it was just a means to an end.

[datavalue]

It’s similar to the arrival of mechanized looms in the 19th century. My ancestors were weavers, and automation eventually replaced those jobs. I’ve spent 40 years working in IT as a programmer and am now nearing retirement, so I’ve been fortunate. To me it feels like programming as a skill may not have much time left. Probably how my ancestors felt.

[NewsaHackO]

Yeah, I was reading a little bit about knitting before my post and saw that in 1589, a person who invented a sort of prototype to the automated knitting machine in the UK had his patent application denied by the queen due to taking jobs away from hand knitters. I guess back then they had to be a little more protective because it would be a lot easier for civil unrest to lead to revolution and civil war in postfeudal UK than now.

[munk-a]

Most people who are knitting do it purely for the experience of knitting. If you need clothes it's far more affordable to buy the cheap manufactured stuff. Some people certainly enjoy the creativity of expression and wish they could get to that easier - but most of those people have moved away from manual tasks like knitting and instead just draw or render their imagination. There's genuine value in making things by hand as the process allows us time to study our goal and shape our technique mid-approach. GP may legitimately like knitting more than making clothes.

[NewsaHackO]

I think you misunderstood my post. Now many people do knitting for the joy of knitting, but people used to knit to create clothing to wear or to sell. Of course, automated knitting machines have largely replaced hand knitting, and people now still do it. If you are very good at hand knitting, you might see if you can sell some work. However, if you want to make knitted clothing at scale, you would be better served taking a high-level approach to the actual design of the clothing and learning how to prompt the automated knitting machine to do so instead of optimizing for how you yourself would hand knit it.

[munk-a]

That would be a maximally economically efficient approach to producing knit clothes - but hand knit clothing still does have a significant market. This year I sought out a cobbler to get a new pair of shoes because my feet are a bit weird and the machine templates for what a foot should look like doesn't produce something I can comfortably wear. If you personally derive value from putting in the manual labor to produce "artisanal" goods in most fields you can find a market willing to pay the premium for your labor. This market is much smaller than the machine-driven equivalent so it can't support nearly the same quantity of producers as the market supported before automation came along but it is a niche you can operate within.

I don't disagree with your main thesis that an automated knitting machine can out produce hand-knit goods but I do think you're under appreciating that there still is a market for the non-automated goods. Even if they can't compete for the majority of the market markets are weird and non-uniform so those skills do still feed into a market.

[pdntspa]

I'm still reading the code, I'm still correcting the LLM's laughably awful architecture and abstractions, and I'm still spending large chunks of time in the design and planning phase with the LLM. The only thing it does is write the code.

But that's not programming because its a natural-language conversation?

[bakugo]

> But that's not programming because its a natural-language conversation?

Correct. Programming is writing code. You are not writing code, therefore you are not programming. I don't understand what's so complicated about this.

[pdntspa]

I'm literally making a program. Present-progressive of the verb to program. I feel like you're pearl-clutching on semantics. By my read, programming != writing code, but writing code is most definitely programming. Oxford defines 'to program' as both.

[bakugo]

You're not making a program. You're managing the AI that is making a program. You're a manager, maybe a designer or architect too, but not a programmer.

These are well defined roles that existed well before AI. You don't get to redefine them just because you feel like you should get to be part of some imaginary "programmers' club" without doing the actual thing that defines the "programmer" role.

[000ooo000]

No sane person would argue Person A is a concreter if Person A is telling Person B to do concreting and Person B does the concreting. Doesn't matter if Person A had elaborate plans for the concrete, or if Person A owns the concrete afterwards. These are long-established ideas. You can twist it and argue "semantics!" all you want but it will never take with anyone but the Person A's.

[californical]

I mean, yes - you’re reviewing and architecting, but not creating.

Same as if you use an image diffusion model. You can describe very clearly what you want, and iterate carefully until you get a picture that looks good. But nobody would say that they “drew a nice picture”, since they haven’t done any drawing.

(except maybe the mega-power-users who use the tool and have a warped view of their accomplishment)

[pdntspa]

I'll never say that I wrote the code, because I didn't.

[snackerblues]

>wrote the code

aka programmed.

[bakugo]

Sounds like you just don't like programming. And that's okay! It's okay to not like things.

But "I love programming now that I don't do any programming" is an utterly nonsensical statement. Please stop and reflect over what you said for a moment.

[pdntspa]

Substitute it with "the mechanical act of writing code" and maybe it will make more sense. I have been clumsy with my vocabulary here, forgive me.

[wmeredith]

I think this is a semantics thing. I feel the same way, but I wouldn't say that I feel like I'm good at programming. I'm most certainly not. What I am good at is product design and development, and LLM tech has made it so that I can concentrate on features, business models, and users.

[throwawaytea]

I know how to build a house for the most part. But I don't have time to build a house.

If I get a robot someday and manage it daily before I leave for work to slowly build a house, when it's done, I gotta be honest and admit I'll consider myself a home builder.

Otherwise, who is a home builder? Very few people do every single part themselves, even if they technically could.

[reverius42]

This is like saying you can accomplish a lot "in assembly" if you write C++ instead of hand-writing assembly. I think I agree that similarly to "this is not hand written assembly", for the use of LLMs to generate high level code, "this is not programming" is also true.

It didn't mean we shouldn't use C++ and stop hand-writing (almost all) assembly. I don't think it means we should't use LLMs and stop hand-writing C++ either.

[MattGaiser]

Different definitions of programming.

OP defines it as getting the machine to do as he wants.

You define it as the actual act of writing the detailed instructions.

[bluefirebrand]

It is very difficult to get the machine to do what you want without the detailed instructions

If you have an LLM generate the instructions, then the LLM is programming, you're just a "prompter" or something. Not a programmer

[r-w]

Exactly. There's a probabilistic machine in between you and every instruction that gets executed, without exception. It's straight up different.

[cgg23]

Im concerned that people are debating over this lol.

[thendrill]

I see alot of people get really confused between the act of writing code VS. programming...

Programming is willing the machine to do something... Writing code is just that writing code, yes sometimes you write code to make the machine do something and other times you write code just to write code ( for example refactoring, or splitting logic from presentation etc.)

Think about it like this... Everyone can write words. But writing words does not make you a book writer.

What always gets me is that the act of writing code by itself has no real value. Programming is what solves problems and brings value. Everyone can write code, not everyone can "program"....

[bigstrat2003]

Programming is writing code. There's nothing to confuse because that's what the word means.

[simplyluke]

Is it? I wouldn't consider punch cards writing code but they were certainly programming. Programming is a broader concept than code in a text file.

[ModernMech]

They're saying writing code is programming but not all programming is writing code. What is Scratch?

[r-w]

A graphical means of writing and manipulating a program.

[boc]

Aka Claude Code.

[poszlem]

Why do you feel good about programming despite not writing in machine code?

[bakugo]

False equivalence. x86 assembly is a programming language, C is a programming language, Javascript is a programming language. English is NOT a programming language.

If it was, you wouldn't need "AI" to convert English into a real programming language before that, in turn, can be converted to machine code.

[throwawaytea]

My boss can make people do countless things in the proper order, with just a few words. Sounds like a programming language to me.

[jlarcombe]

I enjoyed that too when I was a youngster but there are good reasons why it is impractical for day to day work.

[orsorna]

Well for one, programming actually sucks. Punching cards sucks. Copywriting sucks. Why? Well, implementation for the sake of implementation is nothing more than self-gratifying, and sole focus on it is an academic pursuit. The classic debate of which programming language is better is an argument of the best way to translate human ideas of logic into something that works. Sure programming is fun but I don't want to do it. What I do want to do is transform data or information into other kinds of information, and computing is a very, very convenient platform to do so, and programming allows manipulation of a substrate to perform such transformations.

I agree with OP because the journey itself rarely helps you focus on system architecture, deliverable products and how your downstream consumers use your product. And not just product in the commercial sense, but FOSS stuff or shareware I slap together because I want to share a solution to a problem with other people.

The gambling fallacy is tiresome as someone who, at least I believe, can question the bullshit models try to do sometimes. It is very much gambling for CEOs, idea men who do not have a technical floor to question model outputs.

If LLMs were /slow/ at getting a working product together combined with my human judgement, I wouldn't use them.

So, when I encounter someone who doesn't pin value into building something that performs useful work, only the actual journey of it, regardless of usefulness of said work, I take them as seriously as an old man playing with hobby trains. Not to disparage hobby trains, because model trains are awesome, but they are hubris.

[munk-a]

> Well for one, programming actually sucks. Punching cards sucks. Copywriting sucks.

There's a significant difference between past software advancements and this one. When we previously reduced the manual work when developing software it was empowering the language we were defining our logic within so that each statement from a developer covered more conceptual ground and fewer statements were required to solve our problems. This meant that software was composed of fewer and more significant statements that individually carried more weight.

The LLM revolution has actually increased code bloat at the level humans are (probably, get to that in a moment) meant to interact with it. It is harder to comprehend code written today than code written in 2019 and that's an extremely dangerous direction to move in. To that earlier marker - it may be that we're thinking about code wrong now and that software, as we're meant to read it, exists at the prompt level. Maybe we shouldn't read or test the actual output but instead read and test the prompts used to generate that output - that'd be more in line with previous software advancements and it would present an astounding leap forward in clarity. My concern with that line of thinking is that LLMs (at least the ones we're using right now for software dev) are intentionally non-deterministic so a prompt evaluated multiple times won't resolve to the same output. If we pushed in this direction for deterministic prompt evaluation then I think we could really achieve a new safe level of programming - but that doesn't seem to be anyone's goal - and if we don't push in that direction then prompts are a way to efficiently generate large amounts of unmaintained, mysterious and untested software that won't cause problems immediately... but absolutely does cause problems in a year or two when we need to revise the logic.

[pton_xd]

> Well for one, programming actually sucks.

I'll never understand those in a field who hate the day-to-day details of their job. You're intelligent, why not do something you actually enjoy engaging with?

Maybe now with the advancement of the field you're finally enjoying yourself, but why were you subjecting yourself to daily misery for so long in the first place? I don't get it.

[orsorna]

Well I just explained what I actually enjoy about programming, which is the results of it. Many jobs have intermediate boring steps that build to something satisfying.

>but why were you subjecting yourself to daily misery for so long in the first place? I don't get it.

It just meant it took a lot longer to build something, to get that satisfaction.

[bluefirebrand]

> Well for one, programming actually sucks

Speak for yourself. Programming is awesome. I love it so much and I hate that AI is taking a huge steaming dump on it

> So, when I encounter someone who doesn't pin value into building something that performs useful work, only the actual journey of it, regardless of usefulness of said work, I take them as seriously as an old man playing with hobby trains

Growing and building rapidly at all costs is the behavior of a cancer cell, not a human

I love model trains

[orsorna]

Your cancer cell analogy is moot unless you paint all AI generated applications to be unusable trash, which is not the case, and I wouldn't describe my own work with it. It's true that standards have dropped to the floor where anyone can "ship" something but doesn't mean it's good. I think I have a better handle on how to steer GenAI versus the average linkedinbro. But the divide between journey and destination is valid, I guess it's something that hasn't been explored until GenAI.