[tovej]

This is different.

Understanding assembly/machine code is optional but helpful. The programming language semantics are enough to reason about what the program is doing. Other tools also help, but are optional for learning how to program.

Using an AI, there is no semantic model that can be used to reason through. You're left without any mental model of the proglblem at all.

[vitally3643]

I've been arguing for years that is isn't optional and treating it like it is is how we ended up with Electron and 400MB JavaScript websites.

When you have no mental model of the machine running your code or what the physical implications of code mean, you fundamentally lack the ability to reason or care about performance. "Works on my machine" is the original vibecoding.

[inigyou]

I take it you listen to Casey Muratori's talks? He talks about this a lot.

[vitally3643]

No, I like to form my own opinions

[tovej]

I mean I don't disagree, but there's still a difference in the kind of disconnect you get. The disconnect is harmful in the high-level language case, but it's dangerous and irresponsible with vibe coding/LLMs.

Also, I would argue that a good enough understanding of computer architecture and a mental model of a process' memory layout gets you there, without knowing how to write assembly. That's still a mental model.

[jnovek]

LLMs these days seem to have no problem using language semantics to conceptualize what’s happening in a program. This is my favorite use of an LLM, “why is this library doing x” and then it digs through the library itself in my venv to find an answer.

[tovej]

That's not what the LLM is doing. It is guessing at what is happening by regurgitating some docs. It's a more expensive web search.

You also don't have a mental model if you need to ask the LLM about it. This is stuff you should be internalizing.

[rmunn]

What I've done is ask the LLM a question like "How do I configure EF Core in this particular way?", then when it tells me the answer, I go and look up that function in the EF Core docs and learn by reading the docs. (Which also tells me whether it's correct or hallucinating; one time the LLM told me "You can do X like this" and the documentation said "We don't yet support doing X, but in a future version you'll be able to do it like this"). Here, I'm using the LLM to compensate for the fact that MSDN search is awful and the bits of info you need are scattered across three different articles, none of which link directly to each other.

[jnovek]

You internalize the inner workings of all the libraries in your venv? Impressive! My current project’s uv.lock has ~60 packages in it already, reading and comprehending those tens to hundreds of thousands of lines of code must be time consuming.

You’re also just confidently wrong about the model reading the code. It quotes file paths and line numbers and I open and read those files at those line numbers. For me, hallucinations are much more frequent when it references the docs rather than code because docs are more subjective than code.

This is a normal thing I’ve been doing since at least December.

I have to ask — do you actually use LLM coding tools? Your knowledge on this topic seems really out-of-date.

[tovej]

The fundamental architecture of LLMs has not changed, so knowledge on that cannot be out of date.

Do I internalize the inner workings of all the libraries? Not unless it's necessary. Sometimes it is. If I want to read the source code of the function I'm calling, I can just do that, my IDE pulls up the file with one key combination.

I'm perfectly capable of reading source code myself, I don't need a non-deterministic filter in between.

[inigyou]

Yep, super-duper-google is an unequivocally good use case for LLMs.