[sho]

There is no longer, in my opinion, any scope for reasonable debate that AI models like Fable 5 are net productivity increases for many, if not most, if not ALL, programming tasks. Anyone can, or should be able to, prove this to themselves in about 5 minutes.

And so if someone like the author is trying to argue the contrary, that leads me to believe they either: (1) have not bothered to spend even 5 minutes validating their belief or (2) do not care to test their beliefs against reality, for whatever reason. Either one is a bit of a red flag.

[krupan]

I just attempted to verify this myself, but they want my hard earned dollars first. I didn't see any satisfaction guarantee or anything. That already feels like a scam.

[sho]

You know, if I held an important opinion about something, and there was a fairly easy way to conclusively validate or falsify it one way or the other, and all it was going to take was a couple of bucks, I'd just pay it. Having good info about the world I live in is important to me.

Just saying.

[krupan]

So you'll buy the supplements I'm selling? They'll cure everything that ails you, I promise ;-)

[sho]

Let's try another tack. What would it take to change your mind?

[CollinEMac]

It's pre-Fable 5 but they did site a real study.

[eudamoniac]

Why do you think so many people who have used the same models you do, who are otherwise intelligent, and who should be able to prove to themselves your position in five minutes, don't?

I'm somewhat agnostic about the whole thing, and I find the utter confidence you display strange and arrogant. Some really good devs say AI is not that great. Some other really good devs say it is great. Why is one side of them automatically delusional? Could they know something you don't?

[sho]

> Why is one side of them automatically delusional? Could they know something you don't?

I wrote and deleted a couple of answers to this - they didn't satisfy, so I'll just be honest.

No, they don't know anything I don't know. There's now only one reason for denying that AI is helpful in software engineering, and that is emotional, be it fear of change or cultural point-scoring.

The only honest answer to the question, "Is modern frontier AI helpful in most software engineering?" is "Yes, of course it is." Anyone answering differently than that is, by now, simply wrong. Why they are wrong may vary, but they are wrong.

[eudamoniac]

I disagree and I think the distinction is what we mean by "helpful in software engineering".

Is Fable helpful in that it can write some code that does what I told it to do? Yes, obviously. I don't think anyone is arguing that, because it's trivial to see that if you tell a frontier model to do a coding task, it usually does it well enough.

Is Fable helpful in that over the span of six months of using it, the codebase and my brain's relation to it is in a better state than if I had not used it? Well, I don't know. In this case I understand the code less, and the code is probably in a poor state, but it is further along in the feature list. Whether that tradeoff is a net benefit to whatever metric you care about is debatable.

I think most will agree that the extreme case in which you understand zero and the codebase is spaghetti (true vibecoding), but it has a bunch of features, is not good for most professional contexts, because we have seen this results in a high bugrate and eventual loss of trust in the tool and inability for the AI to maintain invariants due to context size.

So somewhere on the spectrum between no-AI and vibecoding is probably ideal. Where on the spectrum is the argument, and everyone is going to have their own opinions based on their own domains. I don't see this as anyone being wrong or emotional.

[sho]

> it's trivial to see that if you tell a frontier model to do a coding task, it usually does it well enough

So you do not disagree? You agree 100%? Yes, it is trivial to see. Hence my near-anaphylactic reaction to articles like this, which specifically claim that it is NOT useful. Do you just mentally filter that out or something?

> Is [..] the codebase and my brain's relation to it is in a better state than if I had not used it?

But now this is a different question. It will not be the same, that's for sure. With new tools we must learn new patterns, new best practises. I have come around to the opinion that we must collectively move to a higher level of abstraction and accept that we will understand the code less - but I don't agree it must necessarily be worse. That will all depend on the new techniques we discover and apply.

> So somewhere on the spectrum between no-AI and vibecoding is probably ideal. Where on the spectrum is the argument, and everyone is going to have their own opinions based on their own domains. I don't see this as anyone being wrong or emotional.

I think that anyone planting a big flag at 0 (no AI) in 2026, with what we have available, is indeed doing it for emotional reasons, and when they claim there's no benefit being anywhere else, they're wrong. Which is what the article we're talking about is doing - hence my, and other's, scathing reaction.

[eudamoniac]

> I think that anyone planting a big flag at 0 (no AI) in 2026, with what we have available, is indeed doing it for emotional reasons

I just think there is a possibility that being on the AI spectrum is not necessarily better than being at 0. Maybe retaining maximal understanding is better in the long run, even better than minimal, supervised AI usage. Productivity in the long run might be better without it, we just don't know.

[sho]

I appreciate your nuanced take, but I think it's implausible that the "correct" balance turns out to be 0. That just defies all reason. We'll learn how to apply the tools in ways that maximize the benefit while minimizing the downsides - as we do with all new technologies. And there is a long, long way still to go in improving the tools themselves - we are not even close to "done" in terms of the AIs themselves. It's impossible they will ever be worse than right now. It's very possible - inevitable, even - they will be much, much better.

It's just not plausible to me that we don't find some way to leverage all that power without fatally undermining everything we're otherwise trying to achieve long-term. It's not plausible to me that skilled, knowledgeable developers like you would ever conclude that AI was never useful, always harmful, and that it is critical to the project's long-term health that you must do this 2,000-file internal refactor entirely by hand.