Every time I see a vibe coder say something along the lines of "if you haven't used these tools over the past five minutes, you don't know what they're capable of, because everything's different now!" I get a little bit perplexed.
You do know that we can see the output without using it ourselves, right? Some of us are still reviewing pull requests and reading through code repositories, y’know?
Replying to @baldur@toot.cafe
I see it every time my coworker sends me an email.
Occasionally there is a gem of useful information buried somewhere among the reams of slop, but it takes so much effort to read it all that I'd probably have been better off not reading it in the first place.
Replying to @argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org
And, well, https://mastodon.sdf.org/@argv_minus_one/117215411079697884 bots are shockingly negligent. Ask them a question about programming, and instead of giving you one straight answer, they give you a dozen wild guesses and expect *you* to figure out which of them—if any—is correct.
I used to be better off with pre-2024 search engines and Stack Overflow, but now both of those things are full of bot-generated spam!
These bots aren't helpful for programmers. These bots are an unmitigated disaster for programmers.
Replying to @argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org
And before anybody says “lol get a real model”, the guy I was talking to in that thread used a real model, and it epically failed too. https://mastodon.sdf.org/@argv_minus_one/117215673653412253
Bots aren't just expensive and proprietary and full of ethical issues. They also don't work as advertised. They're great at generating generic marketing copy and whatnot, but as soon as the bulls**t stops and the actual engineering starts, they fall apart.
Replying to @argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org
@argv_minus_one
@baldur
In my support role, I get support requests "assisted by", and sometimes even fully "agentic" and they are an absolute nightmare to work on.
Issues that aren't real, applied "fixes" that break things, generated fake "sources" for the prior fix or comments.
The back and forth is like communicating while both parties are suffering a watershed stroke.
Replying to @Brett_E_Carlock@mastodon.online
It's not just you, and it's not just software. I've heard of legal filings citing nonexistent case law. At this rate, we're going to be living in a society in which everything is made up, and the very concept of truth no longer exists.
Replying to @argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org
@argv_minus_one
@baldur
I gather that is quite the point and why it is pushed so hard.