this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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Fuck AI

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skills for rent (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world
 
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[–] redwattlebird@lemmings.world 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is the opposite of that 'teach a man to fish and he'll never grow hungry" etc.

[–] Bearlydave@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day, light him on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

[–] AeonFelis@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

"you'll own nothing and be happy" applies to skills now.

[–] forrcaho@lemmy.world 60 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Having been a coder for decades before AI came on the scene, I don't understand how inexperienced programmers could possibly write a serious amount of working code with AI.

It's wrong, like, at least half the time, but as an experienced coder, I can look at the "code" it generated and know what it was trying to do, and then write it correctly. I do find AI useful when I'm not sure how to go about solving a particular code-related issue, but ... it just gives me something to think about, not an answer I can use directly.

[–] geekgrrl0@lemmy.ca 24 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's like google-coding in 2010; nothing you search for is exactly what you need, but it could help you see why your code isn't working.

[–] iarigby@lemmy.world 25 points 3 days ago (5 children)

I really don’t dig that comparison. When you look up a snippet on stackoverflow, for example, you can immediately see the quality of the answer, as well as feedback from real people

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah like if you start coming across snippets that aren't even properly indented, you know you're digging the real bottom of the barrel (been there while struggling to fix email templating I knew nothing about back in the day). Now, the code you get from the LLM looks totally legitimate to the untrained eye, and it may even generate a convincing explanation.

You won't have any indication when it's dead wrong until you try to run it. And even then, it may be "working" in a way unintended because you don't actually understand what you copy+pasted, because neither does the LLM ofc.

I can't even imagine the spaghetti bowl you can get yourself into if you just keep vibe coding yourself deeper and deeper, while understanding nothing.

The spaghetti bowl is the real problem. You can make something that works, but it's so fragile because the solution is rarely general and never elegant. The snippet might be surprisingly elegant, but it will reimplement the same code 3 different ways in 3 different places and the whole thing turns into a mess

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[–] deeferg@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

I can look at the "code" it generated and know what it was trying to do, and then write it correctly. I do find AI useful when I'm not sure how to go about solving a particular code-related issue, but ... it just gives me something to think about, not an answer I can use directly.

So glad to see others that do that. Still haven't really tried to understand what vibe coding is, as I try and ignore passing terms, but I was starting to think it was just using the AI assistants in any way. I use it in the same way as you and find it perfectly fine for that purpose but I can't imagine using it for anything more.

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[–] 13igTyme@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I had to google Vibe Coding. Seems like it's not actual coding and you'd then have to check the code yourself and at that point why bother? Easier to start with something that makes sense then the understand and fix a cluster fuck.

[–] calcopiritus@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Nah, that would be programming with AI.

In vibe "coding", you ask the AI for the code and just run it. If it doesn't do what you want it to do, you just ask the AI again, or another AI. Ad infinitum.

Check the code yourself? That's like 5th century pleb work, vibe "coders" would be wasting their precious time when they can just ask another AI to do it.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

As usual, people assign conspiratorial motives and strategies to behavior that's really an extremely simple straight line between two points: "AI software has a lower apparent cost than hiring another developer, so let's use AI."

[–] medgremlin@midwest.social 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's very helpful that there are a handful of nonsense phrases that AI has scraped by reading journal articles wrong. They're commonly published in magazine format with a bunch of narrow columns, so there's some gibberish that AI scraped by reading across the page instead of down the columns. I want to make a database of those nonsense phrases so that I can just Ctrl+F in a journal article to see if I should just skip reading it because it's AI garbage.

[–] Rin@lemm.ee 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If you run your AI, point doesn't matter. However, what matters more is the fact that if you don't use a skill, you just straight up lose it and that's what AI is doing to developers. Mfs straight up forget how to write code

[–] olympicyes@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

I learn a lot debugging the code I get from AI, and occasionally, I learn a thing or two.

[–] Lennnny@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I've been using chatgpt to help me build a Bubble website. That is, I am doing all the work, I just bounce questions of how to achieve things and structure conditional statements correctly.

Because I'm basically sanity checking everything it says vs copying blindly, it's interesting to see just how much it gets caught in a loop of misinformation. I'm lucky to be one of those learners who just needs an example, even if it's a shitty one, to figure it out myself, so I often find myself using it simply to see how it's NOT done.

But yeah, I know jack shit about coding but I'm sure AI code sucks ass.

[–] Opisek@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

Good for you to want to learn a new skill and taking things that LLMs spit out with healthy skepticism. I'm afraid future generations will lack such motivation.

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[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 54 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It’s worse than that.

The goal isn’t to sell coding superpowers to programmers. It’s to drive a wedge between employer and employee. Make both of them dependent on an intermediary instead of each other.

Think DoorDash but for coding gigs. You don’t have a job, but a series of push notifications offering a chance to review an 18-line PR for $3.81.

Remember to respond within the next 90 seconds to maintain your priority status, and don’t decline too many offers.

Edit: See also, chickenized reverse-centaurs.

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[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

Really wish they'd be a direct link to the source, not solely a screenshot. Is this the Web?

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 43 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's the same cycle since the '70s. Whether it's COBOL or VB.NET or vibe coding, the premise hasn't changed.

There's three broad categories of code:

  1. Monkey code (random applets that are almost entirely business logic and non-critical)
  2. Actual code (most things)
  3. Crazy shit like kernel or browser code.

I can see vibe coding, situationally, lower the barrier to entry of (1). But also that's no different from COBOL or VB.NET which both promise "MBAs can now write code", which conveniently never extends to maintaining said code. And vibe coding doesn't help with that either, ChatGPT is an awful debugger.

Your boss thinks ChatGPT will help with (2), but it either won't or only very slightly as an advanced autocomplete. For any problem-solving that requires more specific domain knowledge than can automatically find its way into their tiny context windows, LLMs are essentially useless.

.... So I'm not worried. Today's vibe coders are yesterday's script kiddies.

[–] xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 4 days ago (2 children)

the amount of mistakes and and hallucinations ai has makes it actually take longer to code.

it’s the same old garbage in, garbage out….

it can kinda help you get started but that only saves you 10 minutes of reading documentation that you have to read anyway to make sure it didn’t make something up.

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[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 64 points 4 days ago (14 children)

Here's a fun thing. Using the latest AI to code backend and front-end code. Every couple of weeks, have to stop, go through every line and module, and throw out pretty much 90% of the code, manually refactor, and rewrite it.

It offers a good starting point, but the minute things get slightly complicated, you have to step in. I feel bad for people who think this will make it so they don't need experienced developers and architects. They're in for a rough ride.

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 44 points 4 days ago (2 children)

An interesting point I heard the other day: if AI can replace entry level jobs, doing simple scripts that AI can definitely do (because it essentially just spits out the stack overflow/Reddit/etc training data verbatim), then companies no longer need entry level programmers.

If they don't need entry level programmers, how do you get future senior programmers? Skipping directly to advanced stuff without getting practical experience on the simple stuff is incredibly hard.

What happens when the current senior programmers retire in larger numbers, and there's very few replacements because the ladder is gone?

[–] makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world 30 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's a problem for Q72 and they're incapable of looking past Q4. Besides, they'll have already jumped ship by then, what do the execs care if they make this quarter just ever so slightly more profitable

They're incapable of looking past a single quarter, let alone 4.

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[–] not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 days ago

i think the rough ride is a necessary learning experience

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[–] Donkter@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

On the other side, if it's "deskilling" to do vibe coding instead of real coding isn't this person saying that the barrier to entry for coding has been lowered?

Either vibe coding is not effective and is therefore not taking away the skill of coding or it is effective enough to replace aspects of coding that you would otherwise need to develop the skill to do.

Like if I'm an engineer or a real estate agent or a business...dude, and I want to use coding in my field but I don't have the time or desire to start learning a whole skill (anywhere from having children to just learning too many skills already) I assume vibe coding is my best friend.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I think it can do some stuff, especially some entry level tedium.

So far I haven't seen a single success on the specific things I've tried it for, even when pretty short, other than exceedingly trivial things like reminding me whether this language has a join as a string method or as an array method of o don't use it that often.

I do see potential for an awkward gap between unskilled and skilled where an entry level person doesn't have as clear a path to getting actually better. In math this generally happens in school, where they keep students from using the most effective tools until they prove they can do without it. So education might have to go a bit further into programming skills rather than delegating quite so much to the professional workplace that may be less inclined.

[–] centipede_powder@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Im not going to lie, I totally vibe code. Ive been using it to build guis that help speed up repetitive processes. Vibe coding has been helping me learn too code. I think people abuse it for sure. The code still needs to be checked since LLMs are about as trustworthy as Quora.

[–] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I mean it's only a problem depending on the cost of the tools? Renting 4-5k a year worth of tools to make 150k might be ok to some people. While you are at risk of every increasing prices you could just use the time that it's cheap now to when it gets expensive later to educate yourself.

What's the alternative give some college 250k plus crazy interest rates and 4 years of your life?

Just like with all tools blue collar or white they are worth what you can earn from using them.

[–] DicJacobus@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Shitholes rearing their head thr last 5 6 years made a lot of people forget , America is also a massive shithole

[–] andybytes@programming.dev 3 points 2 days ago

Vibe coding is stupid

[–] selkiesidhe@lemm.ee 12 points 3 days ago

Well if it helps for y'all to know, if I can't put my measly webpage making skills to decent use in the course of a weeks time, I'll be buying the services of a freelancer because hoooooly shite am I rusty.

(I need to update my basic website and am terribly lazy. Maybe making some extra cash would make a kid somewhere happy.)

((Don't message me here though I don't check messages))

[–] Notserious@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

You can always tell when your on a new bug when you ask about error “exception when calling…” and AI returns your exact implementation of the error back as a solution.

Not really intelligent

[–] amotio@lemmy.world 26 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I have no idea what vibe coding is, can someone ELI5 it to me?

I have tried AI to get some rough C# for my hobby game but even that was unusable.

[–] Luffy879@lemmy.ml 39 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

Vibe coding is basically having no idea about coding and using the AI to make snippets of Code for you

Like if you want to programm snake, you would prompt it:

  • Tell me what parts of code are required to programm snake in python

then it would tell you like:

  1. you need a programm to make a grid system
  2. you need an array which can go down a tickrate
  3. etc pp

so you tell it like:

  • Generate me code, that does xy
  • Generate me code that takes the input of xy and does z with it

and so forth, then you just paste everything into a txt and ask the AI to debug it for you and hope it works

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[–] elgordino@fedia.io 38 points 4 days ago (12 children)

‘Vibe coding’ is where you code only with prompts and never look at the generated code.

Seems like a great way to create insecure unmaintainable code if you ask me.

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[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 days ago (11 children)

It's not possible to make you unskilled if you're skilled. At worst, you'd get rusty. It is possible that your skills might not be in high demand anymore though.

The only thing that would make programmers not be in demand is if "vibe coding" were truly producing a better product than traditional programming. So far, the only ones making that claim are the ones desperately trying to sell "AI" before the bubble bursts. It's true that there are some companies that really want to believe it. But, companies are always desperately hoping for something that can allow them to fire their expensive workers. It's rare that that works out.

[–] 000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's been aggressively pushed upon new programmers though, a whole generation who might potentially never develop skills to begin with

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