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jmward01 | on: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription
Wow. To me the point of code has always been the crazy ideas and playing around. I love to create just for me and every once in a while for others is ok too. If you only think of code as 'a tool to build useful things' and everything else as wasted then sure, this is the philosophy for you. However, creating a bunch of random not going to follow up on it but I explored and played moments seems like a plus and not a negative to me.
mrkeen | parent | next
OP paid a machine to have those moments instead of him.
hparadiz | root | parent
As opposed to the old days when people would just blindly copy/paste random shit from Stackoverflow?

Ya'll need to stop with this cope. It's not a good look.

JoshTriplett | root | parent | next
> As opposed to the old days when people would just blindly copy/paste random shit from Stackoverflow?

Many of the people who are complaining about AI vibecoding today also didn't blindly copy/paste from StackOverflow in the past.

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throwatdem12311 | root | parent | next
Once you reach a certain skill level you really didn’t ever visit SO anymore. I basically just live in Postgres, Redis, Ruby and Rails documentation. Still do.
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michaelchisari | root | parent | next
Anyone worth their salt looked down on copy/paste from Stackoverflow, let alone blindly doing so.

Where does this idea come from that good programmers were ever cool with that?

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Alupis | root | parent | next
I don't think those two things are comparable, really.

With SO copy/paste, you still were undertaking the mental exercise (and reward) of thinking through hard problems, researching solutions, and assembling it yourself.

With AI, you literally outsource most or all of that. The way some people "vibe code", they barely are engaged with any of that process, if at all.

I think about it like I do video games: it's a lot of fun to play them, and while it can be interesting to watch someone else play, it's just not the same.

kerkeslager | root | parent
I started coding before Stack Overflow existed, and those were the days when coding was most fun for me. Learning HyperCard Basic from the manual that came with the computer was so full of joyful moments.

Stack Overflow had it's heyday, but by the time AI came around I already wasn't using it. Stack Overflow for a long time has been inundated with the kind of people who think everything is the XY problem[1], and arrogantly assume they know what your problem is better than you do. Stack Overflow was all-but-useless for at least 5 years before AI broke into the public eye.

[1] https://xyproblem.info/

DJBunnies | parent | next
Playing with legos is fine if you can afford them.
techblueberry | parent
It’s not binary, it’s a plus until it’s not. I agree with the author that the problem is “what happens if code is free” can change the incentives so much you forget why you were there in the first place.

You’re very reasonable response may be “well, why don’t you just do more of what you want to do and less of what you don’t want to do” but that’s not how incentives work.

You could talk about revealed preferences, and how obviously if this person did these things maybe that’s obviously what he wanted to do. And great, feel good about that.

There’s an uncomfortable reality for most of us normies (maybe not popular with the libertarian HN crowd) that an increase in freedom can make it much more difficult to find meaning and purpose. Friction can be good actually.

I do theorize that this is one of the mechanisms by which productivity could be tanked by AI.