Hacker News Reader

Comment by martinald | Hacker News Reader

That's literally what has been happening forever though. Think how complex the abstractions are from something like SQL to the actual CPU instructions that are being executed on a modern OS.

The thing I'm most excited about with 'vibe coding' isn't really existing software developers making things. It's people with deep domain knowledge who can't program can now build stuff. It's more of an excel replacement imo as it gets into the mainstream.

I am sure that most LLM generated software projects are more easily understood at a code level than the average excel 'megasheet' created by this kind of person, and certainly will be less brittle to a certain degree.

View on HN

I think the problem with vibe coding though is it’s not bi-directional, like if you have deep domain knowledge, unless you know how to code, how do you know that the code it just created actually does what you want it to, especially as it gets more complex and your new code changes old code. You could ask, but the devil is often in the details, especially if your domain is highly technical.

> how do you know that the code it just created actually does what you want it to

I believe that problem can be solved, and will be with the correct new tools.

I think a new type of "low-code" programming language will evolve tailored for domain experts that don't know coding, but understand how to guide an LLM.

The development environment should be a crossover between a project-management tool (Jira or Azure devops style) with literate programming: something that allows organising all the separate parts that compose the program in a way understandable by the human and the AI bot.

Online notebooks are a good first step in that direction, in special the "reactive" kind where the runtime logic does not depend on the order you change things in the page.

Except vibe coding doesn’t work for non-programmers except in the hype propaganda. In reality these tools are only powerful in the hands of real programmers who are able to understand what is being produced and can adapt and maintain it.

To me, it's always wild to see people trying to prove this is "the future" and "no one will ever code again". And then they try to prove it by building a react todo app, something that has been done millions of times and is really just an advanced hello world project...

I've had great success using AI for some tough things, but not on an entire foreign codebase that requires domain knowledge, no matter how constrained my prompts are. As soon as your use-case goes above the average "building a small tool and make it a $4.99 saas startup", AI really only helps you with the exact code to transfer your already pre-planned pseudo-code/behavior.

And even then, you need the knowledge to understand that what the AI merged out of the millions of StackOverflow answers is actually outdated or a hallucinated API function that never existed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com