this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
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Experienced software developer, here. "AI" is useful to me in some contexts. Specifically when I want to scaffold out a completely new application (so I'm not worried about clobbering existing code) and I don't want to do it by hand, it saves me time.
And... that's about it. It sucks at code review, and will break shit in your repo if you let it.
On that last note, important thing they left out here being general news reporting tech stuff is that this was specifically bug fixing tasks. It can typically only provide the broadest of advice on that, and it’s largely incapable of tackling problems holistically when you often need to be thinking big picture while tackling a bug.
Interesting that the AI devs thought they were being quicker though.
Same. I also like it for basic research and helping with syntax for obscure SQL queries, but coding hasn't worked very well. One of my less technical coworkers tried to vibe code something and it didn't work well. Maybe it would do okay on something routine, but generally speaking it would probably be better to use a library for that anyway.
I actively hate the term "vibe coding." The fact is, while using an LLM for certain tasks is helpful, trying to build out an entire, production-ready application just by prompts is a huge waste of time and is guaranteed to produce garbage code.
At some point, people like your coworker are going to have to look at the code and work on it, and if they don't know what they're doing, they'll fail.
I commend them for giving it a shot, but I also commend them for recognizing it wasn't working.
I think the term pretty accurately describes what is going on: they don't know how to code, but they do know what correct output for a given input looks like, so they iterate with the LLM until they get what they want. The coding here is based on vibes (does the output feel correct?) instead of logic.
I don't think there's any problem with the term, the problem is with what's going on.
That's fair. I guess what I hate is what the term represents, rather than the term itself.
Not a developer per se (mostly virtualization, architecture, and hardware) but AI can get me to 80-90% of a script in no time. The last 10% takes a while but that was going to take a while regardless. So the time savings on that first 90% is awesome. Although it does send me down a really bad path at times. Being experienced enough to know that is very helpful in that I just start over.
In my opinion AI shouldn’t replace coders but it can definitely enhance them if used properly. It’s a tool like everything. I can put a screw in with a hammer but I probably shouldn’t.
Like I said, I do find it useful at times. But not only shouldn't it replace coders, it fundamentally can't. At least, not without a fundamental rearchitecturing of how they work.
The reason it goes down a "really bad path" is that it's basically glorified autocomplete. It doesn't know anything.
On top of that, spoken and written language are very imprecise, and there's no way for an LLM to derive what you really wanted from context clues such as your tone of voice.
Take the phrase "fruit flies like a banana." Am I saying that a piece of fruit might fly in a manner akin to how another piece of fruit, a banana, flies if thrown? Or am I saying that the insect called the fruit fly might like to consume a banana?
It's a humorous line, but my point is serious: We unintentionally speak in ambiguous ways like that all the time. And while we've got brains that can interpret unspoken signals to parse intended meaning from a word or phrase, LLMs don't.
I have limited AI experience, but so far that's what it means to me as well: helpful in very limited circumstances.
Mostly, I find it useful for "speaking new languages" - if I try to use AI to "help" with the stuff I have been doing daily for the past 20 years? Yeah, it's just slowing me down.
and the only reason it's not slowing you down on other things is that you don't know enough about those other things to recognize all the stuff you need to fix
I like the saying that LLMs are good at stuff you don’t know. That’s about it.
FreedomAdvocate is right, IMO the best use case of ai is things you have an understanding of, but need some assistance. You need to understand enough to catch atleast impactful errors by the llm
They're also bad at that though, because if you don't know that stuff then you don't know if what it's telling you is right or wrong.
I...think that's their point. The only reason it seems good is because you're bad and can't spot that is bad, too.
To be fair, when you're in Gambukistan and you don't even know what languages are spoken, a smart phone can bail you out and get you communicating basic needs much faster and better than waving your hands and speaking English LOUDLY AND S L O W L Y . A good human translator, you can trust, should be better - depending on their grasp of English, but there's another point... who do you choose to pick your hotel for you? Google, or a local kid who spotted you from across the street and ran over to "help you out"? That's a tossup, both are out to make a profit out of you, but which one is likely to hurt you more?
Everyone on Lemmy is a software developer.
Sometimes I get an LLM to review a patch series before I send it as a quick once over. I would estimate about 50% of the suggestions are useful and about 10% are based on "misunderstanding". Last week it was suggesting a spelling fix I'd already made because it didn't understand the - in the diff meant I'd changed the line already.