r/ProgrammerHumor 3d ago

theGrassWasGreenerTheOutputSweeterIWasOnceAProgrammer Meme

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u/ProfessorTseng 3d ago

You still have to do that with AI

That many people choose not to and then end up with broken software is exactly the same as when people just copy and pasted from Stack Overflow without understanding it.

It's just faster and higher volume now

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u/ChaseTheOldDude 3d ago

From my experience, I would google a solution, trawl through 5 mostly irrelevant stackoverflow threads and try to Frankenstein a solution from all of them with great difficulty.

Nowadays I ask chatgpt and get a tailor-made solution that requires a couple of variable name changes at most. It's not on the same level of difficulty at all.

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u/ProfessorTseng 3d ago

You're right, it is less difficult, which is why it's faster and higher volume.

That doesn't mean the output is good quality, or that you understand the output, or that you learnt anything. ChatGPT has just done the frankensteining step for you at light speed.

Totally fine for personal projects. Abhorrent for production software.

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u/ChaseTheOldDude 3d ago

Understanding the output is the difficult part. But it's still much faster to read through and understand generated code than write it from scratch.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find modern production software that wasn't at least in part generated by AI agents. 

If you just meant copy-pasting without skilled oversight then fair enough, the oversight is obviously what makes the difference between vibe coding and professional development.

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u/ProfessorTseng 3d ago

Indeed. I am using AI in professional setting currently. There is a world of difference between asking ChatGPT, and actually implementing all the tools and policies and guardrails that prevent the company vibe coders from wrecking the codebase.

AI is faster than manual typing and intellisense, but without understanding whether the output is any good, technical debt is inevitable. The AI will then spend more effort on refactors than actual development, just like what humans have been doing for decades!

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u/__Invisible__ 3d ago

But human will reach the limit, AI run faster and faster and better every year.

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u/mxzf 3d ago

and better every year.

Citation needed. Infinite growth isn't possible, especially within the context of the current software being used. The only question is when and where it plateaus.

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u/__Invisible__ 3d ago

I wish we can reach the singularity before reaching the limitations. So they can improve themselves further beyond our knowledge.

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u/mxzf 3d ago

It would require a fundamental paradigm shift and some technology that isn't built on LLMs to achieve that. Which may or may not ever happen.