‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

How to keep enjoying programming in a world of LLMs

352 points · 350 comments · signa11

  1. chicken-stew · · focus · HN ↗
    Not so long ago I read something on HN which resonated with me: we’re moving into the era that is comparable to car mechanics enthusiasts. You have a previous generation of cars where people just enjoy working on with hand tools, and there’s modern cars where people like to tune with software patches.

    From the very start of llms I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with code that was generated for me. Either it’s buggy, it works but I end up losing an evening on some obscure bug, or it’s full of red flags.

    My latest hobby project is just in a text editor with markup and that’s it. I’m also done with the augmented assistance in the IDE. I google things I forgot. I constantly read these amazing stories of people vibe-coding some firmware/driver that just works, and honestly I’m starting to question whether I’m reading the posts of some promotional bot.

    1. user43928 · · focus · HN ↗
      > I constantly read these amazing stories of people vibe-coding some firmware/driver that just works, and honestly I’m starting to question whether I’m reading the posts of some promotional bot.

      No, it just works after a few iterations.

      And you'd know this if you would use AI instead of working in a text editor with markup.

      To each their own, and I understand if working by hand is more fun for you.

      But in my opinion you guys don't get to make strong claims about the quality of works that make heavy use of AI.

      You don't have the experience, and I bet neither does the guy who wrote the article about it being essential to handwrite all the code after planning. The arguments about the environment and sustainability do not seem relevant.

      1. cdelsolar · · focus · HN ↗
        Yeah I don’t understand. This is late 2026. Opus 5.5 can literally build anything I throw at it. We’re still seeing people who have not been satisfied with _any_ AI generated code?
        1. xigoi · · focus · HN ↗
          Sure, they can build “anything”, but the quality is not good. I have recently played a few vibecoded games I found on F-Droid and the implementation sucked.
          1. hombre_fatal · · focus · HN ↗
            LLMs could write perfect code in 2 seconds every time and you'll still be on the hook for figuring out what makes something fun to play and nice to use. In fact maybe even more on the hook since you wouldn't get to procrastinate by working so much on impl details.
Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.