Every time I see someone on HN crowing about how great so-called "vibe" coding is, I can't help by think they must be doing the lowest, most basic types of coding.
I don't need AI to help me code. What I need AI to do is help me figure out new coding solutions. But all AI seems able to do is regurgitate things that other people have already done that it's ingested from the internet.
I'll ask AI how to do abc, within xyz parameters, with def available and ghi constraints. I typically get back one of two things:
1. A list of 20 steps to achieve abc that somewhere around the middle has a step that's the equivalent of "Then magic happens" or two to three steps that are entirely unrelated to one other or the project at hand.
2. A list of what should be 20 steps that suddenly ends at step 7, leaving the problem only half done.
Most frustrating is when the "AI" says to use $tool/$library, but $tool/$library is not available on the specified platform, or hasn't been updated since 2011 and no longer works. When I tell the AI this, it always responds with, "You are right, that tool is no longer available. Here's a list of even more broken steps you can take to work around it."
So far, for my coding needs, AI seems only able to regurgitate what's already been done and published by others. That's great, but there are search engines for that. I have novel problems, and until AI can actually live up to the "I" part of its name, it is worthless to me.
In my banking megacorp, despite having officially title of senior sw engineer, coding is maybe 10% of my time spent. And its the best, most creative part I actually enjoy. Why would I give up that? No real velocity gained even if all would be 1 click away in flawless production-ready state.
The real cruft of seniority is: processes, knowing right people and their buttons, politics, being there to fix obscure corner case production issues and so on. How can llm help me with that? It can't.
For code sweatshops they may be a blessing, for corporations drowning in regulations and internal abysmal labyrinths of their IT, not so much.
Lol, are you me? Also a senior developer at a financial institution. I've maybe coded like 1000 lines in the last 2 months. I just got a ticket recently that required code and it felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders to finally be able to put hands to keyboard again.
Dang hello, me too. I recently became tech lead at our fintech co, and the few days a month I get to code is like vacation for my mind. I still remember the good ol' days where nobody talked to me and I solved problems all day long.