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"Coding" is Largely "Solved" (raymyers.org)
submitted 6 days ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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“Coding” is an ambiguous term for many tasks and responsibilities. There is no agreed upon boundary at which point it will be “solved”. Consider these three cliches making the rounds now:

  1. Coding is largely solved? (ambiguous point of contention)
  2. Verification is not solved. (consensus)
  3. Maintainability is not solved. (consensus)

I have practical needs and I don’t see them getting met by arguing the semantics of point 1 while we’re suffering from 2 and 3. On a level playing field we might be able to negotiate “coding is solved” into a meaningful conversation, but the funding doesn’t want that, it wants a Superintelligence.

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[–] 0 points 5 days ago (4 children)

Respectfully, your opinions are about 3 months out of date. Astra and Opus 5.5 are really a big step up, and most of the decisions they make are reasonable. They also ask you for decisions quite well.

And you don't really need a "spec". You need to describe in detail what you want, but the flow is more like "I want to make a customer forum. The only supported login email should be a magic email link. Write the server in Go using it's html templating. Keep the CSS simple and only use dependencies when it makes sense. Come up with a plan and let me review it."

Then you just review it, a few more rounds of testing, and boom, job done.

You don't really need to be a skilled programmer to do that.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 days ago (3 children)

    Is the login oidc and pkce compliant? Does it support SSO? Persistent login? Gdpr? How does account recovery go if Google kills a customer account? Does data get linked to crm? Does it scale horizontally? What database does it use? How does it handle attacks and spam? Does it support images? If so, how do you mitigate CSAM? How do you track usage and engagement? How do you get alerted if your forum is down?

    I ask all of this because while AI can build what you describe pretty easily, it's also completely useless from a business perspective. You're right that years ago, you'd have a small team of devs writing this buy something off the shelf.

    But when your C-suite hands you the code and tells you to deploy it, what then? Does it even support admin users and mods or is everyone going to Couchbase to edit the tables directly.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 days ago* (2 children)

    If you need any of those things, you can just ask for it.

    I get that you really don't want it to be true that it works as well as it does. Your job depends on it.

    Mine does too, but I can face the truth even if it is unpleasant.

    Also I wouldn't necessarily have believed it either if I hadn't tried it for myself. I would encourage you to spend a bit of money and a couple of days vibe coding something non-trivial with Opus 5.5. Then at least you'll know what's coming...

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago* (1 child)

    I mean you're right, I don't want it to be true, but also my job is to try to use AI to make my teams more productive. And we've succeeded to a degree. We are getting more done. But it is not ask and thou shalt receive.

    I use AI a lot. Yesterday I gave up and built my own harness because if I don't I'm eventually going to be saddled with the shit my company is trying to make a thing. It was astoundingly easy, though now I'm on the treadmill of "just a few more tweaks...".

    In 8 hours I built the thing while generating about 800 LOC and another 1500 lines of tests in the actual application I'm working on. And I'd say I've largely built "the easy stuff," and the implementation classes are going to be more challenging. I'm pushing as hard as anyone to make AI development actually work — I actually enjoy the challenge and rapid iteration quite a bit. I'm not speaking out of ignorance here.

    I've vibe coded a couple of personal application things. They aren't production-ready business apps, but they do everything I need. And they really were as simple as asking for what I wanted and I can add features about as quickly. It's incredible. But it's not replacing any of my developers yet.

    My only caveat: I really haven't tried Fable due to cost. Anyway, be well, mate. Enjoying the conversation despite disagreeing.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 days ago

    My only caveat: I really haven’t tried Fable due to cost. Anyway, be well, mate. Enjoying the conversation despite disagreeing.

    Well, that's why we're disagreeing 😄

    I agree with everything you've said if you're using models weaker than Fable. The latest models (Astra, Opus 5.5, maybe Argon I haven't used it much) are a significant step up. Way more than the benchmarks suggest. It really is "ask and you shall receive". You might have to ask a few times but still...

    Also caveat on my end: I've only tried vibe coding with Rust, because it's the best language available for humans and AI seems to like it too (lots of static checks). I have no idea the quality of code you'd get in other languages. I would be cautious before having it write C++ for example... though it's probably fine.

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