Please wait...
VS Code makes me feel ... old.
When you move through source code that is managed with git, there is a spot on the bottom of the screen that indicates who last modified that line, and when.
I'm hitting lines that were modified decades ago -- 23, 25, years or more. Stuff that hasn't been touched since LoanShark wrote it in 1998, stuff that hasn't been touched since IO ERROR (RIP) wrote it in 1999 ... and even that doesn't cover the first ten years during which we didn't use version control.
There's "git log" ... and then there's "git blame" ... and then there's this. A constant on-screen reminder. Wow.
Not to make fun .. but 25 years ago..some of us were still diapers.
VS Code makes me feel ... old.
When you move through source code that is managed with git, there is a spot on the bottom of the screen that indicates who last modified that line, and when.
I'm hitting lines that were modified decades ago -- 23, 25, years or more. Stuff that hasn't been touched since LoanShark wrote it in 1998, stuff that hasn't been touched since IO ERROR (RIP) wrote it in 1999 ... and even that doesn't cover the first ten years during which we didn't use version control.
There's "git log" ... and then there's "git blame" ... and then there's this. A constant on-screen reminder. Wow.
Not to make fun .. but 25 years ago..some of us were still diapers.
You were a diaper 25 years ago?
Cool. I was a chamois cloth.
lol
Not to make fun .. but 25 years ago..some of us were still diapers.
You were a diaper 25 years ago?
Cool. I was a chamois cloth.
Ruby is another one of those im not fond of. At. All.
Python, for the win.
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2025/09/25/open_source_to_closed_doors/
doh
Not to make fun .. but 25 years ago..some of us were still diapers.
You were a diaper 25 years ago?
Cool. I was a chamois cloth.
Ruby is another one of those im not fond of. At. All.
It made a difference, and DHH is pretty awesome ... but it's not a language I would desire to write anything in.
I agree, Python for the win.
Here's your 100% True Fact of the day.
The phrase "We should rewrite <x> in Rust" literally translates to "I hate <x>, I hate you, and I'm a douchebag, and you should definitely punch me in the face as hard as you can because I deserve it."
I know its not for everyone, and no, it wont beat some of the HUGE commercial models, but Qwen's latest coder model is pretty decent a huge leap in quality from 2.5 , and amazingly its quite fast even on commodity CPUs.. easily 3x speed of other models its size. Not real sure how they pulled that off, but makes it quite usable as a local co-pilot code helper sort of thing.
A quantized version, will run you around 20g. No, not tiny, but not huge either.
Ya i know, i have been stepping away from this stuff for the most part, but i saw the news and all the praise, so i just had to look for myself.
LoL. when i was a kid we called that object orientated programming.. what is old is new again i guess. https://news.mit.edu/2025/mit-researchers-propose-new-model-for-legible-modular-software-1106
I wish I could code. Biden was right. But, as pointed out earlier - 8th grade drop out. Don't have the maths skills.
Subject: I hate that it's called "vibe coding"
Today I wrote the code to handle RFC6532 section 8.6: the addressbook-query REPORT semantics of CardDAV. And I did it in just a couple of hours, with some help from AI. Not just any AI either: Eddie the Shipboard Computer himself, Microsoft Copilot.
"But IG, how could you?!" you say. "Letting a Microsoft product touch your Magnum Opus?"
Yeah, I get it. All other things being equal, that's not how it would go.
But let's be real, here: Microsoft didn't write the brains behind Copilot.
OpenAI did. Microsoft just force-fed it to every corner of their universe.
And although they've tuned it to be a little bit over-eager (that's the Eddie reference) it has become my go-to AI site because they have a very generous free tier. No way am I paying for it: if I wanted to shell out I'd be paying Grok.
So yeah, Microsoft is giving me tools to help write a Microsoft competitor for free. Die, Bill, die.
Anyway, the real focus here is that tonight was a far better experience than anything I've asked a computer to help write or debug before. And the reason is pretty obvious: in this case I was able to give it a specific set of tasks, specific data formats, specific library functions to work with, and I dictated the data model. The ghost of Fred Brooks appeared in the sky and recited his famous quote about how if you define the data model clearly, the code will be obvious.
And that was the big win here. When your data model is so clear that the code "practically writes itself" ... THAT is where the code generator really shines. You can't just open up a window and say "write a carddav server" or "write a game" or any of the myths pushed by the horde of unemployed self-righteous asshats on LinkedIn claim it can do. You still have to design the thing.
You still have to come up with the data model. You still need to figure out how it all fits together and how it's going to work. After you've done the thinky part, and DEFINED it well enough, the computer can automate away the boring bits.
But that's what you should have been doing all along anyway.
Subject: Re: I hate that it's called "vibe coding"
And that was the big win here. When your data model is so clear that
the code "practically writes itself" ... THAT is where the code
generator really shines. You can't just open up a window and say
"write a carddav server" or "write a game" or any of the myths pushed
by the horde of unemployed self-righteous asshats on LinkedIn claim it
can do. You still have to design the thing.
Some friends of mine talked about similar experiences last weekend. If you are in an expendable position as a coder it is a bit scary if you ask me. It was already fucked up to be an expendable junior.
Subject: Re: I hate that it's called "vibe coding"
Since we're on the subject, here's a really weird take I read on it this morning.
[ https://learncodethehardway.com/blog/39-ai-didnt-kill-programming-you-did/ ]
"AI DIDN'T KILL PROGRAMMING; YOU DID."
It's a weird rant that goes on and on about how the corporate machine sucked the life out of the trade long before AI came along.
"AI didn't kill programming. You killed programming decades ago by stripping it of all individuality and curiosity to satisfy the whims of giant corporations. You created universities that taught only one language and trained programmers to never think of programming as personal expression. You turned programming into a sterile profession who's only purpose is making other people money. You even went so far as to hunt down and threaten anyone who dared to disagree with you. You threatened their jobs, their reputations, and their mental health over petty bullshit like an underscore in a variable name."
The big thing about underscores is repeated a lot. I didn't know that was such a sin. Me, I'll continue to use them. I like them. But I guess I'm a real developer and not an expendable coder because I just keep writing code and I don't care.
"And now you think programming is dead? It died years ago. You're just finally smelling the rotting corpse while AI devours the carcass. There it is, on the ground, next to the knee pads and chapstick you use when you clean off Zuck's Gucci slippers with your willing tongue."
I think I'm smelling an agenda here. But I'm not sure where he's going with it, who he's blaming, or who he's trying to defend. Is he making the case that being a "code pounder" for big tech is a dying profession? Because it probably is. But I'd argue that the herd needed to be culled anyway. I'd prefer the trade to be just people who know it, love it, and become great at it, not people who see the paycheck and decide to go for it on that basis.
"You then utilized this learned subservience to convince programmers that it wasn't safe to release their code without a permissive license. This involved false threats of lawsuits, threats that nobody would use their projects, and false claims that it was their duty to society."
I'm starting to wonder whether this person is one of those GNU hippie types who just hates corporations. Maybe he just got downsized out of one and now believes that we all need to go back to the FSF commune.
"The real threat AI poses is to these open source projects and corporations. You see the irony of all your decades of work destroying the humanity in programming is that it's culminated in a tool that frees programmers to do what they want. What these tools also do is make it trivial for individuals to compete with established projects and corporations. We've already seen how Cloudflare quickly replaced Next.js, and this has already started happening with other projects.'
I don't know what to make of this dude. He's the author of several "learn xyz the hard way" courses. He seems to be all over the map. And even after reading this blog post twice I have no idea whose side he is on.
Yeah, that's crap.
AI may not have killed programming in the way the author means, but it killed the programming job market.
Subject: Re: I hate that it's called "vibe coding"
Well then, those people should learn to co... oh, wait.
I have a Google Spreadsheet of all of my records. About 800 of them. About 700 in, I realized it would be good to have a tracklist, so I could say, "Show me what SONGS are on THIS album."
Probably some simple code for most of you. I had a conversation that made me go, "Can Ai write this code for me?"
It can. It can link to Discogs and other sources and it wrote the code for me. I haven't compiled and executed it, and it is probably broke in a way I can't fix... but I think it did MOST of the heavy lifting for me.
It isnt the END of your career - it is another tool. If I could get as far as I did - I suspect you can improve your productivity a couple hundred percent with it - and still be valuable for Q/A purposes. Ai is your new stupid Indian. Politically incorrect, sure - but you know what I mean. And it is cheaper, too. Stop working so hard. Let it do the redundant, mindless coding. Then fix that code so it runs, and profit.
Subject: Re: I hate that it's called "vibe coding"
2026-03-17 17:53 from LoanShark
Subject: Re: I hate that it's called "vibe coding"
Yeah, that's crap.
AI may not have killed programming in the way the author means, but it
killed the programming job market.
Programmers themselves devaluated programming if you ask me.
Most of my non-business friends are software developers or are in roles that require a decent amount of serious programming. A typical subject of conversation in my group is the degradation of software quality - why the fuck is fucking Windows 95 more responsible than modern Windows? Automatic answer is why would any programmer do the job of getting the project done right if they can use some bloated framework that gets the job done within the impossible deadlines expected. So yeah development teams are developing crap and every fucking body knows it.
That said I think the idea that coders are getting replaced is performative. For the most part it looks like people is getting fired due to bad business decisions and then the IT industry is using AI as an excuse for show. All of my IT friends who have been sacked or had to switch jobs as of late were in projects that were doom or missmanaged AI or not AI.
I had Ai tell me how to write a script to import from my Google sheet and parse through discogs to create a new sheet that includes every song on every album I own. About 800. I haven't tried it yet - but the logic looked good. I could NEVER code like this on my own. I speak code like I speak Spanish - I understand the syntax and the grammar enough to be able to parse what is going on as long as it is very basic and formal - but I'm nowhere conversational or fluent. But I think I can make this work.
It may suck for you - who have used your intellect to gatekeep being able to make the PC do what you want it to for a lucrative career since 1978. But for me - it probably opens up a whole new world of asking the computer to do what I'd PERSONALLY like and having it do it. That is HUGE for society. I'm sorry your job is being eroded. I'm a "systems" guy - my career disappeared to Indian in the early 2000s, then the cloud drove the final stake into it. I could maybe get a job being part of a 3 guy Systems team running a 1000 sever cloud hosted DC, on call, overworked - with 1000 Indians actually doing the support out of Bangalore. You'll not get MUCH sympathy from me - understanding is the best you can hope for.