It's because we see a bunch of people completely ignoring the missing 20% and flooding the world with complete slop. The push back is required to keep us sane, we need people reminding others that it's not at 100% yet even if it sometimes feels like it.
It’s usually people doing side projects or non-programmers who can’t tell the code is slop. None of these vibe coding evangelists ever shares the code they’re so amazed by, even though by their own logic anyone should be able to generate the same code with AI.
This kind of thought policing is getting to be exhausting. Perhaps we need a different kind of push back.
Do you know what my use case is? Do you know what kind of success rate I would actually achieve right now? Please show me where my missing 20% resides.
What kind of software are you writing? Are you just a "code monkey" implementing perfectly described Jira tickets (no offense meant)? I cannot imagine feeling this way with what I'm working on, writing code is just a small part of it, most of the time is spent trying to figure out how to integrate the various (undocumented and actively evolving) external services involved together in a coherent, maintainable and resilient way. LLMs absolutely cannot figure this out themselves, I have to figure it out myself and then write it all in its context, and even then it mostly comes up with sub-par, unmaintainable solutions if I wasn't being precise engouh.
They are amazing for side projects but not for serious code with real world impact where most of the context is in multiple people's head.
No, I am not a code monkey. I have an odd role working directly for an exec in a highly regulated industry, managing their tech pursuits/projects. The work can range from exciting to boring depending on the business cycle. Currently it is quite boring, so I've leaned into using AI a bit more just to see how I like it. I don't think that I do.
You can still understand a system deeply and find elegant solutions, and use LLMs to translate your idea into code, then review the code. It's still much faster than writing everything by hand in a lot of cases, if done properly.
Reviewing code that was written by somebody else is one of the least fun and enjoyable activities in my experience .
I personally don't know any programmers who enjoy process of doing PR reviews.
If you only care about number of features Copilot implements for you or lines of code Claude Code gave you - you must be a manager.
I really don't mind PR reviews, as long as the author is cooperative. I do not like arguing over obvious things with someone who isn't participating in good faith. Thankfully I have a good team in which it doesn't happen.
And this is the determining factor to whether a current dev will be replaced by AI or will evolve alongside with it, being the bridge between humans and AI.
Which is not really different to what we're already doing, translating human requirements to machine code. Just that communication skills will become an even bigger part of the job.
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