Hello programmers! I’ve been making a living for a couple of decades figuring out stuff for people and coding whatever will make them happy. It’s fun. I’ve grown to prefer the people to the coding but I still get a kick out of the whole thing.
The problem is: at the job we’re being asked to pivot to vibe coding. At this point the order is to use it for all code, read the slop carefully, argue with the machine for way too long and only then open that PR. Massive productivity gains are expected. I’m appalled from an ethical, philosophical and professional standpoint. We’re a non-profit ngo ffs. My colleagues are fine with it. If I get even slightly critical the group goes awkwardly silent and I get comments on how all the programmers they know from other places don’t code anymore.
If this is how it goes from now on, I’m out. Is it really though? Are all businesses switching to vibe coding? Have some of you started switching career? I think I want to go to meatspace. Hand-made coding could make a cute hobby.
The price is also a big factor. They’re currently taking big losses, so your AI usage is being subsidized by investors. Eventually they’ll want a return on that investment, so the price is going to go up. Way up.
We don’t know yet whether AI is actually cost effective over just having a developer write the code. Or maybe it’ll be cost effective to use something on the level of Haiku for simpler stuff, and a human developer does the more complicated stuff.
I don’t think it will take a societal collapse to stop the use of these tools. Just someone at your company running a cost benefit analysis on it after the AI companies start charging the full price.
I was lucky to upgrade my GPU before the price increases, but the open weight models are quite alright for the moderate stuff, and electricity is much cheaper than the cloud token costs at the moment. So, unless HW prices will be forever high and that bleeds into the 2nd hand market too, I don’t think there will be at least some economical viability.