It seems to be inevitable that with any new technology we go through a phase of super duper excitement about the possibilities, where we try to use it to the extreme, and through that process start to absorb what it actually is and isn't capable of.
The hype cycle's distasteful of course, but I've accepted that this is how humans figure out what things are. Like a child we have to abuse it before we learn how to properly use it.
I think many of us sense and have sensed that the promises made of agentic programming smell too good to be true, owing to our own experiences as programmers and engineers. But experts in a domain are always the minority, so we have to understand that everyone else is going to have to reach the same intuition the hard way.
I’ve been programming professionally for 25 years. Well, 24 really because in the whole last year I barely wrote a line myself but my output increased dramatically.
If you can’t see that it’s over, I’m not sure what to tell you. You will, in time.
The type of work matters and understanding how capital interacts with labor is something that hasn't really changed over the last 150 years (not the first time productivity tools have been introduced in capitalism).
All we are going to get is increased mass surveillance and molding software engineers into more assembly line work.
Both things do not sound good or reasonable nor wanted by a majority in our industry.
But sure! Being able to do more busy work is useful I guess, too bad the workers will never benefit from such a scheme; hopefully the masses don't overthrow the country, but I wouldn't blame them if they did.
+1, it feels very much like a case of _feeling_ more productive because you’re outputting more …stuff…, but IME, it’s easy to produce a lot of stuff that isn’t useful and just creates a productive vibe (pun intended)
I don't know if I'm just not seeing something that the vibe coders do, or if it's not really that crazy?
like I'd say it's a productivity boost in some aspects, definitely. but it's not like you'd be able to get the same output unless you had years of experience and know what you're doing
and going full unsupervised agentic mode I haven't seen much benefit from that. still have to pretty much just guide em to do this and that in this way
The hype cycle's distasteful of course, but I've accepted that this is how humans figure out what things are. Like a child we have to abuse it before we learn how to properly use it.
I think many of us sense and have sensed that the promises made of agentic programming smell too good to be true, owing to our own experiences as programmers and engineers. But experts in a domain are always the minority, so we have to understand that everyone else is going to have to reach the same intuition the hard way.