florianherrengt (u/florianherrengt)

florianherrengt commented on The vibe coder's career path is doomed blog.florianherrengt.com/... · Posted by u/florianherrengt

hotpotat · a month ago

In my experience limiting myself to two projects in parallel is most productive, with a clear primary project whose agent’s completion take precedence over the other’s. It lets me still have concurrent work going on, but I’m very clearly still taking care to be precise and targeted with my prompting. Too many things going on, and I’m no longer optimizing for doing the task but for having as much parallel execution and progress as possible, and that’s a trap of perceived productivity.

florianherrengt · a month ago

I mean it is right there at the beginning:

> “I went from 4-5 parallel branches down to 2, sometimes just one. […] I had to stop to think things through.”

Where do you see me drunk on power here?

My point is that it isn’t faster because producing the code isn’t the bottleneck.

florianherrengt commented on The vibe coder's career path is doomed blog.florianherrengt.com/... · Posted by u/florianherrengt

strangescript · a month ago

“It’s only going to get better” "For LLMs to keep improving, we need one of three things: more data, more power or a breakthrough." "Breakthroughs are rare."

This is very short sighted. The amount of research and papers coming out on AI is staggering. Maybe raw power gaining breakthroughs are rare, but you literally only need one to have exponential impact.

If you look back at the history of LLMs, its a never ending timeline of "well, they will never be able to do this" that have been proven wrong, going all the way back to the early 20-teens.

Seems like a very strange bet to make at this point in time.

florianherrengt · a month ago

My bet isn't against progress. It is against magical timelines peddled by those with VC incentives. I don't want to build a career on hype, sprinkled with "maybe", "could" or "soon" and ignores the very real diminishing returns and bottlenecks we face today.

E.g: They kept predicting widespread fully autonomous vehicles. Significant progress has been made but a vehicle taking you from A to B without human oversight remain elusive.

Demand for great software developers isn't fading. Let's lean in and master our craft, not limit our growth by over-relying on AI.

Admittedly, I could be wrong. Maybe next year AI will be able to fully build software on its own and software engineering is dead. If you think that's true, why aren't you planning your career change right now?

If we land somewhere in the middle, what skills can I develop to become a better vibe coder which aren't just becoming a better software engineer generally? When I know exactly what to do, AI is just a faster typist. But when I'm stuck, if I outsource the solution entirely to AI, how do I actually learn and grow?

florianherrengt commented on The vibe coder's career path is doomed blog.florianherrengt.com/... · Posted by u/florianherrengt

UncleEntity · a month ago

Yeah, I'm starting to see a pattern to these "LLM's aren't the bee's knees" articles.

First, it's always some 'telegram bot' type project where it all starts to break down when they try to add too many features on the existing (buggy) features without understanding what the stupid robot is up to.

Second, they all come to the conclusion they don't want to be 'unpaid project managers' and it's better for the entire world for people to get paid the $100k+ salaries to write crappy javascript.

During the heart of Covid, when the scientific archives were opened for everyone, I downloaded a bunch of stuff and have been working through some of it with the help of Claude. Perhaps surprising to the vibe coders, if you constrain the robots and work through their lack of 'intelligence' they're pretty good at taking the theoretical concepts from paper A, B and C and combining them into a cohesive system which can be implemented as individual modules that work together. I believe there used to be a term of art for this, dunno?

You can also stumble on things which nobody really realized before as the theoreticians from Paper A don't go to the same parties as the theoreticians from Paper B so they don't realize they're working on the same problem using a different 'language' and only when you try to mash them together does the relationship become obvious. Having a semi-useful robot to think through something like this is indispensable as they can search through the vast databanks of human knowledge and be like "no, you're an idiot, everyone knows this" or "yeah, that seems like something new and useful".

So, yeah, horses for courses...

florianherrengt · a month ago

This feels like a comment shot from the hip. You fundamentally misread my argument while proving my core point.

You crystallised the disconnect yourself: "with the help of Claude."

The article’s first line states: "LLMs are helpful." My stance is clear. I’m not anti-AI. When I wrote "I use Claude on a VERY short leash with a specific purpose" ... that is "with the help of Claude."

My experiment tested the opposite: "let Claude build it".

The 'telegram bot' is a fullstack app with non-trivial db schema, state management and 3rd party integration. Instead of dismissing it, show me a better alternative and explain why it’s superior.

You defend expertise in your domain (research synthesis), describing how you "constrained the robots" using your expertise to guide Claude. Yet you dismiss equivalent expertise in software engineering, reducing it to "$100k+ to write crappy JavaScript."

How did you "constrain" Claude without knowing what needed constraining, why it mattered and how to evaluate if the output was valid?

That is expertise. The salary is a symptom of it.

florianherrengt commented on The vibe coder's career path is doomed blog.florianherrengt.com/... · Posted by u/florianherrengt

lordnacho · a month ago

I feel like I won the lottery.

Everyone is doing this sort of "better write some MCPs" thing, so that you can keep the LLM on the straight and narrow.

Well, let me tell you something. I just went through my entire backlog of improvements to my trading system with Claude, and I didn't write any MCPs, I didn't write long paragraphs for every instruction. I just said things like:

- We need a mock exchange that fits the same interface. Boom, here you go.

- How about some tests for the mock exchange? Also done.

- Let's make the mock exchange have a sawtooth pattern in the prices. Ok.

- I want to write some smart order managers that can manage VWAPs, float-with-market, and so on. Boom, here you go.

- But I don't understand how the smart orders are used in a strategy? Ok, here's a bunch of tests for you to study.

- I think we could parse the incoming messages faster. Read the docs about this lib, I think we can use this thing here. Boom, done.

- I have some benchmarks set up for one exchange, can you set up similar for others? Done.

- You added a lock, I don't want that, let's not share data, let's pass a message. Claude goes through the code, changes all the patterns it made, problem solved.

- This struct <here>, it has a member that is initialized in two steps. Let's do it in one. Boom, done.

- I'm gonna show you an old repo, it uses this old market data connector. How do we use the new one instead? Claude suggests an upgrade plan starting with a shared module, continuing towards full integration. Does the first bit, I'm mulling over the second.

Over the last four days, it has revolutionized my code. I had a bunch of things I knew I could do if given enough time. None of the above would stump me as an experienced dev these days. But it would take my attention. I'd be in a loop of edit/compile/test over every feature I've mentioned above, and I would be sure to have errors in either syntax or structure. At some point, I would use a pattern that was not ideal, and I'd have to backtrack and type/google/stackoverflow my way out of, and each step would take a while.

Now, I can tell Claude what to do, and it does it. When it fails, it's productively failing. It's closer to the target, and a gentle nudge pushes it to where I want.

florianherrengt · a month ago

You're describing exactly what I distinguish as legitimate AI use, not vibe coding. You're an experienced dev who understands your system deeply, making architectural decisions ("no locks, pass messages instead") and using Claude to implement specific, well-defined tasks faster. The key difference: you could do everything yourself and Claude is doing the typing for you. When you say "None of the above would stump me as an experienced dev", that's the opposite of vibe coding. You're using AI as a typing accelerator for a codebase you understand, not as a replacement for expertise you never developed.

florianherrengt commented on The vibe coder's career path is doomed blog.florianherrengt.com/... · Posted by u/florianherrengt

cadamsdotcom · a month ago

The trick to keeping the agents effective is complexity management.

You know you’ve hit a complexity barrier when your agent claims to have implemented something but it’s just.. missing. That’s your sign it’s time to clean things up - maybe simplify it to a pattern that funnels many things through one place. Then the models can work again.

This complexity reduction is a key step in engineering anything really. It makes for a healthier codebase.

And of course, incremental improvements in models will let them go further before hitting their own specific complexity barriers.

I truly believe there IS a durable role for “AI whisperers” of this kind. Folks who can tamp down the complexity as something is built, to keep it under the complexity ceiling of present-day models - and as the crazy pace of the industry lifts that ceiling again and again, folks who know where the limits are so they can work as fast as possible within them.

It’s a very different type of engineering driven by a very different set of constraints. It’s unfamiliar and it’s fascinating watching engineers grapple with it. But it’s here and we have no terminology for what it’s doing to our work, so some people are frightened while others get on with it.

Best you be among the latter.

florianherrengt · a month ago

Maybe my analogy is off, but I've been thinking of it like high-end restaurants not being threatened by fast food chains.

I'm trying to understand what I'm missing here. You describe these "AI whisperers" who can tamp down complexity, but doesn't that still require strong fundamental skills and deep knowledge of how to build software? Or am I thinking about this wrong?

If it eventually lifts this ceiling high enough that everyone can build with AI, how does this not simply become minimun wage work?

In which case, what's the unique value proposition?

The way I see it, either:

1. AI gets so good that everyone can build anything (in which case, why pay premium for whisperers?)

2. Or it stays limited enough that you need real engineering skills (in which case, we're back to valuing traditional expertise)

florianherrengt commented on The vibe coder's career path is doomed blog.florianherrengt.com/... · Posted by u/florianherrengt

fragmede · a month ago

If software engineering as we know it is hypothetically dead, shouldn't I prefer a minimum wage job over not having one?

florianherrengt · a month ago

Minimum wage jobs pay low wages because a large number of people can do them. This means that if you work a minimum wage job, you're not just competing with others in your field. You're competing with anyone willing to work for minimum wage. It also works the other way around. If your job used to pay well but now only offers minimum wage, you could just as easily switch to any other minimum wage job.

florianherrengt commented on The vibe coder's career path is doomed blog.florianherrengt.com/... · Posted by u/florianherrengt

oc1 · a month ago

I love vibe coding. Now i can present vibe-coded mvp to my boss and it just works. No more wireframes. It's all done in a single prompt.

florianherrengt · a month ago

You're the perfect target audience for vibe coding.

florianherrengt commented on The vibe coder's career path is doomed blog.florianherrengt.com/... · Posted by u/florianherrengt

trashtensor · a month ago

Even for professional developers I am not buying this argument. I think there is an argument to be made that we actually don't know how to work with these tools effectively and repeatably yet. But as the tools improve and we figure out the processes more that may change. It might not too, but I am leaning more toward it working better when we figure out how to use it than not.

e: Not a q for parent, but maybe for others. Are we supposed to be making a distinction between "vibe coding" and "coding with an AI agent"? What is the difference?

florianherrengt · a month ago

According to Wikipedia, vibe coding is "fully giving in to the vibes, embracing exponentials, and forgetting that the code even exists" and "If an LLM wrote every line of your code, but you've reviewed, tested, and understood it all, that's not vibe coding in my book—that's using an LLM as a typing assistant"

florianherrengt commented on The vibe coder's career path is doomed blog.florianherrengt.com/... · Posted by u/florianherrengt

superkuh · a month ago

I understand the audience this person has written for: professional developers. In that context, sure. But for everyone except professional developers vibe coding is amazing.

It gets the things they want to do done. No paying someone else, no asking for help on $chatprotocolchannel, no getting a friend to help. It's just there. It doesn't matter if it's ugly. It doesn't need to be monetized, doesn't need to be worked on by a team of people. It just needs to work... enough.

Vibe coding may not be for you. But vibe coding is so that we don't need to bother you for trivial things (like porting a 12 .c file X11/cairo program to a single .pl file cariro/gtk program).

florianherrengt · a month ago

I have no issues with that and I made it very clear. Vibe coding for non-technical people is great.

florianherrengt commented on The vibe coder's career path is doomed blog.florianherrengt.com/... · Posted by u/florianherrengt

mandevil · a month ago

The thing I keep worrying about is the fate of the store clerk.

Retail store clerk was a medium skill/medium prestige job up through the 1970's and 1980's. You needed someone who knew all of the prices for their part of the store (to prevent tag switching), who could recognize what was the expensive dress versus the cheap dress, and remembered all of the prices so they could work quickly without having to look things up (1). There would be stories of retail clerks rising up to CEO, and even if you weren't that ambitious it was a career path that could provide a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.

Then the laser/upc system came in and hallowed out the career path. UPC codes could be printed in a more permanent way (don't need to put 10c stickers on every orange) and then it was just a DB lookup to get the current price. And there was a natural language description that the register printed so you could do a quick confirmation.

This quickly hallowed out and destroyed the career path: once the laser/UPC/database system meant that almost anyone could be an okay retail clerk with very little training, companies quickly stopped caring about getting anyone above that level, experience no longer mattered- or was rewarded with pay increases, and it created the so-called "McJob" of the 1990s.

Karl Marx had actually written about this all the way back in the 19th Century, this was the alienation of labor, the use of capital investment to replace skilled labor with interchangeable repetition that kept people from feeling satisfaction or success at their jobs- and the pay and career satisfaction of retail clerks in 1990s America followed almost exactly the path of skilled weavers being replaced by machines in 19th Century Birmingham.

Will that happen with SWE? I don't know. But it is a thing that preys on my mind late at night when I'm trying to sleep.

florianherrengt · a month ago

This is the "AI soon becomes good enough" scenario.

Where is the version of this story where retail clerks enthusiastically learned the UPC scanner system and then leveraged that knowledge into better careers? The inspiring tales of workers who "embraced the future" and thrived?

The technology was specifically designed to eliminate the need for worker expertise, not enhance it. They were learning to operate a system whose entire purpose was to make them replaceable.

I'm sure some clerks were skeptics back then. When technology did take over and replaced them, they probably got a big fat "I told you so." But everyone got the exact same outcome as everyone else: lower wages, fewer opportunities, less job security.

But imagine stores in the late 1980s realising their fancy new systems kept scanning steaks as bananas and designer jeans as dish soap. If databases crashed regularly and people were clueless as to what cost what.

Companies would have been desperately trying to retain and recruit back the very workers whose skills they'd just dismissed as outdated. The ones who knew every price would have become essential.

Unlike retail work, software engineering has multiple layers of skill. What happens if/when AI coding tools fail? Code can fail in subtle and catastrophic ways. Or what if it simply fails to live up to the hype and doesn't deliver?

The very tools that devalue coding skills might actually increase the value of deep engineering knowledge.

If AI replaces me, I'll be sad. I'll have to retrain, acquire new skills and find a new career. But at least that's a clean break, a clear transition point. My nightmare scenario is that it turns me into a button-pusher who prompts AI without understanding what it's producing, making me as replaceable as those scanner-operating clerks.

Today, I have to make a choice. I can decide to become the best clerk I possibly can, or I can learn how to use the scanner. What I would like to know is: people who think the scanner will be good enough, why bother and not plan your career change instead?