> Someday years from now we will look back on the era when we were the last generation to code by hand. We’ll laugh and explain to our grandkids how silly it was that we typed out JavaScript syntax with our fingers. But secretly we’ll miss it.
Why will I miss it? I will be coding my small scripts and tools and hobby projects by hand because there is no deadline attached to them. Hell, I will also tag them as "bespoke hand-crafted free range artisanal" code. There will be a whole hipster category of code that is written as such. And people will enjoy it as they enjoy vinyl records now. Many things would have changed by then but my heart will still be a programmer's heart.
I still use the chatbot but like to do it outside-in. Provide what I need, and instruct it to not write any code except the api (signatures of classes, interfaces, hierarchy, essential methods etc). We keep iterating about this until it looks good - still no real code. Then I ask it to do a fresh review of the broad outline, any issues it foresees etc. Then I ask it to write some demonstrator test cases to see how ergonomic and testable the code is - we fine tune the apis but nothing is fleshed out yet. Once this is done, we are done with the most time consuming phase.
After that is basically just asking it to flesh out the layers starting from zero dependencies to arriving at the top of the castle. Even if we have any complexities within the pieces or the implementation is not exactly as per my liking, the issues are localised - I can dive in and handle it myself (most of the time, I don't need to).
I feel like this approach works very well for me having a mental model of how things are connected because the most of the time I spent was spent on that model.
I really tried to like Mermaid but the difficulty in styling gets tiring after a while. Went back to trusty .puml for sequence diagrams - much more expressive when it comes to styling.
> I am bracing for 2026 as the year of the slopacolypse across all of github, substack, arxiv, X/instagram, and generally all digital media.
2026 is just when it picks up - it'll get exponentially worse.
I think 2026 is the year of Business Analysts who were unable to code. Now CC et all are good enough that they can realize the vision as long as one knows exactly the requirements (software design not that important). Programmers who didn't know business could get by so far. Not anymore, because with these tools, the guy who knows business can now code fairly well.
"I think 2026 is the year of Business Analysts who were unable to code." This is interesting - I have seen far more BAs losing jobs as a result of the 'work' they did being replaced by tools (both AI and AI-generated). I logically see the connection from AI tools giving BAs far more direct ability to produce something, but I don't see it actually happening. It is possible it is too early in the AI curve for the quality of a BA built product to be sufficient. CC and Opus45 are relatively new.
It could also be BAs being lazy and not jumping ahead of the train that is coming towards them. It feels like in this race the engineer who is willing to learn business will still have an advantage over the business person who learns tech. At least for a little while.
Does this guy do anything that is user-friendly and is as per open source ethos of freedom and user control? In all this shit-show of Microsoft shoving AI down the throat of its users, I was happy to be firmly in the Linux camp for many many years. And along come these kind of people to shit on that parade too.
P.S: Upvoted you. I don't care about downvotes either.
Are engineers really doing vibecoding in the truest sense of the word though? Just blindly copy/pasting and iterating? Because I don't. It is more of sculpting via conversation. I start with the requirements, provide some half-baked ideas or approaches that I think may work and then ask what the LLM suggests and whether there are better ways to achieve the goals. Once we have some common ground, I ask to show the outlines of the chosen structure: the interfaces, classes, test uses. I review it, ask more questions/make design/approach changes until I have something that makes sense to me. Only then the fully fleshed coding starts and even then I move at a deliberate pace so that I can pause and think about it before moving on to the next step. It is by no means super fast for any non-trivial task but then collaborating with anyone wouldn't be.
I also like to think that I'm utilising the training done on many millions of lines of code while still using my experience/opinions to arrive at something compared to just using my fallible thinking wherein I could have missed some interesting ideas. Its like me++. Sure, it does a lot of heavy lifting but I never leave the steering wheel. I guess I'm still at the pre-agentic stage and not ready to letting go fully.
Fedora 43 with KDE - have been using 140% scaling with my Dell Ultrasharp 32" 4k monitor - no issues whatsoever. I've noticed that the Dells do a pretty good job with Linux - I have used monitors of various sizes ranging from 27" to 43" and never had any issues on Linux.
It should be much more punishing from the 4th home like 45%. One can understand 2/3 homes, e.g., one to live in and the rest as investment for retirement income. More than that is just greed. Also, if you don't live in one of your properties, either sell one to keep the total number within 3 or pay additional tax.
if you allow each person to have 1-2 investment homes then you have the exact same problem but now it's decentralised and more people (more voters) benefit from the problem continuing to worsen
I mean that can be adjusted/tightened - you can say one to live in and one for rental and that's it. Other factors like other investment income etc can also be part of the criteria.
Why will I miss it? I will be coding my small scripts and tools and hobby projects by hand because there is no deadline attached to them. Hell, I will also tag them as "bespoke hand-crafted free range artisanal" code. There will be a whole hipster category of code that is written as such. And people will enjoy it as they enjoy vinyl records now. Many things would have changed by then but my heart will still be a programmer's heart.
reply