I have recently found something that’s needed but very niche and the sort of problem that Claude can only give tips on how to go about it.
Any niche problem requires original work or deep searching for something that can complete it. There is no free lunch.
To me, the essence of coding is about using formal languages and definable state machines (i.e, your toolchain) to manipulate the state of a machine in a predictable way.
C, C++, even with their litany of undefined behavior, are still formal languages, and their compilers can still be predicted and understood (no matter how difficult that is). If the compiler does something unexpected, its because you, the programmer, lacked the knowledge of either the language or the compiler's state.
Vibe coding uses natural languages, and interacts with programs whose state is not only unknown, but unknowable. The machine, for the same input, may produce wildly different output. If the machine produces unexpected code, its not because of a lack of knowledge on the part of it programmer - its because the machine is inherently unpredictable and requires more prodding in soft, fuzzy, natural language.
Telling something what outcomes you want, even if described in technical terms only a programmer would understand, is not coding. It's essentially just being a project manager.
Now you may ask - who cares about this no true Scotsman fallacy? If its coding or not coding, we are still producing a program which serves the product needs of the customer.
Personally, I did not learn to code because I give a shit about the product needs of the customer, or the financial wellbeing of the business. I enjoy coding for its own sake - because it is fun to use systems of well defined rules to solve problems. Learning and using C++ is fun, for me; it seems every day i learn something new about the language and how the compiler behaves and I've been using C++ for several years (and I started learning it when I was 12!)
Describing the outcome or goal of a project in natural human language sounds like a nightmare, to be honest. I became a software engineer so I could minimize the amount of natural language required to succeed in life. Natural language has gotten me (and, I suspect, people like me) in trouble over and over again throughout adolescence, but I've never written a piece of code that was misunderstood or ambiguous enough for people to become threatened by or outraged by it.
I think the disconnect is that some people care about products, and some people care about code.
If we're making up hypotheticals, then LLMs can be predicted and understood (no matter how difficult that is). They don't run on pixie dust.
In both all you need is the ability to communicate to the machine in a way that the machine can convert your ideas into actions.
The restricted language of a compiler is a handicap, not evidence of a skill - we've been saying forever that "Natural Language" compilers would be a game changer, and that's all that an AI really is
Edit: It appears that this discussion is going to end up with a definition of "coding"
Is it coding if you tell the computer to perform some action, or is it coding if you tell it how to do that in some highly optimised way (for varying definitions of optimised, eg. Memory efficient, CPU efficient, Dev time efficient... etc)
BASIC was supposed to be astep toward using a natural human language, and a number of Microsoft products were too.
As I said before, we've been wanting to use a Natural Human Language for programming for a long time.
Edit: adding a wikipedia reference because apparently I am the only person on the planet that has been looking for a way to use a Natural Human Language for programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_programming
Second Edit: Adding the following paragraph from the wikipedia page for emphasis
Researchers have started to experiment with natural language programming environments that use plain language prompts and then use AI (specifically large language models) to turn natural language into formal code. For example Spatial Pixel created a natural language programming environment to turn natural language into P5.js code through OpenAI's API. In 2021 OpenAI developed a natural language programming environment for their programming large language model called Codex.
Some people are getting a lot of work done using LLMs. Some of us are using it on occasion to handle thing we don't understand deeply but can trivially verify. Some of us are using it out of laziness because it helps with boilerplate. Everyone who is using it outside of occasional tests is doing it because they find it useful to write code. If it's not coding, then I personally couldn't care less. Only a True Scotsman should case.
If we get to the point where we are no longer coding, we are just describing things in product language to a computer and letting it do all the real work, then I will find a more fulfilling career because this ain't it
I personally hate coding, but it's a means to an end, and I care about the end. I'm also paranoid about code I don't understand, so I only rarely use AI and even then it's either for things I understand 100% or things that don't matter. But it would be silly to claim they don't produce working code, no matter what we want to call it.
If we get to a point where the engineers are replaced by machines, I would hope that the project managers were replaced years before that, as a final act of revenge
I enjoy a lot of things (Software Engineering is one of them) that in NO way determines whether or not AI is coding, nor does it guarantee me a career (just ask all the blacksmiths that disappeared once cars became the mass transport vehicle).
The fact that people are going to (possibly) be able to instruct a computer to do whatever they wish without the need of a four year degree and several years of experience scares you, I get that, but that's not going to have any effect on reality.
Edit: Have a look at all the peoples careers that have ended because software took over.
Notice how nobody is skeptical of compilers?
Every generation, we seem to add a level of abstraction conceding because for most of us, it enhances productivity. And every generation, there is a crowd who rails against the new abstraction, mostly unaware of all of the levels of abstraction they already use in their coding.
BUT neither are humans, if you give two different humans the same task, then, unless they copy one another, then you will get two different results.
Further, as those humans evolve through their career, the code that they produce will also change.
Now, I do want to point out that I'm very much still at the "LLMs are an aid, not the full answer.. yet" point, but a lot of the argument against them seems to be (rapidly) coming to the point where it's no longer valid (AI slop and all).
Thats true, but giving a human a task isn't coding - its project management
Secondly, and this is far more important, it's telling a machine what you want it to do - in text
Exactly like coding.
I mean full credit to you with your disingenuous goalpost shifting and appeals to authority, but reality has no time for you (and neither do I anymore).
There are the social media types you mention and their polar opposites, the "LLMs have no possible use" crowd. These people are mostly delusional. At the grown-ups table, there is a spectrum of opinions about the relative usefulness.
It's not contradictory to believe that the average programmer right now has his head buried in the sand and should at least take time to explore what value LLMs can provide, while at the same time taking a more conservative approach when using them to do actual work.
No, Claude can create logs all across my codebase with much better formatting far faster than I can, so I can focus on actual problem solving. It's frustrating, but par for the course for this forum.
But this comment might step a bit into pedantry.
Especially if I point out that they said "are also", not "are".
Not trying to argue, since I don’t have counter evidence, but how can you be so sure?
On the other hand, $10B as valuation (not revenue) just requires a greater fool. Maybe it's possible, but I doubt there are too many of those fools available.
I interpreted the parent as saying $10B valuation.
- There is a moat of doing so (i.e. will people actually pay for your SaaS knowing that they could do it too via AI) and..
- How many large scale ideas do you need post AI? Many SaaS products are subscription based and loaded with features you don't need. Most people would prefer a simple product that just does what they need without the ongoing costs.
There will be more software. The question is who accrues the economic value of this additional software - the SWE/tech industry (incumbent), the AI industry (disruptor?) and/or the consumer. For the SWE's/tech workers it probably isn't what they envisioned when they started/studied for this industry.
I had been thinking of buying an $80 license for a piece of software but ended up knocking off a version in Claude Code over a weekend.
It is not even close to something commercial grade that I could sell as a competitor but it is good enough for me to not spend $80 on the license. The huge upside is that I can customize the software in any way I like. I don't care that it isn't maintainable either. Making a new version in ChagGPT5 is going to be my first project.
Just like a few hours ago I was thinking how I would like to customize the fitness/calorie tracking app I use. There are so many features I like that would be tightly coupled to my own situation and not a mass market product.
This to me seems obvious of what the future of software looks like for everything but mission critical software.
Or they have actually used all these tools, know how they work, and don't buy into hype and marketing.
I tried to use it for Python, Rust and Bash. I also tried to use it for crawling and organizing information. I also tried to use it as a debugging buddy. All of the attempts failed.
I simply don't understand how people are using it in a way that improves productivity. For me, all of this is so far a huge timesink with essentially nothing to show for it.
The single positive result was when I asked it to optimize a specific SQL query, and it managed to do it.
Anyway I will keep trying to use it, maybe something needs to click first and it just hasn't yet.
I’ve been delighting all of my tedious tasks with as much context as I would give a person, and my personal win rate at this is substantially higher than I expected.
If you give it trash and expect gold, sure, gambling.
Specifically, Claude coat is really good at making markdown files of plans and if you review them add in context, you can let it run a little more free than you would otherwise.
If you don’t feel like giving it, the right amount of context, make the job smaller, where there’s just less of it to begin with.
I wouldn’t tell my interns to change the formatting of these printf statements, because I don’t feel like it, but Claude does that stuff pretty great and doesn’t complain as much.
Try like upgrading JS package dependencies, or translating between languages, limited tedious things, and you will be surprised how much better it does.
(Un?)fortunately my work doesn't involve a lot of "drone coding". With personal projects I let it do whatever it wanted including picking the language and libraries. With one of them it ended up so confused with the Redis API(!!!) that it kept going back and forth between different versions to "fix" the issues until it literally removed the functionality it was supposed to add. Problem solved, eh?
I think people might be exaggerating how much they are out of the loop. Claude often needs to be guided away from stupid decisions, and it will absolutely delete code in order to "fix" a problem.
Still, it saves me work on tedious stuff, and makes it more pleasant. I wouldn't ask it to do anything I don't understand, unless I don't care about the result.
The interesting thing about all of this vibe coding skepticism, cynicism, and backlash is that many people have their expectations set extremely low. They’re convinced everything the tools produce will be junk or that the worst case examples people provide are representative of the average.
Then they finally go out and use the tools and realize that they exceed their (extremely low) expectations, and are amazed.
Yeah we all know Claude Code isn’t going to generate a $10 billion SaaS with a team of 10 people or whatever the social media engagement bait VCs are pushing this week. However, the tools are more powerful than a lot of people give them credit for.