Discussion

AlexandrB: > I won’t speculate on how he would have felt about generative AI, but I can say that GenAI is something I care about. It causes a lot of problems for a lot of people. It drives rising energy prices in poor communities, disrupts wildlife and fresh water supplies, increases pollution, and stresses global supply chains.This kind of stuff drives me crazy sometimes. There's is little that's unique to AI here. These are the effects of any kind of industrial expansion. They're also the effects of population growth, in general. This stuff is a problem iff AI is a scam or hugely oversold and these resources are being wasted. But that's a different argument and a less clear-cut one.> It re-enforces the horrible, dangerous working conditions that miners in many African countries are enduring to supply rare metals like Cobalt for the billions of new chips that this boom demands.This point also deserves special mention. Most green technologies (solar panels, electric cars) also require a bunch of cobalt. Again, the "badness" seems to depend on your a priori evaluation of what the cobalt is being used for and not the cobalt mining itself.I think there's also a pretty good chance that if a robot that could mine the same cobalt with no human intervention appeared tomorrow, many folks would complain about "hard working cobalt miners in Africa losing their livelihood to automation".

fhd2: > I think there's also a pretty good chance that if a robot that could mine the same cobalt with no human intervention appeared tomorrow, many folks would complain about "hard working cobalt miners in Africa losing their livelihood to automation".Well, yeah? Just because the current work safety situation is bad, doesn't mean being out of a job couldn't be worse. I'd love a world where more automation meant less, safer, higher paying work for everyone. Our world never worked like that, to my knowledge, and I'm not sure it ever will.

mikkupikku: I've long had great respect for Drew, way since way back when he was sircmpwn writing cool calculator software. Great programmer, and an incredibly based individual. Stays true to himself even in the face of overwhelming pressure.I completely disagree with his take on this; battleship vibecoder in vimscript is awesome and important, socially, because vibe coding makes computer programming accessible to the masses. I don't expect him to ever agree, but much respect nonetheless

scrollaway: > because vibe coding makes computer programming accessible to the massesI've been coding for 24 years and vibe coding has made computer programming accessible to me.I've burned out on my work several times, to the point that a few years ago I became unable to open my IDE without getting headaches and nausea. This has killed one of the startups where I was fractional CTO and it's debilitating as an engineer to feel this.Vibe coding has changed this. I'm once again productive. Like, 1000x more productive than I could ever be.AI is an amplifier. It amplifies shit engineering into shittier code, but I also deeply believe it amplifies people who care about polish and love of their craft into so, so much more.I've been "as a side project" finishing a bookkeeping app I could never finish (https://financica.app/) and adding so many features that are pure polish, which I always wanted to add but the ROI was just not there.Like, the other day I wrote (using AI) a PDF parser for a specific type of account statements from the Belgian government, turning those into perfect data for the books. This saves me a ton of time as a user, nobody in the world has this automation for those types of statements, and it would have taken me several months of full time work to write and automate all of this, learning PDF libraries, dealing with the output, figuring out geometry, writing a battery of tests, etc. I would never have done it. But now, in less than an hour the whole feature was built, shipped and announced.It's awesome.

umanwizard: Computer programming has been accessible to the masses for years. All you need is motivation to learn.The only people vibe coding has made programming accessible to is people who don't have such motivation.

rkapsoro: I'm sure certain people accustomed to hand assembly were saying this when compilers emerged on the scene.

roryrjb: I think I will use vim-classic and possibly contribute to it. Not because of AI, but because I actually want to use Vim over say something like Neovim* and I actually like vimscript, which imo didn't need the development of vim9script to improve it.Regarding why not Neovim, I think it's because a large section of the community want to create more complex TUI elements or replicate GUI interfaces and make it more like VS Code. I use Vim for the "vim way" not because it's in a terminal or it's not bloated like some other editors.

odst: The argument that "vibe coding makes computer programming accessible to the masses" is something I don't understand. With all the free content on the internet, was it not accessible before?

dinkleberg: Obviously the knowledge gap required to go from zero to doing something useful has shrunk substantially. That is improved accessibility.

gundamdoubleO: It does things for them and tells them what to do. Is that really making programming more accessible? I guess in the sense of lowering the barrier to creating stuff. But accessible as in a path to actually start working on things yourself and developing an interest? For most people vibe coding 99% of their lines, I doubt it. And I don't really think that's a problem to be honest, but I don't really buy that it makes programming in and of itself more accessible, more just the result of that programming.

herodoturtle: > And at a moment when the climate demands immediate action to reduce our footprint on this planet, the AI boom is driving data centers to consume a full 1.5% of the world’s total energy production in order to eliminate the jobs of the poor and replace them with a robot that lies.That sentence jumped out at me.

CobrastanJorji: It's a little wrong. It's probably going to replace middle class jobs more than the jobs of the poor.

lxgr: We've had this discussion back when high-level languages started becoming popular. Do the unwashed masses deserve to be programming a computer when they don't have a love and appreciation for assembly, or even the underlying ISA and its instruction encoding? And before that: How dare these whippersnappers just hand in their punched cards when they don't even know how to bit bang the boot sequence of the very computer executing them?It's not even limited to a given occupation. Many hams were outraged about the FCC handing out amateur radio licenses without ANY demonstrated proficiency in morse!Fortunately, at least in technology, nobody cares what these gatekeepers say. I guess that's an upside of software engineering never having graduated to be "actual engineering" (i.e. one with certifications and personal liability).Nobody is preventing anyone from going as deep as they want to, and I expect that going one layer (or ten) deeper in understanding than your peers will still pay off even in a post-AI world. The nice thing is that now, nobody has to to just try something. (And you can ask the same system building these things for you how they work!)

embedding-shape: > I think it’s more important that we stop collectively pretending that we don’t understand how awful all of this isLord forbid if people disagree with you. I know Drew's vibe is always "I'm right because I'm the only one with the correct opinions", but it does get tiring after a while.Not to say AI isn't having huge drawbacks being introduced, and aren't exactly worry-free, but why not change your frame of mind from "Why don't others understand how awful it is?!" to "People are seeing something I'm not, what am I missing?" so your article could actually contain something else than personal and emotions rants?

sarchertech: Well I think he’s taken a moral stance against AI, so it doesn’t matter to him if other people find it useful.

embedding-shape: [delayed]

aaroninsf: People sure hate change.

linkregister: For an environmentmaxxer, eliminating upper-middle class jobs is extremely effective, as this group consumes the lion's share of resources and bears the greatest impact on carbon emissions. Remember that the majority of industry is upstream of consumption.Not endorsing this world view, just noting that the wealthiest 1% of people in the world (encompasses most US citizens) have an enormously outsized impact on climate.

dpatterbee: I think the point is that regardless of what benefits LLMs are bringing to the table, there are a list of downsides that Drew views as non-negotiables. It doesn't matter what other people are seeing, because he sees a fundamental issue underlying the entire premise.It does seem like most people completely ignore the obvious harms caused by AI when talking about using LLMs for programming, as though somehow it is disconnected from the other deployments of the technology.

embedding-shape: > there are a list of downsides that Drew views as non-negotiablesWhich is all fine and dandy. But why play the "You simply don't understand it as well as I do" rather than something more investigative and curious? Just fuels the whole "holier than thou" vibe Drew been trying to increase seemingly every day.It's a disagreement of opinion, not some "I'm the only smart person who can realize this", which is why it kind of sours the entire piece.

endemic: I'm debating using LLMs for my side projects. Does using one remove the "soul" of my project? On the other hand, a friend is actually making progress with his side app _because_ he's able to lean on the LLM after a full day's worth of working the day job. I might be able to actually do some of the things I've dreamed of and never had the capacity for. First world problems, I guess.

freedomben: I've been doing exactly this now for a little while, and it breathed new life into my projects. It's been amazing, honestly. I was worried about the "soul" as well, especially for some projects where I got intimately deep in bit shifting and things, but realistically that project is now 100x more useful to me because it has a ton of features and even bug fixes that I never would have spent the time on before. I highly recommend it.

sourcegrift: Drew is genius but a toxic genius, I've been using vim for 23 years and I'd rather not use vim than use his version of that's my only choice of vim

e3bc54b2: I've been reading and reading about DeVault for more than a decade now. If I can point to one person on the internet and definitively say that their today's version is better than a decade ago, it would be him. (Yes, I can say that he appears to have improved better in this time than I myself have, which can be interpreted in a more than one way).In fact, Andrew Kelley, whom I respect fair bit, also chose to stand behind redict, Drew's fork of redis with similar observation.People change over time, some of them for the better, and I personally like to give them a chance. Some of Drew's opinions and expressions are still a bit much for me, but that is just us both being human.

ectospheno: Plenty of people already submit AI code as their own change. I’d argue every open source program is already “tainted” in that way.

ectospheno: Didn’t think I’d have to clarify what quotes mean in this context but using an LLM to help with coding is fine and people should get over it as it’s already everywhere anyway.

nickandbro: Without getting into some of the other things mentioned in the article,I don't think Vim is going away. Even with all the AI code written, engineers navigate through Claude Code / Codex using Vim (ex: Vim mode in Claude Code).I really like Vim so much that I've built a gamified way to learn it at https://vimgolf.ai that I am working on completing.

sam_lowry_: Poor tend to think of themselves as middle-class.

metalliqaz: so do the richnote I used "rich" there, not "wealthy"

grayhatter: > Lord forbid if people disagree with you.This is too shallow of a take. Especially when your very next point objects to what he uses as a default reference frame that you disagree with. Lord forbid drew disagree about, I think priorities, and values?> why not change your frame of mind from "Why don't others understand how awful it is?!" to "People are seeing something I'm not, what am I missing?"It's the same question. I sympathize with both questions, I constant feel both frustrated, and broken with how few people care about quality, and participating fairly. I try very hard to find the positive aspects "everyone" claims llm codegen provides. I'm looking hard, and can't find them. It's painfully average, often worse so when it gets lost. It doesn't and can not help me, only get in the way... But again, both could easily be true from both frames you suggest. "Why can't people identify this as trash" could very easily be followed by "what I'm I missing from the equation?"> so your article could actually contain something else than personal and emotions rants?I mean, it's titled, A Eulogy for Vim. That seems to be what it says on the tin, no?

love2read: I really hate that the author tugged at the heart strings of someone who is not alive anymore to back their cause of hating AI.

rybosome: I disagree. I’ve had almost 20 years of professional programming experience. Spent a decade in FAANG, the rest in startups.It is unarguable that I am able to program. Vibe coding has absolutely made programming more accessible to me too.I have two kids and a full time job. Before LLMs I didn’t do side projects; work and parenting plus my other interests took > 100% of my energy.Now I have many things I’ve worked on or built solely because LLMs lowered the barrier to entry, and I feel that I can fit the remaining human work into the cracks of the time and energy I do have. One can gripe about how I’m less connected to the code, or that I learned fewer substantial technical lessons from the experience; these things are true.However, I learned more than if I hadn’t done the project at all. It’s like the exercise benefit of an electric bike - you don’t get the aerobic benefit of an unassisted bike, but if it motivates you to ride when you otherwise wouldn’t then the trade off isn’t so clear.

mikkupikku: It takes most people years of burying their heads in a computer to become effective programmers of anything more than trivial software. This is rapidly changing.

Legend2440: >Remember that the majority of industry is upstream of consumption.People forget this. Oil companies may have dug up the oil, but they did so because we paid them to, so we could use the energy for good and useful things.Climate change isn't 'evil billionaire companies are ruining the world', it's 'these things we did to improve our lives turn out to have side effects'.

CobrastanJorji: The "upper middle class" is not strictly defined, but they are pretty clearly the folks below the wealthiest 1%. You can't be in the middle without something on either side.They certain consume far more than the poor, on account of having resources, but they also consume far less than the wealthiest 1%.

sam_lowry_: The discussion is about the current generation of LLMs. It's not yet clear whether side-effects outweigh the advantages.OTOH, I can already argue with numbers at hand that Bitcoin made the world poorer and worse off.

EvanAnderson: > My relationship with the software is intimate, almost as if it were an extra limb. I don’t think about what I’m doing when I use it.These two sentences do a great job of articulating a point I've tried (and failed) to make over the years re: the frustration (and sometimes visceral anger) I feel when arbitrary (or out-right unhelpful) changes are made to software I use-- particularly when that software is subject to forced updates.In the past I've tried to use analogies about musicians and their instruments, or carpenters and their tools. I'll add this one to my list of analogies.Silly quick example: There was no reason "Log off" needed to be changed to "Sign out" in the Windows Explorer close dialog post Windows 7. That change made the muscle memory gesture <CTRL>-<ESC> <ESC> <ALT>-<F4> <L> <ENTER> useless. Even more galling, though, you can't just substitute <S> for <L> in the gesture. The list box also contains "Switch User", "Sleep", and "Shutdown", too. To be sure you don't choose the wrong thing and, say, shut down a machine accidentally, you have to look at the screen. An appalling lack of attention to detail and disrespect for the users of the software to serve absolutely no functional purpose. (My BP is rising just typing about it...)