Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

To me it feels like I’m in the camp of people who has already figured it out. And I have now learned the hard way that it’s almost impossible to teach others (I organized several meetups on the topic).

The ability seems like pure magic. I know that there are others who have it very easy now building even complex software with AI and delivering project after project to clients at record speed at no less of quality as they did before. But the majority of devs who won’t even believe that it’s remotely possible to do so is also not helping this style of building/programming mature.

I wouldn’t even call it vibe coding anymore. I think the term hurts what it actually is. For me it’s just a huge force multiplier, maybe 10-20x of my ability to deliver with my own knowledge and skills on a web dev basis.

It's just hard to believe something is real when it's not reproducible.

your problem domain is greenfield freelancing if i am reading you correctly?

The tarpit of AI discussion is that everybody assumes that their local perspective is globally applicable. It is not.

I feel like I’m in your camp, to my own surprise.

I’ll try my hand at some guidelines: the prime directive would be “use the right ai tool for the right task”. Followed by “use a statically typed language”. Followed by “express yourself precisely in English. You need to be able to write like a good technical lead and a good product manager.”

With those out of the way:

Completions work when you’re doing lots of rote moderately difficult work within established patterns. Otherwise, turn them off, they’ll get in the way. When they do work, their entire point is to extend your stamina.

Coding agents work when at-worst a moderately novel vertical needs implementation. New architecture and patterns need to be described exhaustively with accurate technical language. Split up the agents work into the same sort of chunks that you would do between coffee breaks. Understand that while the agent will make you 5x faster, you’ll still need to put in real work. Get it right the first time. Misuse the agent and straightening out the mistakes will cost more time than if you hadn’t used the agent at all.

If novelty or complexity is high, use an advanced reasoning model as interactive documentation, a sparring partner, and then write the code by hand. Then ask the reasoning model to critique your code viciously. Have the reasoning model configured for this role beforehand.

These things together have added up to the biggest force multiplier I’ve encountered in my career.

I’m very much open to other heuristics.

The spec, or prompts system, whatever you call it, is more like a recipe than code. It doesn't automatically generate the dishes; a good cook is still needed.

Yes and culinary schools exist and create new cooks in a reproducible way. Why can't coding with ai be taught?

I fully expect that in 1-2 years that SWE curriculum will have AI coding as a major feature. The question I have is will students be required to do their first year or first assignments in a given course without AI.

My ex teaches UX. We were talking about AI in academia last week. She said that she requires students to not use AI on their first assignment but on subsequent ones they are permitted to.

> For me it’s just a huge force multiplier, maybe 10-20x of my ability to deliver with my own knowledge and skills on a web dev basis.

I can tell you that this claim is where a lot of engineers are getting hung up. People keep saying that they are 10, 20 and sometimes even 100x more productive but it's this hyperbole that is harming that building style more than anything.

If you anyone could get 10 to 20 years worth of work done in 1 year, it would be so obvious that you wouldn't even have to tell anyone. Everyone would just see how much work you got done and be like "How did you do 2 decades worth of work this year?!"

This.

I work in a large corpo eco system of products across languages that talk to a mess of micro and not so micro services.

Ai tools are rarely useful out of the box in this context. Mostly because they can't fit the ecosystem into their context. I think i would need 10 agents or more for the task.

We have good documentation, but just fitting the documentation into context alongside a microservice is a tight fit. Most services would need one agent for the code (and even then it'd only fit 10% in context), and one for the docs.

Trying to use them without sufficient context, or trying to cram the right 10% into context, takes more effort than just coding the feature, and produces worse results with the worst kind of bugs, subtle ones borne from incorrect assumptions.

Because LLMs arent calculators. Theyre non deterministic. Recipes and dishes are predictably reproducible, ai output isnt.

> If novelty or complexity is high, use an advanced reasoning model as interactive documentation, a sparring partner, and then write the code by hand. Then ask the reasoning model to critique your code viciously. Have the reasoning model configured for this role beforehand.

Does this mean basically "Opus"? What goes into "Have the reasoning model configured for this role beforehand."?

I agree. I'd say it's simply that 20 years of software development isn't bottle necked by the ability to churn out code.

I disagree with the OP that AI coding can't be taught. My answer to why so many people have trouble would be that they refuse to learn. I see tons of people who are insanely biased against AI and then when they try and use it they give up after the first go (having tried a horrible application of AI like making a functioning production app with 1 single prompt, no one using AI for work is using it like that). They also don't take any suggestions on using it better because "I've tried it before and it sucked."

If you asked me months ago whether "prompt engineering" was a skill I'd have said absolutely not, it's no different than using stack overflow and writing tickets, but having watched otherwise skilled devs flounder I might have to admit there is some sort of skill needed.

Just record yourself doing it and post online. If the projects are indeed complex and you’ve found a way to be 20x more productive people will learn from it.

The problem is not having any evidence or basis on which to compare claims. Alchemists claimed for centuries to synthesize gold, if they only had video we could’ve ruled that out fast.

I've noticed a great deal programmers, very good programmers at that, that completely underestimate how fast things are moving. They're natural skeptics, and checked out ChatGPT when it was released. Then they maybe checked out some other models a year after. But eventually wrote it off as hype, and continue to do things their way. You know, artisanal code and all that.

I think that if you willfully ignore the development, you might be left in the dust. As you say, it is a force multiplier. Even average programmers can become extremely productive, if they know how to use the AI.

What sort of code are you writing? I find a lot of my stuff requires careful design, refactoring an existing system to work in a new way.

If the code I was writing was, say, small websites all the time for different clients, I can see it being a big improvement. But iterating on a complex existing platform, I’m not so sure that AI will keep the system designed in a maintainable and good way.

But if your experience is with the same sort of code as me, then I may have to re evaluate my judgments.

yep plus all these companies going all in on AI would have already laid off 95% of their software engineers.

FWIW, some people need training on using stack overflow and writing good tickets

For which reason exactly? Everyone will catch up to this eventually.

If contracting with bigger companies and enterprises, for which I am on 6-12 month projects, and even longer retainers is "greenfield freelancing" then sure. I actually do not really engage in small projects less than that, because they don't pay well.

Not websites, but rather bigger systems. The largest client I work with now has 150k daily active users, for which I mostly am putting together new backend features. The website itself is completely outsourced to another party with webflow. I am building the same stuff I have been building over the past 10 year in my career. I don't generally build small websites, or any "website" at all, unless its for relatives or friends.