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Linus Torvalds is surprisingly optimistic about vibe coding - except for this one 'horrible' use (www.zdnet.com)

submitted 1 month ago by leo@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show to c/news@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show

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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I am still wondering whether vibe coding will really get folks excited about programming. It is a way to create stuff, so I can see folks getting excited about vibe coding by itself. But making the jump from there to programming seems like it would be frustrating, since you would need to start over with small projects to have any chance at learning the basics.

And yeah, for now I do not believe that vibe coding will displace programming, because natural language is in many ways just a worse way to formulate logic.
It's like going through a translator to talk to someone in another language. It works for simple instructions and to some degree, you can have the translator explain a more general concept, like how to get to a specific place, without you needing provide every detail, but:

You can only guess what instructions the translator actually provides.
If the result isn't as expected, e.g. the person doesn't show up at the described place, then it is nigh impossible to find out which part of the instructions were wrong. Both because you don't understand the instructions, but because you might not know the way either.
And it is just a less efficient way to communicate than when you know the other person's language.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

But making the jump from there to programming seems like it would be frustrating, since you would need to start over with small projects to have any chance at learning the basics.

There's definitely big pitfalls here but I think being able to actually produce software that is useful to you is a better starting point than toy projects that are only for learning purposes. LLMs producing code normally explain what they are doing, and give more detailed explanations when asked that can be supplemented by looking things up separately, which could be one way to learn enough to make your own edits to get around its mistakes and limitations.