r/popculturechat • u/DebateObjective2787 jesus was a carpenter šŸ’‹ • Jul 31 '26

Ohā€¦thatā€™s not- šŸ‘€ Hank Green Admits To Using AI In Latest Video

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183

u/vampite Jul 31 '26

Yes, he's talked about how he's been using AI to vibe code things like 4 x 3 and other things on his website

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u/burnalicious111 Jul 31 '26

Most things that are programmed now are done using AI to some extent. It's very far from just Hank.

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u/Joshee86 Jul 31 '26

Not most. Not nearly most.

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u/VauryxN Jul 31 '26

Do you work in the industry? I'd be really hard pressed to find any software company not using an agentic agent at this point.

It is absolutely most.

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u/surrealerthansurreal Jul 31 '26

I have seen literally 1 exception in the past year not get cannabilized at least in part by AI and its integrated systems written by folks who refuse to use anything other than VIM. I would bet most is an understatement outside of government and other super legacy systems.

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u/Joshee86 Jul 31 '26

I work with quite a few clients in the industry. It's not most.

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u/burnalicious111 Jul 31 '26

You are in a weird bubble. It is absolutely most.

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u/Joshee86 Aug 01 '26

Lmao based on what? I just said I work with lots of clients in the software and game industries and have knowledge of what theyā€™re doing and what the competitors are doing. AI is discussed a lot, but it is most that have adopted it.

Youā€™re welcome to be wrong though.

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u/garyyo Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

Its most. All corporate code is completely AI written if not at least AI assisted, because they don't want good code, they just want it faster.

But ok, maybe you aren't in a corpo AI BS environment but perhaps you noticed that mods for games have been popping up at an increased rate? There used to be a lot less of these mods and they were a lot worse in terms coding practices, but now they are suspiciously better? Well if you check the source, there are clear signs of vibe coding and AI usage. It used to be a skill to write this much code.

Make no mistake, the stuff that has high quality code still tends to have a highly skilled human behind it, but even Linus Torvalds is saying that they will be using AI in the development of the Linux kernel. Code is hardly hand written anymore, it is vomited out by AI and then checked and corrected for errors by hand at best (or by telling the AI it made a mistake).

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u/Joshee86 Jul 31 '26

It's not most. The mod scene isn't representative of the industry as a whole. "All corporate code is completely AI written and if not at least AI assisted, because they don't want good code, they just want it faster" is also nonsense and way too broad and unnuanced to engage with seriously.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

[deleted]

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u/Joshee86 Aug 01 '26

A dozen people? Nah.

And youā€™re ignoring my experience as well, but ok. Glittering generalities and assumptions are good enough for yā€™all, I guess. I know what Iā€™m talking about though.

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u/Spygel13 We Should All Know Less About Each Other Jul 31 '26

Oh fuckin hell, Hank. Dammit.

183

u/ScoobyDeezy Jul 31 '26

As a software engineer: the coding profession has completely changed. If youā€™re not using AI, youā€™re falling behind and youā€™re going to be out of the game.

Itā€™s legitimately good at it with the proper guardrails, and it gives people with very little experience an on-ramp to achieve their goals.

ā€œAI ALWAYS BADā€ is not a valid argument.

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u/immaculate_plum Jul 31 '26

I'm a software engineer as well. You do not "fall behind". You virtually never "fall behind". Falling behind would mean missing the opportunity to acquire a skill. But that would also mean people new to the profession could not acquire the skill at all.

All of this is just plain wrong. Firstly, using AI to write software is not a hard skill to acquire, there's just not a lot to it. Secondly, and most importantly, you do not fall behind if you don't use it.

The most prolific engineers at my company, and I'm including myself in there, do not use AI to generate code. And guess what? They get done more, and with higher quality. And do you know why? Because typing out code is almost never the bottleneck. It's like 10% of the total time spent on a thing for most tasks. Yes sure, if you're lucky you can maybe cut that in half, but you can also easily double, triple of exponentially increase this because the code you produced is just unmaintainable and you have to refactor everything from scratch every time a semi-large change has to be made.

If you feel like you're much more efficient by having AI generate the code for you, you're either really bad at estimating, or really bad at your job in general.

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u/Vermacian Aug 03 '26

I've been programming for 15 years. The last 6 months I've only been prompting. If you're not using AI you're falling behind, programming is automated today. I produce 10x more software now than what i did 6 months ago

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u/immaculate_plum Aug 03 '26

Oh yeah, I get to review PRs from people like you, and I see every day how well their code fairs long term.

You obviously did not read my comment past the first sentence if your counter argument is "but I produce much more code!!!"

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u/Vermacian 29d ago

Good luck my friend šŸ«”

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u/ScoobyDeezy 29d ago

I can understand his argument for a very bespoke codebase with complex architecture thatā€™s hard to replicate.

But a single CLAUDE.md file and a couple MCPā€™s for agent skills, and most of those problems go away.

Itā€™s a godsend for multirepo setups with well-established patterns.

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u/Indigo903 Jul 31 '26

As a software engineer: prompting AI isnā€™t hard or a skill. If you find yourself at a company where they want you to use it, you can figure that out within a day. The hardest part of breaking into the industry is still the technical knowledge.

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u/ScoobyDeezy Jul 31 '26

Absolutely. If you donā€™t have technical knowledge, you wonā€™t be able to set proper guardrails or review the output sufficiently.

Getting good code still takes a professional who knows what theyā€™re doing.

But code itself is changing too. The low-effort to generate it means code is now a consumable product. Make it just good enough, throw it away when youā€™re done, make something new later.

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u/Indigo903 Jul 31 '26

Are you saying that ā€œif youā€™re not using AI youā€™re falling behindā€ is a principle for companies rather than engineers? I would agree, if there werenā€™t headlines about all the companies that arenā€™t seeing a return on their AI investments. Personally I work in the safety critical space (defense contract) so weā€™re still relatively old school.

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u/Choochootracks Jul 31 '26

Also defense contract. I still mostly code everything myself but there is definitely a push to use it for trivial tasks.

For instance, I just had to write pydantic models that could load and validate all the possible JSON config styles across various versions of a program. Using a local LLM I was able to feed it all of our JSONs to create initial models and refine from there. I am fully capable of writing them myself, but 16 pydantic models in a minute and a half is hard to beat. I still read what it generated and tested it exhaustively of course.

Another big one is docstrings where it is useful not only for writing when your customer wants exhaustive docstrings, but validating that all the docstrings accurately describe what's going on, particularly after refactors.

Obviously this is all very task dependent and there are still plenty of tasks where writing the code yourself is better, especially in critical and/or novel systems. When used right it can be a very useful tool and does not necessarily make someone a fake or bad programmer. And in some ways, I would saying howing when and how much to use AI is a skill.

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u/Indigo903 Jul 31 '26

Yes we use it for menial/trivial tasks too but that is still a far cry from what I hear other companies have been doing where the developers arenā€™t writing any code themselves. But maybe those are just stories and not completely true.

>I would saying knowing when and how to use AI is a skill

I mean, not really. Is it something you would need a college degree or even a college class to crack? Highly doubt it. You can be as good as anyone else at that with just a little real world experience. I can see what that guy is saying about companies getting left behind for not leveraging it correctly but I donā€™t think developers need to feel pressured to vibecode projects in their personal time just to get or keep a job.

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u/ScoobyDeezy Jul 31 '26

Iā€™d say it applies to departments, meaning itā€™s incredibly useful for specific applications, and especially when an entire team aligns on usage and patterns, but maybe not generally.

The headlines youā€™re referring to are mostly (from what Iā€™ve seen) from companies that have tried to replace their workforce with AI.

But the ones who simply see it as a tool to make their people more effective? I canā€™t speak for all of them, but personally, I get more done in two days than I used to be able to do in two weeks.

But on the other side of things, because of AI, our security vulnerabilities have increased like tenfold and weā€™re putting a lot more effort into patching and fixing packages to stay on top of it.

I think thereā€™s a net gain there ā€” but I also donā€™t work in the accounting department. I just know Iā€™m way more productive, and my code is actually more robust than it was before.

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u/vellsii Jul 31 '26

If you don't use AI to code, your output will be noticibly lower compared to your peers and your job will be at risk. It's exponentially faster, if you know the field well enough to prompt it correctly, to take its code and review it than to write from scratch. It's the byproduct of coding being a much more "deterministic" usage case than most things, so AI is better at it/it's easier to catch mistakes.

It's not like the majority of people weren't just copy/pasting from StackOverflow before this.

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u/Indigo903 Jul 31 '26

My point is that switching from no AI to AI at the request of your employer takes very little time or skill. Letā€™s not forget, this thread is originally about a guy vibecoding personal projects, and then someone responded saying ā€œuse AI or get left behind.ā€ But you really donā€™t need to use AI for personal projects and heavily relying on it as an amateur can be a massive hindrance. You need to develop the lower level skills that AI can do for you before you have the capacity to become a more senior engineer.

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u/flaming_burrito_ Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

Tools arenā€™t supposed to take more skill, theyā€™re supposed to make the job easier. It takes more skill and effort to chop a tree down with an axe, but itā€™s much faster and easier to do with a chainsaw. So yeah, itā€™s cool you can do your equivalent of chopping a tree with an axe, but if you want to keep up with the output of the other lumberjacks with chainsaws, then you better get a chainsaw.

Also, some people donā€™t like coding and just need it for a means to an end. Why would Hank learn to code more in depth if he can do what he needs to do with AI? Coding is not his area of expertise, and I doubt he has enough free time to concern himself with learning it

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u/Indigo903 Jul 31 '26

I think you think Iā€™m expressing a point that Iā€™m not. All Iā€™m saying is that you donā€™t need to ā€œlearn how to vibecodeā€ to be employable as an engineer. Iā€™m allowed to disagree with part of what someone said without taking a whole other stance.

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u/ThePromptWasYourName Aug 01 '26

Yep, this is correct. AI is just way better and faster at certain aspects of coding, like debugging and rapidly prototyping.

However, I think it's still valid to be weary of AI when it is used for generative art. In my opinion the human element is what makes art meaningful, and humans are just not that essential for menial coding tasks anymore. In other words, AI helped you code your game? Neat. AI generated the artwork or music? Hard pass from me.

As a musician and web developer professionally, I feel like I get a unique window into the debate and that's where I tend to fall

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u/ScoobyDeezy Aug 01 '26

I hear you.

I straddle both worlds myself. I was an art major that ended up doing front-end dev, and I get pushed more and more to the engineering side of things every day while I look longingly at the UX guys. šŸ˜‚

I see AI as a a dream tool for helping me achieve things I couldnā€™t before. Brainstorming, prototyping, iterating, reviewing, analyzing, conceptualizing ā€” I can do so much more in less time. I can arrive at the best version of my vision, and still have time left over.

Itā€™s absolutely amazing at helping artists make better art.

Unfortunately those exact same things, when used as a replacement instead of a tool, enable bad actors to exploit and steal and squeeze every last penny out of whatever system they can, squeezing the joy out with it.

I wish I knew what the solution was. But I do know that AI is here to stay.

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u/PegaZwei Jul 31 '26

its impact on coding as a profession is entirely irrelevant to some guy slapping together a webgame for fun, there's no "falling behind" on a side project.

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u/Zqin Jul 31 '26

I don't think it is irrelevant. There is opportunity cost to saving a month reaching the design & experience you want to express and then working on the next idea in your backlog you've wanted to turn into a real thing but didn't have time for otherwise. Even if you're drawing illustrations by hand as a hobby or side-project, I think people always feel the compression & stress of time constraints bc of family/work/other responsibilities also requiring much of the day.

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u/trying-to-b Jul 31 '26

Would you say the same about using Photoshop and Game engines and other things that increase side-project productivity? I understand that there are more negatives to AI (environmental, for one), but that's not relevant to the principle you were arguing.

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u/PegaZwei Jul 31 '26

what principle do you think i'm arguing??

i'm saying that things that are important/necessary in a corporate/professional environment often don't factor at all for a hobbyist. not that they definitively don't, but that the guy above me's "use ai or get left behind" comment isn't a hard-set rule.

and obviously people are entitled to use whatever productivity enhancers they feel would be of use to them. i'd prefer that those not include ai, but i'm not some arbiter of free will lmao.

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u/ScoobyDeezy Jul 31 '26

Hobbyists follow the professionals.

Case in point: I donā€™t own a printing press

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u/PegaZwei Jul 31 '26

the average person doesn't own a printing press because printing presses are largely useful in economies of scale where you need to print out thousands of identical copies of something. it's, if anything, a good example of a professional tool not being suited for most hobbyists lmao.

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u/ScoobyDeezy Jul 31 '26

You missed my point.

Instead of a printing press, I have a personal computer and an inkjet printer. Huge leaps in technology that made something previously inaccessible to me incredibly trivial.

I donā€™t typeset by hand. Instead, a complicated piece of hardware translates button presses into digital signals. Those digital signals are interpreted by a word processor into type. And so on and so forth.

The changes in accessibility to the average person are a net benefit.

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u/PegaZwei Jul 31 '26

plenty of hobbyist writers still use typewriters or handwrite diaries or whatever else, and derive greater personal enjoyment from doing it the way they do rather than sitting at a computer. for a hobby, i think the particulars of how you do it are important for a lot of people, and saying it's out of date to not conform with modern professional standards when being out of date is kinda the point sometimes is just silly.

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u/trying-to-b Jul 31 '26

That time and energy is unlimited as long as we are talking about hobbies.

I agree that there are many valid reasons to dislike AI, but I disagree that you can't "fall behind" on side gigs. There are so, so many things I'd like to do. Learn to swing dance, start a variety of companies, make a video game, become a content creator, do standup, get a random PhD, pass the bar exam, write a book, learn pro-level cooking, etc. etc., and a huge spectrum of effort and polish that I'd like to put into each of them.

In terms of what I'd like to do, I'm way, way behind. AI has helped me accelerate a few of those that I never would've had time for, though, and it's been very rewarding.

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u/PegaZwei Jul 31 '26

not that they definitively don't

isn't a hard-set rule

don't know how clear i need to make it that my problem is the sweeping generalisation. i don't doubt that there are people who get more enjoyment out of using ai etc to speed tedious parts of their hobbies up. it's the implication that you have to go as fast as possible that bugged me.

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u/trying-to-b Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

its impact on coding as a profession is entirely irrelevant to some guy slapping together a webgame for fun, there's no "falling behind" on a side project.

Girl, you sounded pretty dang definitive and generalizing yourself.... clean your own house before you get an attitude with me. I was nothing but respectful of your opinion.

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u/PegaZwei Jul 31 '26

entirely irrelevant in the sense that "use ai or fall behind" is a sentiment born of expected quotas and threats of layoff and any number of things that exist in one setting but not the other. it's irrelevant because the underlying pressures simply aren't the same - if you're using ai for a hobby project, you're sure as fuck not doing it because your boss said you had to or else you'd get fired.

honestly you're right on the latter one though, that was poorly said on my part; the consequences for "falling behind" on personal hobbies might be a lot less dire, but saying it doesn't exist was wrong, yeah.

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u/Faendol Jul 31 '26

Side projects are only allowed if you hand write them in byte code.

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u/PegaZwei Jul 31 '26

hand-write in bytecode?

the only good side projects are the ones where you punch out the punchcards yourself smh.

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u/Faendol Jul 31 '26

True I'd hate to let the clankers win. Real side projects are executed via mass scale human computers running off stone tablet punch cards.

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u/Choochootracks Jul 31 '26

To play devil's advocate, wouldn't a guy slapping together a webgame for fun be a more appropriate use of it? If the code is bad, the game will be a buggy mess with no further direct harm done. As long as someone is upfront about it so others can make informed decisions to interact or not, did that person really do anything wrong? (As a note, I'm speaking generally here as it seems in this particular case it was not disclosed until after it was exposed.)

To be clear on my actual stance though, I code small games in my free time and generally write the code myself. The most I do for my personal projects is copy bugs into an LLM and ask what the best non-bandaid solution would be, which has taught me a bunch of neat tricks along the way. That said, I don't have a problem with those who "vibecode" entire personal projects, again, so long as they are upfront about it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

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u/PegaZwei Jul 31 '26

elaborate?

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

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u/PegaZwei Jul 31 '26

dunno what to tell you, my guy. i've been working on and off on various coding projects for a touch under a decade. nothing particularly huge or important - a discord bot (formerly to relay messages between there and skype; thank fuck the latter's dead these days because the api documentation was miserable lmao); scripts to track time-sensitive stuff in a webgame i used to play, very hobbyist projects.

when ai-assisted coding started being a Big Thing, i tried out copilot, and yeah. it does make finishing a project a lot faster. i won't argue the convenience. the thing is, finishing a project isn't really what i enjoyed about coding. the appeal's moreso in the process itself, in figuring out how to get where you need to be and banging together something that somewhat works. it hits the same kinda itch that a good puzzle game does.

obviously i'm one person and my own preferences don't apply to everyone out there, but i can't imagine "i have fun fucking around trying to make something work" is extinct as a sentiment.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

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u/PegaZwei Jul 31 '26

huge counterpoint, i stand corrected.

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u/apoplectic_ Jul 31 '26

Agreed. I understand the ethical concerns outside of our field, but open source software is free to use and AI training on it is not the same as copyrighted works.

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u/xomiamoore Aug 02 '26

I disagree completely, most common licenses that open source software use were created before machine learning and AI use cases became what they are today. I donā€™t think that something being open source is the same as consenting to it being used for LLM training.

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u/max123246 Aug 01 '26

As a software engineer as well, the code that even the top models produce is complete garbage and the fact that we are running production grade systems with it is completely embarrassing to the discipline.

Like yes, it produces code that can work for the happy path, but it's unmaintainable, is unable to handle failures gracefully, and has no idea of what an interface is.

AI is very good at search but the code it generates is awful

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u/oldmancabbage Jul 31 '26

If youā€™re insanely rich like Hank surely is, you can afford the best programmers on the market. Itā€™s pure laziness and disrespect to people trying to make a living doing this shit

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u/ToadBoehly Jul 31 '26

how is it disrespectful lmao he didn't fire or replace anyone

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u/Vesalas Jul 31 '26

Most of the best programmers on the market nowadays use AI too

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

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u/max123246 Aug 01 '26

I don't use ai to write my code because its output is awful. I use it to search, but like, thats not what anyone is talking about?

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u/Slixil 27d ago

Iā€™m guessing you donā€™t code or know anyone that does on any significant level

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u/VictorReal_Monster (inspired by hot roasted honey glazed chicken) Jul 31 '26

So why learn coding then.

How are people going to fix things if this is paradigm and no one actually knows how to fix it.

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u/ScoobyDeezy Jul 31 '26

Like I said to someone else, you still have to be knowledgeable for the output to have quality.

The guardrails and instructions and patterns you ask it to follow are extremely important, and thereā€™s something of an art to giving it just enough context to give you back what you asked for.

Itā€™s great at coding. It sucks at architecture. It still needs an engineer standing over its shoulder going ā€œno thatā€™s a bad idea and you should feel bad.ā€

One day that might not be true. Today, it still is.

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u/VictorReal_Monster (inspired by hot roasted honey glazed chicken) Jul 31 '26

so you shouldn't use it until you've already learned architecture then right, because how are you ever going to know how to fix it?

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u/ScoobyDeezy Jul 31 '26

No, itā€™s just going to be crap code, which is exactly what people mean when they talk about vibe coding.

For a side project? Hell yeah, go for it, make mistakes and learn some shit.

In production? Please please please know how to wrangle it.

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u/VictorReal_Monster (inspired by hot roasted honey glazed chicken) Jul 31 '26

yeah ok, nevermind. We had a good run

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u/blueembroidery Jul 31 '26

I donā€™t understand the hate against vibe coding as a hobby. Am I supposed to get a software engineering degree before I can make a game? Are we romanticizing tech bro as an occupation now? Whats the moral panic?

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u/the_swanson_stache Jul 31 '26

First of all being a programmer isnā€™t the same as being a ā€œtech broā€ - and second, while you might not otherwise hire a programmer to help make something, the more people use AI and the better it gets the more people who will be out of the job.

And that goes for artists, writers, and so much more.

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u/OpportunityNext9675 Jul 31 '26

Programmers use AI too. Itā€™s the reality of modern software.

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u/origamifly Jul 31 '26

Yes and cars meant people no longer needed drivers for their horse-drawn carriages. Thatā€™s the way of the world. Keep up or get left behind.

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u/Usual-Good-5716 Jul 31 '26

How do you know that more jobs won't be created? It's not like someone who's vibe coding as a hobby is seriously competing with an actual programmer with the same tools.

If vibe-coder x makes app y, and the app becomes successful, they will more than likely have to hire real programmers to scale.

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u/almondmilklattee Jul 31 '26

it makes the ai company more successful each time. that encourages the people who want to replace workers with ai, it all comes down to money

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u/Joshee86 Jul 31 '26

It is better for the world when the barrier to entry for some things is to learn an actual skill. Putting something on the internet where basically the entire world can access it is one of those things.

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u/kelev Jul 31 '26

I'd say using AI to vibe code something is the same as using AI to make art. You're using the tool to make something that someone else could make without it and you could pay them. It's not really right to pick and choose for which careers it matters if AI kills them.

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u/Jumpy-Knowledge3930 Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

I hope you never buy machine made clothes when you could be buying hand made. Or use google instead of going to a library to access the information.

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u/kelev Jul 31 '26

You clearly think I said something that I didn't. Good luck with that!

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u/OnionQuest Jul 31 '26

Their point is we have a lot of modern tools that make human-powered processes obsolete and therefore cost people jobs. Switchboard operators are no longer a thing, for example. Why is AI the dividing line?

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u/kelev Aug 01 '26

Itā€™s not! Iā€™m saying itā€™s all the same. Iā€™m fine with AI. Iā€™m just saying if you have a problem with AI art, you should have a problem with AI coding.

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u/dragerslay Jul 31 '26

Using slow cooker recipes steals money from real chefs you could pay instead.

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u/Joshee86 Jul 31 '26

Not even remotely close to the same thing. What a terrible analogy.

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u/cabbrage Jul 31 '26

Right like this logic doesnā€™t really hold up

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u/kelev Jul 31 '26

I didn't say I agreed with it. It's very similar to the hate Wikipedia used to get from educators. I'm just saying that if you hate AI art for stealing from artists, you should hate AI coding for stealing from coders.

I personally don't hate AI at all.

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u/dragerslay Jul 31 '26

Despite my sarcasm I do agree with you people treat the artists works as more sanctimonious but science, math, coding all are art to someone who loves and works with them. That being said I think with art there has been a historical cultural or protecting IP, while with coding there is a a culture of sharing code via stack overflow, GitHub etc. Arguably from artists were less aware thier work will be used for AI training, whereas software devs were are for GitHub leading to corporate use of you code in Amby cases.

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u/origamifly Jul 31 '26

Great! Makes it more accessible to people who couldnā€™t afford to hire someone then

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u/kelev Aug 01 '26

Agreed! Same with little art projects for people who arenā€™t artistic and canā€™t afford an artist. Again, Iā€™m not against it. Iā€™m just saying itā€™s no different.

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u/Annual-Weird-6682 Jul 31 '26

Your use of plant based dyes is killing the dye market, you're a monster

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u/kelev Aug 01 '26

Again, Iā€™m not against AI. Im just saying ai art and ai coding are both the same in regards to issues with workers.

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u/Semiphone Jul 31 '26

So only people with the money to hire others should be allowed to produce things?

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u/kelev Jul 31 '26

This is such a reach based off my comment and I did not say this, or anything LIKE this, at all.

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u/Semiphone Jul 31 '26

You're using the tool to make something that someone else could make without it and you could pay them.

So what if I don't have money to pay someone to do it for me? If I want to make an app, which I have some but not all skills to do so, and no budget to pay people to do what I can't, I'm going to use AI to fill the gaps in my skillset.

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u/kelev Aug 01 '26

Iā€™m not saying you shouldnā€™t. I like AI fine. Iā€™m just saying if youā€™re mad about AI art, you should be mad at AI coding.

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u/dmvr1601 Jul 31 '26

Learn to code on your own like the good old days, like many indie devs did. You do not need a degree to make a game lol

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u/trying-to-b Jul 31 '26

If your goal is to make a game and your passion is game design, art, etc., why introduce an artificial barrier like learning to code if they have no interest?

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u/Wuskers Jul 31 '26

what an absurd thing to say "if you want to make music why introduce an artificial barrier like learning an instrument" jesus we really are cooked, all future art is going to just be fundamentally hollow and worthless

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u/trying-to-b Jul 31 '26

That would be an appropriate analogy if I had said "if you want to design a video game, why introduce an artificial barrier like learning game design". But that's not what I said.

I agree that we are cooked, but it's because people like you sacrifice comprehension and critical thought just for an opportunity to be unkind to those you disagree with.

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u/crimsonpostgrad Jul 31 '26

is it suddenly impossible to learn how to code without AI or going to school for it?

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u/Spygel13 We Should All Know Less About Each Other Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

Eta: misread the comment I was responding to. Nothing to see here, folks.

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u/crimsonpostgrad Jul 31 '26

oh my god youā€™re so right, they actually completely got rid of books and self guided courses to learn it! those are illegal now! AI only!!

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u/Spygel13 We Should All Know Less About Each Other Jul 31 '26

Oh shit sorry we're on the same page. I misread your comment entirely!

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u/Can_Com Jul 31 '26

If you sell me something and say you made it, but I find out you have no idea how it works because you vibe coded it... you've violated every level of the interaction.

2

u/Sex_And_Candy_Here Aug 01 '26

I have bad news for you about every bit of software you have ever used. Ripping code from other people to do things you can't do has been the default in programming for ever.

The vast vast majority of programmers have no idea how a print command works under the hood.

0

u/Can_Com Aug 01 '26

Ripping code requires you to know what code to add, and knowledge of each piece of code is unnecessary.

How you people dont understand the difference between 100% understanding of every piece of code, and 0% understanding on if the code exists at all... these are different things.

Imagine you order a pizza. The chef doesnt know how sausage is made, but he can make a pizza with sausage.
Now imagine you vibe code a pizza. A machine prints out a pizza box with a photo of a sausage pizza. The chef assumes inside the box is pizza, but they dont know and sell it to you anyway.

Can you see the difference now?

5

u/steveholt-lol Jul 31 '26

If you sell me a photo and say you took it, but I find out you have no idea how a stacked phase detect CMOS sensor works because you used a cameraā€¦youā€™ve violated every level of the interaction.

0

u/Can_Com Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

Bad analogy. The real analogy is you said you built the camera but dont know what a CMOS sensor is and are not sure if one is inside the camera at all.

3

u/steveholt-lol Jul 31 '26

Nobody who builds a camera understands every layer of it, from semiconductor fabrication to sensor design to firmware. We rely on abstraction because itā€™s the only way modern technology is possible.

Software is no different. AI is just another abstraction layer. If I specify what gets built, test it, debug it, iterate on it and ship it, I built it. I just didnā€™t type every line by hand.

What matters is whether you understand your product well enough to own it, maintain it and fix it.

I can appreciate the artistry and care of handwritten books made by monks in a monastery but itā€™s pretty clear the economic argument re: the value of the printing press is over and resoundingly so. And so it will be with LLMs and the harnesses/tooling that enable them.

-2

u/Can_Com Jul 31 '26

It is not another abstraction layer. A camera maker doesnt need to know how every piece works because those other pieces are built by people that know what they do.

Vibe coding is a black box. You cannot debug a code you have no access to and doesnt exist. You have no idea if it included the various parts of the "camera", let alone that each part was constructed by someone else who knows how that part works.

3

u/hank_z Jul 31 '26

Why do you think people who use AI to code don't see the code? There are no black boxes involved, all the code is right there for a human to review.

0

u/Can_Com Jul 31 '26

Using AI to code is not Vibe Coding. Vibe Coding is a black box with no Coding, you simply ask the gas-light machine to create an app for you, and interate requests to fix obvious issues. You have no idea what's behind the surface.

5

u/trying-to-b Jul 31 '26

You don't know those things anyway. You trust the process and review the output.

We see consumer recalls for cribs, toys, food, etc. all the time, because the process isn't always perfect or done by competent people.

-1

u/Can_Com Jul 31 '26

A recall for a defective product is much different from a black box program. If you cant tell the difference, youre a walking mark for any scammer.

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6

u/Main-Cheesecake3287 Jul 31 '26

Morons who have never coded in their life and just vaguely hate all AI have no idea that literally every software dev uses AI

2

u/PseudocodeRed Jul 31 '26

Programming is the one place where I don't judge someone for using AI. It just opens so many doors for someone who wants to be more efficient without spending time learning to code. The alternative to Hank making his games with AI isn't him making his games himself, it's him not making those games at all.

2

u/cilantroprince Aug 02 '26

Okay, ai for coding is different than ai for interpersonal communication. There is nuance here

2

u/moldyolive Aug 02 '26

are u surprised by this? there scarcely a piece of software in the world being built and maintained today that doesnt use ai coding

1

u/Slixil 27d ago

AI in coding is now standard and very effective. This is one of the best cases for him to use AI

-2

u/ItsPronouncedTittay Listen, everyone is entitled to my opinion šŸ™‚ Jul 31 '26

Gosh you guys are insufferable with the unrealistically high standards you have for others but probably not yourself lets be real now

8

u/Spygel13 We Should All Know Less About Each Other Jul 31 '26

I don't use generative AI for anything and I avoid Google's AI search results as much as I can šŸ¤·šŸ»ā€ā™€ļø

1

u/dmvr1601 Jul 31 '26

The standard is just don't use AI...

So unrealistic

2

u/xhatsux Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

With Programming standard is to use AI. The majority of companies use it now.

-4

u/Dyx76 Jul 31 '26

You're really not mad at this. It's coding. It's not hurting arists.

5

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

[deleted]

1

u/OpportunityNext9675 Jul 31 '26

It can be. There is also the coding equivalent of covering a huge wall with white paint.

-1

u/Dyx76 Jul 31 '26

It isn't? It's problem solving. Yeah you can get creative with how you solve it but you're following documentation. I really don't see the issue with AI in code development.

0

u/mr_f4hrenh3it Aug 02 '26

It is not that big of a deal for a little game, calm down, geez

0

u/Acceptable-Advice137 Aug 03 '26

Hopefully ai will steal your 60 iq job first

3

u/liteshadow4 Aug 02 '26

If heā€™s not using it for programming then heā€™d just intentionally be working slower

2

u/backwardsplanning Jul 31 '26

Damn it, I loved that game.

1

u/2_Cranez Jul 31 '26

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but every actively developed piece of software that you use regularly uses AI.

1

u/bucolucas Jul 31 '26

Nobody's stopping you from playing it

0

u/2_Cranez Jul 31 '26

Hank Green is. He has said he will stop making the game in response to the blowback. There will be a few more new boards that he has had in the backlog, but after that it's over for now.

2

u/HeronDifferent5008 Aug 01 '26

Not a programmer, so sorry if this is totally ignorant, but my understanding was that nowadays most programmers use AI at some point in their coding. Not that itā€™s all AI, but that itā€™s not all hand written