alt Hacker NewsCan we explore the digging holes analogy a bit more?
Digging by hand with a shovel involves
1. Assessing the terrain and checking any documented or obvious obstacles (subsurface water, gas, electricity etc)
2. Planning the approach to digging the hole, most efficient angle, and ensuring that collapse doesn't occur
3. Organising disposal
4. Digging the hole
5. Dealing with any unforeseen issues (old tree roots, old foundations etc)
This is exactly the same whether digging by hand or using an excavator. The excavator isn't automating stages 1, 2, 3, or 5. It's just speeding up the 4th stage and only if there aren't stage 5 issues present.
LLMs when employed in a manner on the extreme end of the vibe coding spectrum are automating every stage of the process. If the excavator was hooked up to an LLM and left to run all stages of digging (extreme vibe digging?), I'd argue that yes, the operator is becoming lazy, and is running a very dangerous operation.
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> LLMs when employed in a manner on the extreme end of the vibe coding spectrum are automating every stage of the process
And when you have a backhoe, you can skip a lot of those things, too. It's bad, sure.. but so is skipping a lot of the important parts when using AI.
Most people don't even know to call before they dig, that's why there are public awareness campaigns about it. Most people don't consider any of the things you mentioned when digging a hole. Organizing disposal, really? Most people don't think that far ahead and dump the dirt right next to the hole.
With current LLMs, the excavator in your example would be the one to spend 90% of the time sitting there and doing steps 1-3, and possibly asking for permission to call for an inspection or a team of professionals should these steps reveal 4 cannot be done safely.
In theory, you take the same amount of time, and because step 4 is so fast you can spend more time on the steps before and after, and finish with a better result.
I think most people try the "extreme end" of vibe coding -- "Claude, write me an app to do X" once or twice and realize that doesn't really work -- to get it to work reliably you basically have to write a ROADMAP.md that details each step in a fair amount of detail -- pretty much the same work you'd have to do to hand a project off to a human intern.