alt Hacker NewsSomething something halting problem. I never said don't use the tool!! I use the tool too! I just dont want to talk/read about it all the time.
Programming will never be dead.
1. Because the situation you describe is fantasy.
2. Even if it is a reality and all software can be verified (it cant), I will still be programming and so will millions of others because its fun, programming and sex are really damn close to things I cant live without. Not everyone got into engineering for the money. I legitimately love this activity, it is my actual passion. I would rather be poor than give it up.
Its like im being told everyday all day, non stop that the thing I love is not worth loving.
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I see. I'm not trying to put down your love of programming. The only programming that I really can say excites me (C64 or the like) died a long time ago, before I even started programming for money.
Nothing is stopping you from enjoying the sort of programming that you like. But I think it's healthy to accept that that style will soon not be mainstream. It will be like knitting your own clothes, and that's okay.
Regarding formal verification, it's not needed, as LLMs already make on average about as many errors as the average human programmer.
For me, 90% of programming is just a tool to get the job done. It's like a machine in a factory that spits out 50 spoons a minute, and it doesn't need to be any more beautiful than that. If you enjoy woodcarving and want to spend an hour making your own spoon, do that and don't let the existence of the machine make you feel that hobby is any less worth loving.
This seems more like you projecting what you want in terms of what you enjoy and hoping the world optimises around that preference.
The truth is LLMs is what you need to be optimising around as they will become the standard.
I guess that’s something you need to work through that you’re just so sick of reading about the single biggest evolution in technology since the internet :(
Maybe tech isn’t for you if you don’t like trying to stay on top of it.
You need to bow in the direction of Silicon Valley every three hours or the inquisition comes.
Of course people will still program for the foreseeable future. But it is still a legit question how long it will be before people come to accept a vibe coded program and are ready to deal with its flaws (of course with more vibe coding) compared to hiring a consultancy.
I'm not talking about mission critical software, but bespoke business applications that are produced by software engineering sweatshops and where the actual users are inured to incomplete features with sharp edges, arcane bugs, and incomprehensibly long intervals between bug report and fix.
Even in mission critical software we will likely see a lot of LLM tool usage. Even if the copyright plug is pulled and all vibecoded applications are regarded as copyright violations, its uses to analyze existing code and give advice will remain. In this world, writing applications entirely by hand will become an artisanal discipline.