'Vibe Coding', Chatbots, and Other Bots (e.g. "Agents" Disguised as "Superintelligence") Aren't Saving You Time
False marketing, FOMO marketing tactics
There's this new article which speaks of productivity with slop (spoiler: there's none). Are there gains or losses? Was there ever any true potential to begin with? This was discussed yesterday in IRC in relation to E-mail and coding. An associate asked, is the above "Windows TCO or LLMs' fault or both?"
"Not all ICT is alike," he said, "some *reduces* productivity rather than amplifying ability".
In the case of shorteners (LLMs do not summarise, they can shorten and rephrase), they are typically culling a lot of important information and their rephrasings can - and do sometimes - result in changing the meaning of originals, i.e. they introduce errors and may lead to critical miscommunication. Expansions from prompt to a sea of words (or word salads) also does not add much of value; it just wastes people's time.
One recurring theme (as noted in IRC) is that "vibe coding" produces what was once known as "legacy code" - generally worthless code that needs replacing, nobody really (truly) understands, and can be a major pain to maintain (set aside the defects). █