alt Hacker NewsCoding is not at all like working a lump of clay unless you’re still writing assembly.
You’re taking a bunch of pre-built abstractions written by other people on top of what the computer is actually doing and plugging them together like LEGOs. The artificial syntax that you use to move the bricks around is the thing you call coding.
The human element of discovery is still there if a robot stacks the bricks based on a different set of syntax (Natural Language), nothing about that precludes authenticity or the human element of creation.
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It depends what you're doing not really what you do it with.
I can do some crud apps where it's just data input to data store to output with little shaping needed. Or I can do apps where there's lots of filters, actions and logic to happen based on what's inputted that require some thought to ensure actually solve the problem it's proposed for.
"Shaping the clay" isn't about the clay, it's about the shaping. If you have to make a ball of clay and also have to make a bridge of Lego a 175kg human can stand on, you'll learn more about Lego and building it than you will about clay.
Get someone to give you a Lego instruction sheet and you'll learn far less, because you're not shaping anymore.
Exactly, and that's why I find AI coding solving this well, because I find it tedious to put the bricks together for the umpteenth time when I can just have an AI do it (which I will of course verify the code when it's done, not advocating for vibe coding here).
This actually leaves me with a lot more time to think, about what I want the UI to look like, how I'll market my software, and so on.
> Coding is not at all like working a lump of clay unless you’re still writing assembly.
Isn't the analogy apt? You can't make a working car using a lump of clay, just a car statue, a lump of clay is already an abstraction of objects you can make in reality.
I think the analogy to high level programming languages misunderstands the value of abstraction and notation. You can’t reason about the behavior of an English prompt because English is underspecified. The value of code is that it has a fairly strong semantic correlation to machine operations, and reasoning about high level code is equivalent to reasoning about machine code. That’s why even with all this advancement we continue to check in code to our repositories and leave the sloppy English in our chat history.
You’re both right. It just depends on the problems you’re solving and the languages you use.
I find languages like JavaScript promote the idea that of “Lego programming” because you’re encouraged to use a module for everything.
But when you start exploring ideas that haven’t been thoroughly explored already, and particularly in systems languages which are less zealous about DRY (don’t repeat yourself) methodologies, the you can feel a lot more like a sculptor.
Likewise if you’re building frameworks rather than reusing them.
So it really depends on the problems you’re solving.
For general day-to-day coding for your average 9-to-5 software engineering job, I can definitely relate to why people might think coding is basically “LEGO engineering”.
> You’re taking a bunch of pre-built abstractions written by other people on top of what the computer is actually doing and plugging them together like LEGOs.
Correct. However, you will probably notice that your solution to the problem doesn't feel right, when the bricks that are available to you, don't compose well. The AI will just happily smash together bricks and at first glance it might seem that the task is done.
Choosing the right abstraction (bricks) is part of finding the right solution. And understanding that choice often requires exploration and contemplation. AI can't give you that.