I think illiterate programmers are a good thing.

They are great examples of having a pragmatic goal in mind: they get near what they seek with efficiency, no loss of productivity.

I’ve seen some discussion about the Illiterate Programmers Phenomenon.

From what I researched over a few puffs of Motor Breath while eating dinner, Namanyay Goel’s post is likely ground zero of talk over the topic. Personally, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I felt his pain of doing something I hated but thought it was necessary to do because of some ethos, but that’s when you realize: if you don’t like doing something, do something else.

A seeking out of a Vibe is always present in either way of the creation process.

Creating software because you’re starting to experience a emotional atmosphere (this interest!) is done in either process of coding manually or using a LLM to make anything.

Doing the latter would get you faster to a point of high feeling of that distinct emotion,

results building your interest which sets you in. Small needs of know-how are assumed so you can learn about the possibility afterwards either through mistakes or looking into it another time. These mistakes increase reliability over time being sorted out by issues, threats, and ultimately death (a lot of deaths).

A journey isn’t linear.

It’s all over the damn place. It’s impossible to create the perfect starting position. Getting into the mass of that illusory order fast as possible, directed deep into it, you avoid all which tries to trap you.

So should you?

Well do you care, do you love? I’m starting to build a small project for using AI agents via Ollama & LangGraph for applying to jobs automatically for me (with me in the loop as well). I was meet with a choice between having a LLM build the whole thing for me or for me to do most of it myself: because I actually like to build things & desire to have a greater handle on coding, languages, Comp Sci, etc for transfer to other subjects, I’ll choose the augmented approach. Actually, I’m now learning Elisp more formally so I can extend Emacs and just simply learn lisp-like programming as it interest me. Using such tools is a trap, much like not using them is. In either process you’re likely going to do something which will blow up in your face later which is, as we all know, part of the learning process.

These people aren’t like you and me. They don’t really give two shits about if it’s made in this language or if they practiced correct protocols which don’t have a huge effect on the end result. They want something they want now and it to look cool doing it: and I love that for them. If it blows up in their face and they choose to ditch it great. If not, then they get to learn for real purpose; if you get caught in the cross fires, it’s a new reality of having to look before you cross (or, maybe not so new but different).

Wanna augment?

Namanyay actually has some pretty guide guidance on how you can better augment your use of LLMs so you can learn when you want to. So uh, go look there!

We’re gonna see some serious shit.

Security is going to be tougher from here on out through. Everyday people having access to code generators will likely give rise to a larger volume of issues to deal with (or they’ll all just be some average skill level).

If you don’t love doing something, then don’t do it.

Please don’t go the ends and think of this: obviously you can’t just not ‘do’ anything. But you can often augment you approach to doing something, finding the kind of joy that’s given to you doing that thing: but if you don’t like doing it, then just don’t do it.

Often I get into the topic of exercise with people who don’t exercise themselves

and they always try to rationalize to me why they don’t work out. Why? if you don’t want to work out then don’t work out. Unless you can’t while wanting to, you should never feel like you have to rationalize why you don’t work out.

I want to switch to kettlebells so bad.

I used to practice strength training only. After some time doing it (about \(2 \frac{1}{2}\) years) but soon I started to just simply go to get it over with, finding ways to just stream line it or plow through it to get it over with: I didn’t like doing it anymore. If you start using tools to streamline a process, you probably just hate doing it, and that’s totally fine.

I don’t think you should view yourself some sort of way for finding a routine process boring.

Life and learning isn’t about how well you can do this task over and over again for the sake of “knowing”. It’s okay if you enjoy doing that task, but don’t assume that because you feel bad about outsourcing it’s completion that it’s a issue at large. I have trouble with my times tables: I don’t care. I’ll use a calculator so I can focus on other parts of the problem. If I need to have the mental framework & system for having a intuitive approach to multiplication for some problem, I’ll just create it.

I do think this connects to the idea of Directness, but really it’s Pragmatic.

I’ve been reading Pragmatism by Williams James. I’m not very far yet, only the middle of chapter two, but it’s been having me connect a lot of ideas together within it’s context. Overall, vibecoders are just getting what’s good for them in the most pragmatic method possible: mine is to augment and learn deeply; but, both are both ends to someone’s good.