Vibe coding 🖥️

Do you want access to the Chat GPT code assist as part of your job was the question I was asked. I said no, I’m not sure what I would use it for as the data structures I build and link together. To explain a task in English and then pose follow up questions to an AI Chat Bot seems like a lot more work and slower than just writing the code in plain old R directly.

Maybe I’m not with the times and fail to see the power of artificial intelligence but I generally see it clumsy and something more likely to get in my way rather than be actually helpful. But maybe I’m just stubborn. Years ago, I had this real beginners belief that it is better to code your own solution to problems then include a lot of libraries that to do a lot of extra things that I’ll never use and is overhead – though that’s not how the compiler or linker work in reality – libraries only link to symbols actually used and compilers optimize our unused code. And any library is likely written by an expert in the field who has included many optimizations I’m unaware of.

But AI is different than linking to a library. For one, it requires an external pay service that depends on internet access and you have to hope the API never changes. It also allows or maybe requires you to explain in English what you to do. That sounds nice if you have no idea what you are trying to do in code but in my experience working with AI, the generated code is full of bugs and by the time you explain what you are trying to do and then debug the code, you might as well right it correctly yourself. Libraries you learn the API and then you just link to them. No internet required.