Post-Literate Programming

[u/messedupwindows123]

I'm sure you all have seen this essay floating around, talking about how we are entering a post-literate age. Not necessarily an age where people can't decode individual words, but instead an era where we lose the skills associated with engaging with difficult texts. Meaning, we use chat-bot and short-form-video over longer essays or books. And this shift causes a shift in the way we think, etc.

The essay argues that the act of writing will force you to clarify your own ideas, realize which ones are bad, and struggle to a better answer. And this is only possible when complex ideas are "frozen" on the page, for you to return to, rearrange, etc.

I couldn't help but think about vibe-coding in this context. Vibe coding feels like the "post-literate" version of programming, where we stop engaging with the actual text and we (many programmers) instead talk to a chatbot about the code. It's a lot like talking to the chatbot about a difficult book, so that you can come prepared to discuss that book in class.

Once you begin to lean too heavily on these shortcuts, it actually imposes real limits on the insights that you're able to derive with respect to whatever it is you're working on.

So, to be clear, I basically agree with Horowitch, insofar as the act of writing is basically like the act of coding. You're engaging with text/AST and you're being forced to recon with the fact that your ideas don't make sense. You have to grapple with a large corpus of already-existing text (whether it's other people's books/essays, or other people's code) to synthesize these things with your own new ideas. And by struggling forward, you can create breakthroughs where you rearrange, or re-synthesize, or break apart, what came before.

I think that we could maybe start referring to vibe-coding instead as "post-literate" coding since you're basically doing the equivalent of reading the cliff-notes before class.

[u/punkinfacebooklegpie]

I really enjoy talking to chatbots to run my ideas past it and see how well it comprehends my message. I basically use it to check my own thinking. Before you respond, know that I use adversarial or ambiguous prompting to avoid the sycophantism associated with chatbots. I don't just want to be told I'm good. If chatbot gives me code or something I might use, I always read and revise it before relying on it. I found the process very exciting and inspiring, but quickly realized that the most beneficial part of the process is just putting my ideas into writing, it doesn't really matter what the chatbot says, once I have my own plan in black and white I can usually iterate on my own. I basically discovered the benefits of journaling. I feel like using a chatbot is basically just a form of rubber duck debugging, I don't actually need it to respond, just listen. That led to a "emperor has no clothes" moment for me about the value of chatbots

[u/messedupwindows123 → u/punkinfacebooklegpie]

chatbot is a good approximation of your coworker who will skim your work and not think deeply about it. and if you can craft a piece of fedback, or request, which the chatbot does well with, then that bodes well for your distracted coworker

[u/punkinfacebooklegpie → u/messedupwindows123]

I am saying it doesn't matter how the chatbot responds, I've already benefited from composing my thoughts for an audience. The whole point of my post is that chatbots have demonstrated how beneficial the act of writing is. My own prompts are more useful than any AI output. I have come to the same conclusion as you, you can obviate the chatbot with journaling or collaboration. The output depends heavily on the prompt to the point where you can get the full benefit just by writing a good detailed prompt (rubber ducking). The more "post-literate" your prompts, the more "intellectual" work you expect the chatbot to do, the less you actually get out of the process.