[Deliberate 118] The post-scarcity world of words

I gotta admit that recently I find it kinda hard to write new blog posts. Something in the back of my head is whispering:

What’s the point if ChatGPT can spit out infinity of essays?

It feels like something previously valuable (and uniquely human)- decent writing – became a tap that most people can just turn on and continue to enjoy to the point of drowning. It manifests on the consumption side too: Because LLMs can answer all my questions, I’m less inclined to read that new essay, newsletter, article. There is less and less need for “just in case” knowledge.

My previous Reasons to Write Online are as valid as ever: honing my thinking, getting average ideas out of the way, and connecting with old friends are not in any danger, but somehow i feel less motivated to post.

Coding is dead

Computer programs are words too, and If you haven’t been following the arc diligently – programmers successfully automated themselves out of their jobs. Large Language Models are really good at writing code, and they will quickly get better than people. They can both produce and consume code, closing the feedback loop.

The other parts of a Software Engineer’s job are safer: architecture, debugging, complex system design that requires tons and tons of tacit knowledge. Churning out basic code does not seem like a promising career path anymore.

But fear not: solving real problems for real people (through any means) is always a good choice. Somehow, despite our best efforts, humans are not running out of problems.

Congrats, you are now a coder

You can now build games and preview them by pasting a single sentence into a chat window. Here are the steps for ChatGPT:

1. Go to ChatGPT.com
2. Choose o1 model if it’s available on your plan
3. Use this prompt: “/Canvas Please make a single-page html/js website that is a flappy bird clone without any dependencies”
4. Click to expand the code window to see it side-by-side
   (Canvas is this split view where you see the artifact you are producing – code-alongside chat window)
5. Press “Preview” (top right) once the app finishes writing code
6. Waste hours playing flappy bird again because you didn’t learn the lesson the first time around. But it’s YOUR flappy bird. Congrats.

Vibe coding

Coding used to be a deliberate process, full of focus and attention. With AI, some of us practice “vibe coding”:

1. You use voice dictation to just dump your meandering thoughts into AI like a distracted manager focused more on lunch than proper delegation
2. You check results and ask the AI to fix this-or-that without much guidance
3. You manually fix problems only if you really need to.

Karpathy coined the term and his phrasing is perfect:

There’s a new kind of coding I call “vibe coding”, where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.
(…)
I’m building a project or webapp, but it’s not really coding – I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.

There has never been a better time to tackle that small project you always wanted to ship, but at the same time – no worse time to start a programming career.

Delegation is key

I would like to be better at “Vibe Coding”. I default to my old ways, tackle stuff manually, type my keyboard like a dinosaur.

Only when I started treating AI exactly how I would a programmer on my team, I started getting much better results. In particular:

1. First discuss a detailed plan of implementation with my AI intern.
2. Only when we agree on the plan, I would “hand it off” to be coded.

Extraordinary returns on Agency and Taste

In the new post-scarcity world of words, the creative process looks like so:

1. Human: Idea
2. AI: Implementation Details
3. Human: Feedback for AI

For those who know what to build, there are extraordinary returns. The only way to hone that muscle is to play, code cool apps, write those essays and inspire others to have great ideas.

If you have an AI coding workflow that works for you well, or have a cool use for AI in your personal life – send them my way! I am particularly interested in tricks involving real-world problems.

Few links

My LLM codegen workflow atm

Harper has a spectacularly detailed tutorial on getting your apps built using AI:

I have been building so many small products using LLMs. It has been fun, and useful. However, there are pitfalls that can waste so much time. A while back a friend asked me how I was using LLMs to write software. I thought “oh boy. how much time do you have!” and thus this post.

History of adults blaming the younger generation

The world changes, but some things stay the same:

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