Comment by lelanthran

4 days ago

I can't completely blame the language here: anyone "coding" in a language new to them using an LLM is going to have real problems.

It's funny the author says this was 90% written without AI, and that AI was mostly used for the json code. I think they're just new to C.

Trust me I love C. Probably over 90% of my lifetime code has been written in C. But python newbies don't get their web frameworks stack smashed. That's kind of nice.

  • > But python newbies don't get their web frameworks stack smashed. That's kind of nice.

    Hah! True :-)

    The thing is, smashed stacks are difficult to exploit deterministically or automatically. Even heartbleed, as widespread as it was, was not a guaranteed RCE.

    OTOH, an exploit in a language like Python is almost certainly going to be easier to exploit deterministically. Log4j, for example, was a guaranteed exploit and the skill level required was basically "Create a Java object".

    This is because of the ease with which even very junior programmers can create something that appears to run and work and not crash.

    • > The thing is, smashed stacks are difficult to exploit deterministically or automatically. Even heartbleed, as widespread as it was, was not a guaranteed RCE.

      That’s like driving without a seatbelt - it’s not safe, but it would only matter on that very rare chance you have a crash. I would rather just wear a seatbelt!

It's a double-sided coin. LLMs are probably the best way to learn programming languages right now. But if you vibecode in a programming language that you don't understand, it's going to be a disaster sooner or later.

This is also the reason why AI will not replace any actual jobs with merit.

  • > LLMs are probably the best way to learn programming languages right now.

    Books still exist, be they in print or electronic form.

    • I would claim that:

      (interactive labs + quizzes) > Learning from books

      Good online documentation > 5yr old tome on bookshelf

      chat/search with ai > CTRL+F in a PDF manual

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