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Comment by lowbloodsugar

11 days ago

Yeah, I remember when the lazy bastards started writing programs using compilers instead of learning assembly language. Now I don’t have a single colleague who can write assembly. There’s whole generations now who can’t code assembly. Most don’t even know what a register is. Hope Zig holds against this latest attempt to make everyone stupid.

31 comments

lowbloodsugar

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uncircle  11 days ago

To add to the other commenters, loads of people don’t know assembly, which speaks to the quality of the average developer. The ones that still understand assembly to this day tend to be better developers, writing faster and more efficient code.

  • crysin  11 days ago

    I'd be very surprised if the "average" developer across the board was in fact not just a JavaScript / TypeScript only developer. I have no expectations or really even hope that the average developer I work with has ever written a line of assembly.

  • DeathArrow  11 days ago

    >The ones that still understand assembly to this day tend to be better developers, writing faster and more efficient code.

    That is if you use something like C, C+=, Java, .NET, Go. With Javascript and Python I don't think knowing assembly would make any difference because it's hard to optimize the code in these languages for how the CPU and memory works.

    • uncircle  10 days ago

      Knowing assembly in this day and age is the result of being curious and wanting to understand how computers work, which means knowledge of algorithms, data structures, etc.

      The same applies to vibe coding: the best "vibe coder" will paradoxically be the person with enough knowledge and curiosity to understand programming, how computer works and the subject at hand; one that could write the whole thing from scratch so they have enough judgement to review generated code.

      Of course the vast majority will be mediocre vibe coders, and even worse programmers; at least that's the direction we're going.

      1 reply →

    • skydhash  10 days ago

      Knowing assembly doesn’t mean you would spend your time writing assembly (aka being familiar with opcodes and architecture optimizations). But in the process, you get familiar with the working of the computer hardware and the OS that sits on top of it. That is always useful knowledge especially when needing to deal with binary format and protocols or FFI.

      1 reply →

gertop  11 days ago

Your analogy falls apart because the "lazy bastards" still knew how to program and understood the code they were working on.

Vide-coders often don't read, let alone understand, the code they send for PRs.

  • merlindru  10 days ago

    I don't think most JavaScript devs know how to read C code, let alone assembly, so I think the comparison is apt. Is it not?

    • wtetzner  10 days ago

      The JavaScript developers are checking in JavaScript code that they ostensibly understand. That is not the same as prompting an LLM to generate Zig that they don't understand, and expecting someone to merge it.

      2 replies →

gls2ro  11 days ago

Generating AI code/PR is not the same as using compilers because of at least two things:

- the scale of how much and how fast you can generate code with AI vs how fast can you write code for compiler

- the mental model of what is being generated and how much the contributor understands and owns the generated code

wtetzner  11 days ago

Using an LLM isn't analogous to using a higher level language.

  • brabel  11 days ago

    That’s funny because it’s exactly, literally the same. The difference is it’s not deterministic. That may be a problem but it’s still a higher level language, just a much higher level language than anything before.

    • sandrello  10 days ago

      I assume you're some sort of programmer and I genuinely wonder how in the world can someone in good faith downplay non-determinism and ambiguity when talking about a programming language.

      High-level languages can certainly yield inefficient code when compiled, or maybe different code among different compilers, but they're always meant to allow their users to know exactly what to expect from what they put together in their programs. I've always considered this a hard fact, I simply cannot wrap my head around working in a way that forces me to abandon this basic assumption.

    • bigstrat2003  11 days ago

      > That’s funny because it’s exactly, literally the same. The difference is it’s not deterministic.

      So it is not, by your own admission, "exactly, literally the same".

      1 reply →

    • wiseowise  10 days ago

      So by your logic all the PMs, managers and customers are programmers, right? After all, there’s a human compiler that takes their input and produces a program?

      4 replies →