Does code still matter?

A ~6 minute video from Stanford University provides one of the best example of why you should avoid vibe coding early in your computer-science career (i.e., before fourth year CS students).

Code is not just "writing" syntax. It's the adventures of solving the problems.

As Jim Rohn’s mentor (John Earl Shoaff) said to him at the very first meeting "Jim, every day stand guard at the door of your mind". Adopting that quote, I now say to my students, "Every day stand guard at your laptop and do code with your hand and mind", practice solving problems every day.

Prof. Mehran Sahami explicitly said that avoid ‘vibe coding’ and understand how algorithms work. Also, we (hopefully) have habit to "decompose" big problems into smaller ones.

Is ‘vibe coding’ is bad?

The answer is both no and yes.

No, it is not bad if you could limit yourself or set boundaries of what/when you should build yourself.

And yes, it is bad when you 100% depend on AI to write code. At least, this is the ‘confession’ of one of my friends (5+ years’ experience, holding a position like ‘Software Architect’) when he failed some live-coding interview session. He felt that the failure is because he was too dependent on AI. IMO, this failure is not his mistake. It is because of physical factors (read: aging).

Yesterday you may have remembered, but not today.

To overcome this, we should do what all MMA fighters do before their fight which is to practice every day to build something called muscle memory. The goal is that tasks become automated through repetition that been done. That memory is a form of infrastructure. This infrastructure is the tool for personal growth.

This is one of my reasons I entered academia. As lecturers, we are training our muscle memory while teach code on a daily basis. So, if you’re not a lecturer, teach code to others every day. Or allocate 10-30 minutes doing a social activity. It can be answering Stackoverflow qustions or solving challenges from sites like this.

Where should I start to find or define problems?

Just take note. Write what you think is a problem. From my experience, I see YouTube ads are sometimea a problem. I just need to listen to Quran recitation without ads. So, I wrote this code.

Finally, this is proof that you’re never too late to start coding [4]. Want to know more for code challenge? Just hit me up.

Happy weekend.