cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/50693956
Transcript
A post by [object Object] (@[email protected]) saying: courtesy of @[email protected], Proton is now the only privacy vendor I know of that vibe codes its apps: In the single most damning thing I can say about Proton in 2025, the Proton GitHub repository has a “cursorrules” file. They’re vibe-coding their public systems. Much secure! I am once again begging anyone who will listen to get off of Proton as soon as reasonably possible, and to avoid their new (terrible) apps in any case. https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/114961415946154957
It has a reply by the author saying: in an unsurprising update for those familiar with how Proton operates, they silently rewrote their monorepo’s history to purge .cursor and hide that they were vibe coding: https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients/tree/2a5e2ad4db0c84f39050bf2353c944a96d38e07f
given the utter lack of communication from Proton on this, I can only guess they’ve extracted .cursor into an external repository and continue to use it out of sight of the public
I’d say this is mostly because you can immediately test the AI’s results and rule out anything it got wrong, and whatever errors you generate can then be fed back into the AI so it can refine what it’s already written. You never have to just trust the AI (assuming you yourself still know how to code) like you have to when using it for research or for solving problems where you don’t get immediate feedback.
Whether this means programming is actually a viable niche for generative AI or whether this speaks more to the limitations and inherent unreliability of the “knowledge” the AI has, I can’t say.
Also, I don’t know if it’s just me but I’m more scared by how fast AI is advancing rather than looking forward to what it can do for me. That definitely clouds my perception when something is AI generated and makes me a lot more dismissive of any real benefits AI might have brought.
It will allow you to see if the AI has made any syntax or runtime errors. It does not tell you about any logic errors.
Logic errors are already the most dangerous kind of programming error, and using AI just makes them even harder to find.
Using AI will only help you with syntax (which any good IDE should already be able to do) and finding information faster than a search engine (but leaving out important context). AI is not useful for programming anything that will be made public.
The danger of vibe coding is that the people doing it either don’t have the skills to or don’t think it’s importsnt to review the AI changes.
If you work with an AI and instead of taking time typing through boring tasks, take time reading through the changes, them there isn’t much of an issue. A skilled software engineer is capable of noticing logic errors in a code they read.
If the generated code is too unmecessarily complex to ensure its logic is okay, then scrap it.
I don’t use it in that way (only use JetBrains’ line completion AI) but I don’t see a problem if it is used that way.
However, if I review a code that was partly generated by AI and notice that the dev let through shitty code without review, the review will be salty.
Yeah, you get immediate feedback, vs a scenario where you have to manually check the “facts” it provides in order to ensure it’s not hallucinating. I’ve had Copilot straight up hallucinate functions on me and I knew that they were bullshit instantly.
I iterate with it a ton and feed it back errors it makes, or things like type mismatches. It fixes them instantly and understands the issue almost every single time.
That’s the trick. Iterate often and always give it new instructions if it does something stupid. Basically be as verbose as needed and give it tons of context, desired standards, pitfalls to avoid, whatever. It helps a ton.