Interesting, I started playing a little with Codex yesterday and it did find some bugs Claude already knew about it, and seemed pretty matter of fact about it. I might have to point it at some of the harder bugs and see how it goes.
I fired up Codex yesterday and asked it to do a security review on an UE5 project i'm working on with Claude. It found some things that Claude already knew about. But nothing made me feel confident it could _write_ UE5 C++ code as well as Claude. I guess it's worth a shot testing it on a minor feature, but what other people are saying here gels with my experience as well.
This seems web centric and I expect that colors the decision making during this analysis somewhat.
People are using it for all kinds of other stuff, C/C++, Rust, Golang, embedded.
And of course if you push it to use a particular tool/framework you usually won't get much argument from it.
We didn't even have to offshore for lots of bad code to be written.
Looks at the scores of Ycombinator startups that wrote a shitload of awful code and failed. Good ideas, pretty websites, but not a lot of substance under the hood. The VC gathering aspect and online kudos was way more important to them than actually producing good code and a reliable product that would stand the test of time.
Pretty much the most detestable section of the HN community. IMNHSO. I notice they're much quieter than usual since the whole vibe coding thing kicked off.
> Looks at the scores of Ycombinator startups that wrote a shitload of awful code and failed.
This can also be restated as, look at all the startups that wrote a shitload of awful code and succeeded.
That’s an indicator code quality doesn’t matter at macro scales. We already knew this though even if we didn’t explicitly say it. It’s more about organization, coordination, and execution than code.
This seems like it's reading too much into things. I'm sure driving an ambulance slower vs faster doesn't make a difference to survival in most cases, but on the margins it absolutely does.
Startups are also quite different from ambulances; surviving and minimising patient harm isn't the most important thing for a startup. Instead, it's building a profitable and valuable business. You're not just worrying about the margins, you're also hoping to squeeze out every bit of growth you can.
> That’s an indicator code quality doesn’t matter at macro scales.
I think it can though. It just depends. Having high quality code and making good technical choices can matter in many ways. From improving performance (massively) and correctness, to attracting great talent. Jane Street and WhatsApp come to mind, maybe Discord too. Just like great design will attract great designers.
I also think it might matter even more in the age of AI Agents. Most of my time now is spent reviewing code instead of writing code, and that makes me a huge bottleneck. So the best way to optimize is to make the code more readable and having good automated checks to reduce the amount of work I need to do, like static types, no nulls, compilation, automated tests, secondary agent reviews, etc.
I mean, look at all the startups that succeeded despite being complete shitshows behind the scenes... the baseline for leadership, organization, coordination or, hell, execution for a startup to succeed isn't exactly high either.
Bad code is one possible axis - not a likely one at that stage though. Bad code gets you a few years down the line when competitors are moving faster than you to the point where they are cheaper and better.
While I love Mitch's drumming and Noel's bass, can you imagine if Hendrix had worked with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce - both much more confident and strident players than the Experience's rythym section.
That would have blown the doors off of everything.
I don't think there was another as "out there" guitar player as Jimi until EVH came along - a little more controlled, but just as confident and chaotic. EVH was quite the systems engineer himself (variac, Floyd Rose later on etc)
Miles always impressed me with his ability to pick the best to back him up, and /then/ let them take the front. Some tracks he barely plays on, waiting minutes for his entry.
Jimmy wanted the best to back him up. But I agree with you; I'm just pointing out why I think he didn't.
Agreed! Like Pharaoh's Dance on Bitch's Brew, Davis doesn't come in for like 4 minutes. Same with In A Silent Way. He just lets the band groove for a while, THEN takes the lead.
In Davis' autobiography, he mentions trying to work with Jimi. I don't think it would have worked really, but who knows. Jimi was completely self taught, while Miles went to Juliard, I don't see how they would have communicated musically, literally. Like, if Miles tells Jimi to try a diminished chord here, or some modal scale there, Miles would have ended up doing a LOT of teaching along the way. And I say this as a guitarist of 30+ years who loves both of them.
Considering that Miles was firmly in a modal music phase at that point, I don't see Jimi's lack of formal training as a hindrance at all. I think he'd be able to hang just fine with Mile's band. Even if Jimi couldn't read changes on a chart, I'm sure he'd have no problem working it out by ear.
I'd like to think that, I love this period from Davis, and love Hendrix, so it would have been great to see a collab.
In terms of communication, I am thinking of something like the musical equivalent to software design patterns, etc. I.e. imagine two devs are pair coding, one of whom has a CS degree from 2002 and one is skilled but self-taught. While working together, the first starts talking about observer or singleton patterns, which the 2nd has never heard of but has coded something 90% of the way there on intuition. There could be some friction as they establish a common language. (Yes, this is based on experience, with myself more or less on both sides of the exchange at one point or another).
Worth noting that this is currently broken for a number of users, I'm on a Max plan and I get the message "Error: Remote Control is not enabled for your account. Contact your administrator" which isn't helpful since I'm my administrator and ... this gets recursive quickly.
As someone vibe-coding a game in Unreal Engine 5 for the last few months, I found this really funny.
Unfortunately I don't have a dog but I do have a design plan so ultimately I'll end up with something a little more deterministic. Possibly. Don't know.
I think it's a foregone conclusion that the clankers are the only ones building something in OP's scenario, leaving nothing left for us meatbags to do but fight the battery bloods and write bad science fiction.
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