Beautiful and witty prose to say "vibe coding sucks". He's not at all wrong about the state of AI coding in May of 2025. The 3 hours I just burned trying to get it to correct output bugs in a marimo notebook (which I started learning this week) is demonstrable evidence.
But it completely ignores the fact that AI generated code is getting better on a ~weekly basis. The author acknowledges that it is useful in some contexts for some uses, but doesn't acknowledge that the utility is constantly growing. We certainly could plateau sometime soon leaving us in the reckless intern zone, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Far as I'm concerned, it's getting better every week in the way Tesla self driving got better every week. Is it closer to its goal? Yes. Does it give value to its users? Arguably yes, but not really.
Is it, in 2025, actually better than a real human at its designated task? Pretty universally no.
So i won't be surprised when the "last 10%" of software AI takes 30 years to close the gap that 20 years of "immanent self driving" is still yet to close.
We should all understand, i would think, that the last 10% is the hard part.
It's a fair point. It's hard to know where we are in the S curve. Considering how much better it's gotten in the past 12 months I don't get the sense that we're decelerating towards a plateau of capability, but it's certainly possible
This seems correct, and I suffer from the same issue as the author, but I'm curious if it's as simple as "you don't believe in the projects". Does Pieter Levels believe in all of his projects so much that they burn a hole in his brain, or does he just think "this seems like a good idea, I should do it and see if it works" and that's enough to get him to the finish line. I assume the latter, but it's just a guess.
I'm not familiar with his work but from a quick search it seems that he's a hustler and is very "eye on the prize." I would think that your characterization of his process is too blasé and that there's actually more conviction behind it, but of course I don't know either. Most of the time I would say that prolific people that seemingly casually whip things up have learned to affect that and there's usually a great deal of obsessiveness happening behind the scenes.
Also, I don't much like the framing of "you don't believe in the projects." It's not meant to be a fault of the person, and I'm sure Pieter and others have graveyards of half-baked projects (which may even be revived one day) - it's part of the process - but I just mean to say that you haven't yet hit on the idea that keeps you up at night (or some nights at least) until it's been realized.
I'm starting at Pacific Northwest National Lab on Monday in the data science and analytics group. I am coming from a 100% corporate background, and I am expecting a non-trivial culture shock to work overwhelmingly with academics and government folks. The reason I joined is I'm highly motivated to work on climate and energy projects, and it seems like an incredible place to do it.
We have to do everything. There's no either/or... we HAVE to reduce consumption, we HAVE to find lower-carbon alternatives for everything we continue to consume, and we HAVE to create technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
It's not gambling or a delusion to say we must create new technologies to have a prayer of solving the problem. And of course there's no "magic pill" - we need to innovate in a thousand different ways, simultaneously.
The scale of the problem is hard to truly wrap ones head around, but it's crystal clear that voluntary sacrifice and curtailing consumption as the primary solution is a non-starter. That's not how humans work.
Also, what about developing countries? Are we going to tell them they have to consume less too? Seems unreasonable. So we're going to ask the developed world to consume less, and some of us might reduce a little bit... nowhere near the scale of emissions reductions that are necessary. Seems more like a rounding error than an actual impact.
FWIW, I am not saying we shouldn't try to innovate and I do very much want us to invest in science and technology that could be helpful.
I don't think we should count on these things such that we don't also take direct steps (cutting consumption where we can) to directly tackle this problem until we have the other options figured out.
I did a weekly "don't eat anything on Sunday and don't eat until Monday lunch" for about a year. Sunday afternoon/evening I'd be kinda groggy and grumpy. I'd wake up on Monday morning completely locked in - it felt like a high dose of adderol without ANY of the side effects. I'd get 2 days worth of work done in a morning. I'd always be bummed Monday afternoon because as soon as I ate the focus went away.
It's not about what's easier, and it's not an either/or proposal. Atmospheric CO2 is currently around 419ppm. Even if we cut our CO2 emissions to zero tomorrow, we still have 419ppm. The temperature might stop going up, but it's not going to go back down unless we get greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere.
Most importantly, it's not certain that runaway warming can't happen even at our current temperature. Methane is being released from permafrost at our current levels of warming and is 20x as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2. Also, our natural carbon sinks (the ocean, macroalgae, forests, soil) are in decline whether or not we stop emitting CO2 - so CO2 may keep going up anyway as we lose biomass.
And let's be honest with ourselves here, we're not cutting emissions to 0 tomorrow. Or next year. Or by 2030. Or by 2050 most likely.
We have to reduce emissions, at a level that seems inconceivable. We ALSO have to pull CO2 back out, again, at a level that seems inconceivable. The ability to scale up CO2 removal to a planetary scale requires that we accelerate development right now.
I wonder if atmospheric CO2 increase is correlated with the massive reduction in insect biomass we've seen. If so, would it be possible for us to reverse if we decrease insecticides and allow insect population regrowth.
> I wonder if atmospheric CO2 increase is correlated with the massive reduction in insect biomass we've seen.
A byproduct of increased atmospheric CO2 levels is an increase in vegetative growth. My naive assumption is that more plant mass means more food and habitat for insects.
This is not true and is based on the naive assumption that more CO2 means more food for plants. Far more important for plants and biomes in general is the climate. Plants might have more CO2 making it more available for sugar production, but this leads to plants creating more sugars but less nutrient rich. Getting back to the climate, plants can only grow if their climates are hospitable to them, but look at the wildfires in California and the Taiga. Trees can't grow there like they used to because the climate has shifted rapidly and are no longer the right conditions, they're too dry and turning into grasslands and deserts.
We've created a world that is vastly different in climate than what came before. This is the problem with the climate crisis in general, all our ecosystems are in the wrong places
look at the wildfires in California and the Taiga. Trees can't grow there like they used to because the climate has shifted rapidly and are no longer the right conditions
Can't speak to Taiga, but trees are growing just fine in California. Overgrowth of trees creating fuel for fires is as much a problem as anything.
I held my nose and jumped in feet first. Actually, I spent 3 months backpacking around Europe first, then went home and just didn't get a new job. It took 6 months to land a client, then 2 to land another, then 1 to land a third and then I was off to the races.
I would not do that approach again.
You've already got some consulting revenue, that's a great start. Do you have a solid 6 months of living expenses saved up? If not, do that. Do you have a portfolio of different projects you've done and a good way to communicate them? If not, do that.
In the small amount of free time you currently have, I'd look very selectively for a large contract. Once you land it, put in your two weeks and make the jump.
Once you're on your own, never stop prospecting. Even when you have too much to do to take on a new client, you have to keep the pipeline full - it's the only way to make it work because you'll invariably have some contracts end abruptly. I was real bad at that part of it, and that's why I stopped after ~4 years.
* Tap your network. Post on social, bug old coworkers, ask friends and family. Know what skills you are selling and at what price.
* Build your brand. Create a website, LinkedIn, and social media accounts. Start blogging or posting regularly somewhere. Even if you don't get clients this way, it will increase your credibility.
* Reach out. Look through job postings and hiring sites. Cold email companies that you're interested in working with. Refine your elevator pitch. Join networking communities.
But it completely ignores the fact that AI generated code is getting better on a ~weekly basis. The author acknowledges that it is useful in some contexts for some uses, but doesn't acknowledge that the utility is constantly growing. We certainly could plateau sometime soon leaving us in the reckless intern zone, but I wouldn't bet on it.