Also feels much better than pure vibe-coding (which I still do for personal projects that aren't mission critical for anyone).

OTOH: I am convinced I can't snap my fingers with my right hand and never will because my specific mix of handed-ness makes it impossible for me to do so, no matter how hard I try and practice. No problem at all with my left hand.

  ┌───────────────────────────┬───────────┐
  │ Activity                  │ Hand      │
  ├───────────────────────────┼───────────┤
  │ Baseball (Bat/Catch)      │ Left      │
  │ Hold Spoon                │ Left      │
  │ Soccer                    │ Left      │
  │ Tennis                    │ Left      │
  │ Throw Ball                │ Left      │
  │ Darts                     │ Left      │
  │ Write                     │ Left      │
  ├───────────────────────────┼───────────┤
  │ Bow and Arrow             │ Right     │
  │ Hold Fork/Knife           │ Right     │
  │ Play Drums                │ Right     │
  │ Scissor                   │ Right     │
  │ Shoot Rifle (Nerf Gun)    │ Right     │
  │ Skateboard/Snowboard      │ Right     │
  │ Use Mouse                 │ Right     │
  └───────────────────────────┴───────────┘

It's kind of sad. But on the other hand, I am glad I don't have to write every little line of code myself *on top* of having to do all the other stuff.

Writing the actual code is a significant part of that, but the codebase is so complex that even Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5 struggle with it without being fed a *lot* of context and constraints. And even then, they need a *lot* of steering due to making bad decisions that only someone with an intimate knowledge of the theory behind our software is able to catch.

I can only assume that people who think coding agents can completely replace an actual developer mostly deal with trivial software regarding both scope and the type of customers they serve (individuals instead of big companies in industry).

I have written code myself that I deem beautiful and expressive. But I'm also a musician, and making music (and listening to it deeply) has given me such intense, mystic experiences, that they dwarf anything I've ever experienced writing code. It's also much harder to make good music because it requires a kind of courage and psychological constitution that is simply not required for writing code.

I'm not trying to be pretentious or precious about art. But I consider the process of creation to be as much a fundamental part of art as the resulting artefact. If I can't contextualize a work of art to a human's inner life - be it implicitly or through knowing about the artist - it's not really art to me.

Artistic code can be a work of art. But only if created by a human (in a way that humans make art), and I think the same principles should apply to it as any other medium of art. But that kind of code is so rare and insignificant compared to all other code being written and published, that I don't think it's worth watering down the discussion with it.

I would only consider AI generated output art, if the way to get there were a substantial artistic expression.

So I think visual arts and music fall in a different category because it's much more artistic, unconstrained, and personal by nature than code. Even if that difference sits on a spectrum. But on that spectrum they're worlds apart.

I struggle explaining my point of view better and hope I manage to get my point across at least to some extent.

Having said all that, I do consider training LLMs on other people's code without compensation wrong as well. Just not as wrong as I do with other stuff.

Art can't be generated. We can only generate artefacts mimicking art styles. So far we have no AI generated images that are considered actual Art, because Art's purpose is to express the artist's intent. And when there is no artist, there is no intent.

I have to stop now, but I guess you can see where I'm going with this.

I don't care about getting a millionth of a cent as an artist (which btw is a number *you* just pulled out of your imagination). I care about them paying a fair share instead of pocketing it, so the money stays in circulation instead of creating a new class of technofeudal lords.

I'm not trying to be glib. The thing that seemed magic to me at that time was all the scaffolding that Rails provided with a few simple commands, making it possible to quickly build something that let the user authenticate and enter and display data. Sure, Ruby itself and the culture around it back then was also great and will always have a place in my heart. But the whole convention-over-configuration and scaffolding thing, that was what I liked so much about it, and I never found that in any other language/framework combo in a way that felt as smooth.

But now, I use AI for scaffolding, and for my side-projects often never have to touch code.

So why would I choose something for a CRUD application that might give me headaches down the road, when there's a possibility that the app might morph into something less conventional, when I could use *any* language/framework that's not as rigid and have the scaffold be built by AI?

I get it if you enjoy actually writing code. But I don't quite get the benefits if the goal is to have something working quickly and be able to potentially build it out to something that is not served that well by RoR.

What is it, man?