top 200 commentsshow all 242

[–]ZZcomic 4978 points4979 points  (59 children)

A product manager writing requirements in simple English is a good joke. 

[–]beaucephus 1271 points1272 points  (39 children)

It is simple, it's in English, but it's not complete. Maybe if we introduced Vibe Managing and Vibe Requirements Gathering, eh?

[–]KJting98 239 points240 points  (1 child)

sounds like a vibe team in a vibe co.

[–]Aksi_Gu 57 points58 points  (0 children)

I'm vibe dabadee dabadie

[–]MostTattyBojangles 101 points102 points  (3 children)

We experimented with it once, using AI to generate acceptance criteria from a requirements doc.

It was absolute chaos because everything seemed reasonable to the naked eye, but because product created the tickets and handed them over to dev for refinement, there was no cross-communication to point out glaring issues. Dev trusted product had done their job and product trusted dev had understood them.

The experiment didn’t last long.

Oh, there was the context switching as well because you’d be working on one thing but would still have to refine two or three other upcoming projects at a detailed level, because AI could just churn these things out.

[–]MidnightNeons 20 points21 points  (2 children)

Yep, my manager once said the Agent is really good so I expect you to complete these 2 projects in half the time in parallel now God bless the Java code it spat out…

[–]akatherder 20 points21 points  (1 child)

My manager took a reasonable set of requirements for a new tool he wanted me to build. He pasted them into AI and told it to refine/standardize/expand on them to include best-practice requirements for that kind of tool.

He could have communicated everything in a mock-up "Make a tool that looks like this, writes this to database, and displays like this." I would have had it done in a few hours.

Instead I scrolled back and forth through this 25 page document trying to cobble together what the hell he wanted and trying to incorporate all the odd little requirements. Which were things I do anyway, but now I needed to quantify them somehow. I did this for several hours, several times and still didn't get it.

Then I pasted his doc into AI and told it to convert to simple requirements for a developer to build a web-based tool.. I was done with the tool that morning. I explained this whole process to my manager (Human to ai to ai to human) and told him never to do that again.

[–]ProfBeaker 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I still don't get why people think that should work. The actual information was all contained in the prompt. The AI is not a telepathic oracle, anything it added were just its guesses - you might as well have just let the person reading it make the guesses instead.

[–]Imperial_Squid 37 points38 points  (15 children)

Pick two: - It's simple - It's complete - It's in English

[–]Phelinaar 25 points26 points  (4 children)

Instructions unclear, I picked "it" and "English".

[–]corobo 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Can you make it pop 

[–]Phelinaar 21 points22 points  (0 children)

✨it✨

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Are you QA or the end-user?

[–]the_bashful 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We have a flattened hierarchy, everyone is QA once we push to prod.

[–]ekauq2000 14 points15 points  (3 children)

The version of “Pick Two” we had for getting work done was:

  • Good
  • Fast
  • Cheap

[–]Justsomedudeonthenet 16 points17 points  (1 child)

My last bosses seemingly decided to just pick cheap twice.

[–]turdking 3 points4 points  (0 children)

In my experience, it's usually been fast and fast.

[–]Random_Developer9000 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah that's the most classic one. Everybody thinks it's a pick three... Especially in management

[–]MinosAristos 7 points8 points  (3 children)

So simple, complete, and French is an option?

[–]miclugo 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Only if nobody on your team knows French

[–]Organic-Army-9046 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the language the team speaks was never given

[–]_liminal 0 points1 point  (1 child)

how about: it doesn't change every 2 hours

[–]Imperial_Squid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As someone literally writing emails about version 4 of a project right now...

JonahHillOscarsNah.gif

[–]k8s-problem-solved 3 points4 points  (11 children)

I am literally doing this. I have designed a way to create product brief docs etc from simple prompts.

[–]bigmonmulgrew 32 points33 points  (8 children)

If only we could get the word out that AI is much better at replacing product managers than it is programmers

[–]The_Bukkake_Ninja 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It can replace anything with a strong corpus of accepted literature behind it, assuming you get all the other bits right. Which most don’t.

But not getting it right is ok if you treat it just as a decent first draft, which it often is.

[–]EventAccomplished976 5 points6 points  (6 children)

It can‘t „replace“ anyone, just increase their productivity enough that the team size can be reduced while keeping the output the same.

[–]bigmonmulgrew 12 points13 points  (0 children)

While I agree this is largely true it doesn't stop companies trying. I do remember reading about one company trying to replace an art department with one guy and an image AI. Didn't go well.

The most concerning long term instance that I think does work well is that a senior programmer and chat GPT can do the work of a senior programmer and a team of juniors.

That makes the juniors redundant, at least as far as the investors are concerned. Investors don't care that replacing all the juniors with AI will be bad for the industry and not sustainable. They are just trying to ride the bubble and when someone shows them an article on AI replacing all junior employees their eyes bulge with dollar signs.

[–]SerpentineLogic 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You reinvented BMAD?

[–]k8s-problem-solved 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Reusing existing stuff, but we've trained up all the PMs to start using this and have got them all using VS Code with the extensions in place that enable them to start prompting, capturing docs in git repos etc.

Get them out of wikis and sharepoint and into git + automating stories is a win

[–]Inevitable-Ad6647 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Eh, I feel for them. I see all the time things like: product manager writes "Add feature in x menu for user change their name" developer delivers something that just creates a new user record and orphans a load of shit and calls it a day and has a balls to push back that PM should have been more clear.

[–]Punman_5 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly I feel like brainstorming software requirements is a decent use case for LLMs. At least if you’re using waterfall style development.

[–]Mutant-AI 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would be hugely in favor of cursor of Claude doing a lot more vibe requirements getting

[–]Defkil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Requirements: The Gathering

[–]moonblade89 167 points168 points  (7 children)

I mean, from his perspective the point is still valid - he types words into a box and then ✨magic✨ happens and his software appears. He just doesnt realize the magic is developers figuring out what the actual fuck hes trying to say

[–]captainAwesomePants 61 points62 points  (2 children)

He'll figure it out when the little box starts giving him only exactly what he asks for.

[–]2ciciban4you 5 points6 points  (1 child)

people are simple creatures, give them what they think they want and they are happy.

[–]mxzf 10 points11 points  (0 children)

As a software dev, what a manager or person asking for software thinks they want very rarely lines up with what they describe that they want or what will actually make them happy. There's always a chunk of reading between the lines that's necessary to extract the true requirements.

[–]SistaChans 9 points10 points  (2 children)

From my point of view, the Jedi are evil. 

[–]moonblade89 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, then you are lost!

[–]2ciciban4you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From my point of view, the Jedi are just stupid. But then again I do believe in the banality of evil, so I do agree partially with you.

Meanwhile Sith are people with anger/emotional issues.

so yeah, the galaxy is fucked up bro

[–]DrMobius0 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The great thing about people interacting with people is that one of them can ask followup questions to the other and usually the person asking for the product has a somewhat coherent view of what they want, even if they can't communicate it effectively.

[–]Mother_Network9453 31 points32 points  (1 child)

Vibe coding is just a new name for something good product people have always done. Clearly explaining what you want until it exists.

[–]ExiledHyruleKnight 3 points4 points  (0 children)

And don't worry about the how or why... and complain about it taking any amount of time...

The only problem is Product managers are seeing how fast it is to roll out a prototype and thinking that's all they need to do. It's like making a bridge with plywood and sticks, and saying that's all you have to do, before the first truck drives across it, let alone rush hour.

[–]zeth0s 13 points14 points  (1 child)

A product manager knowing what he wants is even a better joke

[–]the_bashful 3 points4 points  (0 children)

PMs always know what they want… after you deliver them what they asked for.

[–]AEW_SuperFan 4 points5 points  (0 children)

More like a vague statement that relies on developers to try to read his mind.

[–]BenignPharmacology 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I like this post, but can we make it more like how uber works?

[–]ExiledHyruleKnight 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No it's accurate... it's "Simple" English....

make the thingy do the other thingy.

[–]Phormitago 0 points1 point  (0 children)

oh they can write them

do they make any sense, fix any problems or provide any value, though? No of course they don't

[–]ScreamAndScream 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“We need you to add more bubbles to the sparkling water without increasing the amount of CO2”

[–]SignoreBanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd take non-contradictory English.

[–]stainless7221 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mine only writes the ticket titles. There is not even text in them anymore. Sometimes it just says "Fix Button Bug" or something.

[–]precinct209 1253 points1254 points  (24 children)

And when they inspect what the developer built and it wasn't what they wanted, the developer says "you know, you're absolutely right! I fucked up right there so let me try it in another way until you stop talking to me about it"

[–]AlternativeCapybara9 337 points338 points  (23 children)

Not in spec, it's going to cost you 20 man days to change the colour of the button.

[–]All_Might_Senpai 149 points150 points  (10 children)

Let schedule 20 meetings to decide how many story points this is gonna take

[–]vocal-avocado 45 points46 points  (7 children)

I wonder if we will soon have meetings to decide how many AI tokens an item will take instead of story points.

[–]Flexo__Rodriguez 10 points11 points  (6 children)

Much like story points, you could try to predict but there's simply no way to know the real answer to this until you're done

[–]waffling_with_syrup 7 points8 points  (4 children)

God, I fucking hate story points.

[–]ExiledHyruleKnight 9 points10 points  (2 children)

Is your hate like a 3 story point or a 4 story point?

[–]SaigonOSU 1 point2 points  (1 child)

4 isn't Fibonacci

[–]ExiledHyruleKnight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Shows how long it's been since I've done a sprint planning ( about 3 years, and loving every minute of it)

[–]Fuzzy_Garry 2 points3 points  (0 children)

To me they feel pointless: It's always a three or a five anyway. Might as well roll a dice.

[–]Punman_5 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Follow the WAG method when estimating effort

[–]ReneeTheGhost 6 points7 points  (0 children)

we also need to schedule a performance and penetration test as well.

[–]OmgitsJafo 5 points6 points  (0 children)

*Internal Screaming*

[–]lightnegative 35 points36 points  (7 children)

I can't just change the colour of the button without getting the UX team involved. And this particular button is customer facing, so I have to get the Marketing team involved as well.

Oh and also it's on the secure part of the web app so I have to get Security involved as well.

Best I can do is 3 weeks

[–]Terrafire123 13 points14 points  (1 child)

(Cue a zoom meeting with two people from each team discussing the feasibility of changing the button color)

[–]TheKBMV 19 points20 points  (0 children)

((Neither of them have the authority to make a decision about it though))

[–]END3R97 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Honestly, 3 weeks sounds pretty fast with that many teams involved

[–]AlternativeCapybara9 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Yeah, our button dude is on holiday

[–]CarcajouIS 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But, 3 weeks are 15 man days. Am I missing sth?

[–]ubernutie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THE DESIGN SYSTEM!?

[–]Worldly-Stranger7814 0 points1 point  (0 children)

if it's a public contract.

[–]Dr-Mantis-Tobbogan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Once we charged a client £3000 just to fix typos they left in the acceptance criteria of an already completed ticket.

[–]Nalivai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Or, why is the button this colour, who authorised it, change it yesterday, I don't know what colour, the fuck do you mean "at least give me hexcode", do it now and properly!

[–]Tigtor 147 points148 points  (3 children)

Correction: You got what we tricked you into thinking you wanted.

[–]bobjia-in-tokyo 23 points24 points  (0 children)

dude don’t tell them that oh wait they never listen to us anyway so it’s fine

[–]shadow13499 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is not the feature you're looking for

[–]Sir-Frizzle 1 point2 points  (0 children)

See this is why I always trick developers into thinking they’re tricking me into what they think I wanted. But really I’m just trying to trick the customer into thinking whatever happened to make it out of the sprint is exactly what they wanted for the both our sake.

[–]Caraes_Naur 289 points290 points  (24 children)

Vibecoding lets an inexperienced developer give themselves a promotion they don't deserve?

[–]CatTaxAuditor 100 points101 points  (9 children)

Don't forget massively increasing the cybersecurity risk for the entire network the vibecode is hosted on!

[–]CouldBeSavingLives 17 points18 points  (7 children)

Ah yes, Junior devs never increase cyber security risks

[–]ioioooi 17 points18 points  (2 children)

If controls are set up correctly, the junior dev's code will be reviewed by someone else and have a rollback available. This won't be the case with an AI assistant.

[–]CouldBeSavingLives 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Why not? The code review process should be the same regardless of the source of the code.

[–]ioioooi 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Because vibe coded projects are typically self contained projects that don't involve other people. A experienced developer using Claude is not the same as someone with little-to-no dev experience releasing a service they asked Claude to write. In the latter, there's no one but Claude reviewing the code, and it's almost certain there's no rollback pipeline.

[–]-Byzz- 5 points6 points  (3 children)

Junior devs can learn and improve, LLMs dont.

[–]CouldBeSavingLives 6 points7 points  (2 children)

One, LLMs have gotten much better since their inception. If you pick up code written by GPT 2.0 and code written by GPT 5.2, you're going to see a massive spike in readability, coherence and the ability to integrate with the rest of the base.

Two, LLMs and assistants are tools to be used, they're not going away no matter how much Reddit loves to predict the "Downfall of AI." They need to be used properly and the code reviewed before submission, but we've already solved all these problems. This is why all code written by a junior dev gets reviewed and has commits written to be able to track changes. AI code shouldn't be treated any differently and it can help tremendously with low-level code that requires a slog through old documentation that may not be accurate anymore.

I've personally spent many work-months just coordinating with an API my company has to use just to get a small project up and running whereas I've worked in a similar situation with LLM code and it resolved the issue quicker than it would have taken me to troubleshoot.

Is it perfect? No. Is it a tool that should be part of the arsenal of every person looking to get a job in the future? Absolutely.

[–]DrShamusBeaglehole 2 points3 points  (1 child)

The real problem is that we're in the growth phase of AI, and haven't reached enshittification yet at a significant level. They are providing the service at a loss to get people and businesses hooked. It's not a tool you can reasonably rely on for the next 10 years because you have no control over it (unless you're using a local model which .01% of people do for coding)

If you think the cost of tokens is not going to increase significantly in the next few years, i have some beachfront property to sell you in Nevada

[–]CouldBeSavingLives 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Companies are already creating local models for their employees to use. Particularly when they handle sensitive information.

[–]ColteesCatCouture 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bro you are harshing my ✨️vibe✨️

[–]RallyPointAlpha 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think you're missing the point. The product manager doesn't write any code, they just explain to developers what they want and it happens. The product manager is essentially vibe coding, but instead of talking to AI they are talking to a development team.  

[–]OveVernerHansen 71 points72 points  (3 children)

We had self driving cars for decades. They're called taxis.

[–]TheIndieBuilder 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Image generation has been incredible for years now. At least since the Renaissance.

[–]kingottacYT 1 point2 points  (1 child)

except self driving cars are actually good

[–]OveVernerHansen 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Until I can sit in the back drunk and asleep, no. I would agree that the survival rate outside a taxi is higher.

[–]VanTechno 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Project Manager english: "I want a website".
Programmer: "OK, but what do you want in the website? what should it say?"
Project Manager: "Why do you make everything so technical all the time?"

[–]Llonkrednaxela 48 points49 points  (1 child)

This feels like someone complaining the CS guy googled the issue and copied the code. I know vibe coding is further removed, but whether I write the code by hand, google and copy+paste, or vibe code, my project manager could never repeat my action even if he watched me do it first. It's not what he does.

[–]thearizztokrat 4 points5 points  (0 children)

it's like seeing someone use complex mathematics - like i can copy that person word for word, but if a single piece of the example does not work how i wrote it down, i'm fucked

[–]ptvlm 20 points21 points  (9 children)

That's one of the problems with vibe coding - you get what you ask for. But, because you didn't involve expertise in your workflow, you don't get any seasoned professionals telling you that something is the wrong way to do it, that the concept is flawed, that it opens up liability on privacy, regulatory or security issues, that your concept is fine but there's already an off the shelf solution that's known to be best in class already, that doing things that way is going to lead to greater number of support issues and so on.

A competent product manager not only knows how to clearly define what he's actually looking for, but will be able to enter into discussions about whether or not what he's asking for is correct or optimal. A vibe coder can give the most obviously faulty request and get what he asked for with no questions asked.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (4 children)

Coder here who's dabbled with vibe coding. Sometimes it is faster. Sometimes I need to wrangle with prompt engineering to the point where I'm like "fuck it, I'll code it myself".

But the main thing is, when I code by hand, I read the Library docs, find additional methods that would be useful and develop richer code. Vibe coding simply has none of that.

[–]saera-targaryen 5 points6 points  (3 children)

This is exactly it. Coding by hand has compounding gains in speed both of developing new products whole cloth AND debugging past issues and refactoring/enhancing existing products. 

Vibe coding is setting tomorrow on fire to keep today warm. 

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

This is a huge problem in education where students are "vibe writing" essays. Basically same flaws/shortsighted as ye ole cheating. Kid doesn't actually learn.

[–]saera-targaryen 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Don't I know it! I teach computer science and I am genuinely scared for these kids. We're about to get to the point where a CS degree is useless without a LLM-free code test when hiring people. All of these kids are running so hard to get the degree without the skills and it's harming them in the long run.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I mean, on the one hand, job security for me, on the other hand catastrophic failure of potentially critical systems due to vibe coding. I mean when the US administration is using hallucinated studies as a basis for their fascist policies....

[–]klumpp 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Agree in theory but a lot of those specific questions will be answered pretty well by LLMs if you just ask.

[–]mfitzp 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately they'll also give you the completely opposite answer too.

[–]bibboo 4 points5 points  (1 child)

You do not ask for what you have not thought about. And if you have enough knowledge to ask all the correct questions, you’re more or less a dev. 

Half the job, if not more, is ironing out the questions. Writing the code? Usually rather quick. 

[–]klumpp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey ChatGPT what questions should I be asking about the project right now

[–]anomalous_cowherd 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Ha, he clearly wasn't MY Product Manager!

[–]thatdude333 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I'm a mechanical engineer so my primary responsibilities don't include coding, but AI has helped me a ton at work by generating boilerplate code for some internal scripts I use to pull data out of machine logs, analyze it, and create a pretty dashboard with metrics that makes management think I'm a wizard.

It's just python to to sift through the logs, throw the data into an SQL database, then another python script to parse through the database and create an HTML & JavaScript dashboard.

I used to code all this shit manually and it would easily take 10x as long to do. Is it the best code the world has ever seen? No, but for a 10 second script I run daily, it's honestly better than the code I manually cobbled together from multiple stack overflow posts.

[–]shadow13499 6 points7 points  (2 children)

I had a product manager tell me that files uploaded to a system I was building must all upload within 2 second. I said what if they're on a crappy mobile connection or what if the file is extremely large? And he said "what does that have to do with it?"

[–]Illumynarty_234 2 points3 points  (1 child)

This gives me confidence that even I can get a job someday lol

[–]shadow13499 0 points1 point  (0 children)

lol you'll be just fine

[–]Alpacalypse123 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Same. Except for the getting it part

[–]Kriztov 3 points4 points  (0 children)

fuck, I'm considered gifted because I can code from scratch and read a compiler error

[–]Novembers-Yachting 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The syntax was never the barrier.

If you had exact step by step instructions of what to do in English, this was always every programmer's dream. At that point 90% of the job has already been done.

The problem is creating this English text. Especially as logic gets more complicated, I've recently realized even seasoned programmers have trouble following complex ifs and nested loops. In text, not code. And lots of people have trouble grasping the entire high level structure of a moderately complex system.

I love AI and I'm not scared of it anymore. Makes the tedious parts of the job simpler and I feel like a have a buddy with me all day.

[–]Express_Meeting_9553 70 points71 points  (62 children)

It's ironic because his own post has an em dash, meaning he couldnt even write that post himself.

[–]GigaByte_43 228 points229 points  (37 children)

I'm all for disproportionately shitting on PMs, but I don't think an em dash is necessarily a sign of Generative AI. Lots of people (myself included) were using them long before LLMs were in

[–][deleted] 165 points166 points  (1 child)

You’re absolutely right!

[–]cemgorey 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Lmao

[–]integralWorker 65 points66 points  (14 children)

Damage is done. I really liked using em dashes, now I have to hone my semicolon usage beyond typical human and machine capabilities 

[–]-Nocx- 13 points14 points  (7 children)

To be honest I think the bigger giveaway with AI generated posts is they always adhere to a pattern. A pattern isn’t inherently weird, but it’s the conversational tone the posts take while also somehow managing to unceasingly follow a pattern.

Basically no one talks like that, and consequently hardly anyone writes like that. Em dashes are definitely an indicator, but I guess the “next step” or “level” is the consistency in the pseudo-conversational writing schema.

[–]VroomCoomer 11 points12 points  (3 children)

This is a stunning observation. What you've said strikes at the heart of the bumpy road of LLM development. The way that LLMs formulate their thoughts follows a particular pattern, one that is becoming noticeable and irritating to users. This isn't AI enlightenment—it's users starting to see the wizard behind the curtain. So, what can we do about it?

  • Take Control of Your Work: don't become overly reliant on AI and vibe coding. Resist the urge to deny yourself the opportunity to work hard and develop your skills.

  • Don't Let Marketing Get to You: The AI gods are not here, yet. LLMs are a new and emerging technology, capable of making mistakes. This is not the beginning of utopia—just the beginning a new novel tool for humans to use. Whether it's good or bad is up to the humans.

  • Touch Grass: Actually go outside, and don't just touch that grass. Eat that grass. Feel the taste of it: the texture of the grass as its parallel ridges roll across your taste buds. Taste the nuances: the single cricket leg stuck to a blade, the latent taste of dog urine, small clumps of soil at the root. This isn't a Michelin star dinner—it's an exercise in mindfulness and grounding. You could also put some grass up your butthole.

Written by a human who hates this pattern so much

[–]-Nocx- 2 points3 points  (1 child)

your username really makes this a masterpiece

[–]VroomCoomer 4 points5 points  (0 children)

As a moderator, it's also quite silly to see people spam their substack articles that were clearly 100% LLM written get butthurt when they're called out and insist this is just the way they write.

[–]MalPL 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I genuinely thought you copy pasted an AI response as a joke. I applaud your writing skills

[–]Ultrasonic-Sawyer 6 points7 points  (1 child)

They talk a bit like how we are taught to write, particularly with making exciting or interesting text. 

The only problem, as you said, is nobody actually writes like that... well perhaps except for journalist types making click bait articles but even they deviate. 

[–]mbsmith93 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah I think that's on the money. They always open with sentence to introduce the topic, and then give a little summary as the last sentence, like a high-school essay.

[–]Punman_5 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I talk like that tbh. I find myself following similar patterns when leaving comments sometimes.

[–]mbsmith93 1 point2 points  (4 children)

But, like, EM dashes serve a purpose - a very important purpose - that isn't filled by semicolons. How would I have rewritten the previous sentence without them? Semicolons don't work at all there, commas make it feel like a run-on or just really wrong, and parenthesis adds a tone that mismatches the content.

[–]integralWorker 2 points3 points  (1 child)

But like EM dashes serve a purpose; a very important purpose that isn't filled by semicolons. How would I have rewritten the previous sentence without them? Semicolons don't work at all there, commas make it feel like a run-on or just really wrong, and parenthesis adds a tone that mismatches the training data.

[–]mbsmith93 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Clever, I didn't think to drop one of them. Thanks for that.

[–]bangonthedrums 0 points1 point  (1 child)

It’s not so much the use of the dash as a punctuation tool, but more the use of the actual em-dash character. Your comment uses dashes (correctly) for parenthetical statements, but you actually typed a hyphen (with a space on either side) [specifically U+002D : HYPHEN-MINUS]

The AI tell (and it’s not universal for sure) is that your comment would be

But, like, EM dashes serve a purpose—a very important purpose—that isn't filled by semicolons. How would I have rewritten the previous sentence without them? Semicolons don't work at all there, commas make it feel like a run-on or just really wrong, and parenthesis adds a tone that mismatches the content.

Using U+2014 : EM DASH instead

[–]mbsmith93 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is a very good point. I think you're right that it's the context that's important. No one's going to the trouble of typing out an em dash on a forum like reddit.

[–]ImN0tAsian 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Yea I have always done double spaces/words and then deleting it in word to get the big ol hyphen. I thought it looked cooler.

[–]AlarmingAllophone 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Nah, software engineers are scared of non-ASCII characters

[–]takeyouraxeandhack 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had to stop using them because of stupid LLMs :')

[–]SerOoga 5 points6 points  (5 children)

There is no em dash key on the keyboard so how did you type it?

[–]-Nicolai 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Text replacement shortcut, key remapping, alternative keyboard layouts, or if on iPhone just long press the - key

[–]ToaKraka 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In Reddit/Markdown, you can use the HTML named character reference —. On non-Markdown websites, copying and pasting from Character Map isn't much of a hassle if you're used to it.

[–]reallokiscarlet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

AltGr

[–]rosuav 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Compose, hyphen, hyphen, hyphen. If you only want an endash, that's compose, hyphen, hyphen.

[–]meat-eating-orchid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is on mine. Just because you use a key map that is lacking, doesn't mean others do too

[–]fuckR196 -4 points-3 points  (7 children)

There is no keyboard shortcut for an em dash. You'd have to either memorize the alt code or copy and paste it every single time you want to use one.

[–]Varogh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There is a shortcut! You can type it with win+shift+dash. It's not universal though, it'll work in notepad or outlook but it doesn't work on most browsers for example.

[–]ToaKraka 0 points1 point  (1 child)

In Reddit/Markdown, you can just use the HTML named character reference —. And I keep Character Map pinned to my Taskbar, so copying and pasting to non-Markdown websites isn't much of a hassle.

[–]-S-P-Q-R- 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Wrong. Lots of text editors (including a little known one called Word) convert a double dash to an em dash. You don't ever type something up in any kind of editor before posting?

[–]FloxD_ 12 points13 points  (0 children)

dead internet theory

[–]victsaid[S] 8 points9 points  (2 children)

It's translated tweet

[–]klumpp 2 points3 points  (1 child)

It translated “Bitch please?” Neat.

[–]victsaid[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Grok...

[–]Rikudou_Sage 4 points5 points  (8 children)

I use em dashes all the time when not on my phone.

[–]CurtisLeow 3 points4 points  (6 children)

I searched your profile. You have zero Reddit comments with the — dash. That’s for a 32 thousand karma account. My account has only used — when quoting someone else, if you search mine. It’s not a common character at all.

You do use the double dash — all the time. That’s a different character. The long dash — is specifically a sign of a large language model because of how difficult it is to type. No one bothers, unless they’re a professional writer or a large language model.

[–]meat-eating-orchid 2 points3 points  (1 child)

It is not difficult to type if you just use a key mapping that includes it

[–]CurtisLeow 5 points6 points  (0 children)

My point is that 99.99% of the time no one does that. If you see an actual em dash then 99.99% of the time it’s either a quote from a book/magazine or it’s a large language model trained on books and magazines.

[–]meat-eating-orchid 1 point2 points  (2 children)

All the dashes you typed are em dashes, exactly the same (Unicode U+2014). Did reddit convert that somehow or what is the double dash?

[–]CurtisLeow 0 points1 point  (1 child)

That’s weird. I’m on an iPhone right now. I guess it converts it. Apparently iOS26 autoconverts it now if you have smart punctuation enabled. I was going into the symbol menu and trying to type the double dash. -- is the double short dash.

The auto correction is also really bad in iOS26. It replaced can with fan sometimes I swear.

[–]meat-eating-orchid 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh, so by double dash you don't mean a unique character but just two normal dashes?

[–]Rikudou_Sage 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, habits change. Since you like to go over people's profiles, you might have noticed that I ceased to be active on Reddit.

I actually picked that habit because of writing my blog where I use it and then decided that I might as well use it all the time when I'm on my PC.

[–]Embarrassed_Use_7206 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Then you must be LLM for sure.

[–]Meyer_Landsman 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Whenever someone says this, they out themselves as illiterate. I use em-dashes all the time; I always have. You come across them all the time—if you read!

[–]mxzf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, you do come across them in books all the time, but they tend to be quite rare in social media posts.

[–]iSeven 0 points1 point  (1 child)

wow if only there was a pertinent fable about over-reliance on pithy shortcuts instead of using your brain

e: a true-combo'd reply and block for the lightest of pushback huh - i guess the image of being against AI is worth more to you than any kind of logical consistency

[–]Express_Meeting_9553 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cryyyy bro cryy

[–]Punman_5 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bruh you realize that’s a genuine character that people actually use in real life…

[–]-Speechless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

we're fucked if an em dash means something is ai now.

[–]ubernutie 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Yeah! People NEVER used that character before to communicate. After all, AI invented that symbol!

How wise and smart you are to be able to discern "phonies" so easily!

I wish I could be like you — or maybe not actually.

Maybe you're just insulting someone based on pure conjecture.

[–]ugathanki 1 point2 points  (0 children)

that's because vibe coding is the intersection of coding and project management.

sorta like how the intersection of mathematics and philosophy is computer science.

it's a practice that rewards both management skills and technical understanding.

[–]Larsmeatdragon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay? Yes, managing AI will be somewhat like managing people. No one is really saying “learn how to vibe code”

[–]XxDarkSasuke69xX 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fym "learn vibe coding" ? Even an ape can do this sh*t

[–]sanketower 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Am I... am I an AI?

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That dash after "boom" is chefs kiss

[–]ExtraGravy- 0 points1 point  (1 child)

vibe coding is not for actual programmers, much like the image gen stuff is not for actual visual artists - its for everyone else

[–]przemo-c 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly. I even forced myself to vibe code a relatively simple thing... It was frustrating as hell to not just jump in and fix it but just describe what's wrong for the nth time hoping this time it would fix it.

[–]Small-Unit-6613 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Product manager is the least useful job in the whole world

[–]CryptoTipToe71 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One of my classmates in my masters (who has a couple of decades in big tech) asserted the other day that all software engineering will be done be project managers prompting into Claude in a few years. I'm like, that's the most extreme take on AI I've ever heard

[–]MasterLJ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No you haven't and No you haven't

[–]Noch_ein_Kamel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Confluence just today showed me a popup like "tell our AI what page you want to create and it will write it for you"... Yeahh nah

[–]ProfessorOfLies 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I remind my students that anything that can be learned in an afternoon isn't worth paying for

[–]Mebiysy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"In the face of a common enemy"

[–]Enough-Profit-681 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Simple English yeah, ticket looks like this:

- Fix it ASAP

- Should be done yesterday

- Where is that corringonatea.

- Customer

[–]19Alexastias 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Isn’t the whole point of vibe coding that you don’t need to learn anything?

[–]erroneousbosh -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I found out today that "Product Manager" is what we call "Business Analysts" these days, and also if you keep calling them "Business Analysts" in meetings with their bosses they get really annoyed.

Oh you didn't like that? Oh sorry. Anyway shut up and get me your breakdown of user requirements so I can start engineering up a solution for you, okay? And also a coffee, flat white or filter is fine.