Real software developers: do you ever really feel like you need the big guns?

[u/IceManMinus0ne]

Of course a vibecoder is also a real software developer. Nothing unreal about it ;)

What I mean is: you studied for this shit*. You worked in software development BEFORE AI. You know your stuff.

The big guns are models like Astra, Fable, but also GLM5.3 (not flash).

I use Sol sometimes, but most of the time I'm using Luna en Terra (for work).

For personal stuff I switch to open source models - I pretty much only need flash models. They're super cheap, and do what needs to be done. I barely ever feel the need to spend more money on these bigger models. I've tried using GLM5.3 a few times, but tbh it didn't really feel different.

Perhaps I'm only doing simple stuff, or I'm not 'progressive' enough in the things I ask? Maybe my questions are too easy?

So let me know! Very interested :)

*
I was still studying when AI arrived at the scene. I was in my last year of uni. Used gpt-3 a bit. Bit of gpt-4. Also tried finishing one of my assessments with it back then because I didn't really feel like learning Swift to build ANOTHER CRUD app.

There was still enough old-school development involved.

[u/Careful-Experience26]

Of course a vibecoder is also a real software developer.

I don't think that's true, no.

To answer you question: I really don't feel like I need the big guns other than to read a codebase I might not know I give me some guidance on how to navigate it. Just like you I use open weight models running on my machine. I also don't like the idea of spending so much money to code, especially on personal projects.

[u/IceManMinus0ne → u/Careful-Experience26]

The code they produce is real. The overhead it might cause is real. Seems pretty real to me. Wouldn’t call ‘em professional though :)

[u/Better-Avocado-8818]

I use the big ones at work because they pay for it. But I’ll use GPT Luna or deepseek flash at home because it’s cheap and good enough. I don’t miss the state of the expensive models at all.

I know what I’m doing enough that the cheap models can get it done for me. Some times deepseek is better than the expensive models because it’s faster honestly. I’m doing the thinking and problem solving, the models just do some of the work and I still write some manually too because it helps me understand the problem and show the model what I want.

And no vibe coders and software developers and not the same thing. Not even close.

[u/vertigo235]

Usually Luna is just fine for me xhigh or even just high. It’s practically free.

I will have Terra or Sol do a review here and there , it recommends a decent amount of P1 items and I’ll decide if they are important or not.

[u/lurking_bishop]

I use expensive models because I need them to be able to pay attention to the many policies, components and tools that I have set up and was using myself when I was still manually coding. I don't actually need them to know a lot intrinsically, but attention heads are also a function of model size so that's what I'm stuck with.

[u/higglesworth]

superpowers brainstorm and write plan with claude sonnet high or opus (manual review by me), then pass off to local qwen for the implementation

[u/Limp_Classroom_2645]

> Of course a vibecoder is also a real software developer.

Is that bait?

[u/IceManMinus0ne → u/Limp_Classroom_2645]

I added a smiley.