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well, to me this widespread disapproval for using ai to write a majority of your code seems odd. AI mostly seems like just another tool in our toolbox albeit with its own pros and cons. The pros are that you can rapidly develop stuff and the cons that it's not precise and sometimes it creates deep bugs that are nearly impossible for you to manually debug. 

You might look at this from another angle, which is that the use of AI doesn't capture the spirit of game jams, which are testing our skills to program games "manually" (ignoring the ways in which modern programming has become way less manual than in the past due to engines and libraries doing a lot of the heavy lifting). I think this is the only argument that works for trying to justify bans on ai coding in these contexts. But even here, I disagree with the motivation. Imo the competition should be about making good games and the tool used is irrelevant. Look at robotics competitions for comparison. Do robotics competitions become degraded when competitors put advanced modern computers in their machines? No, they become more interesting. You might say that doing so is inauthentic to the competition which is testing the competitors ability to do electrical/mechanical engineering.

I'd be curious to hear peoples reasons why they disapprove of using ai to write the majority of their code for game jams.

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I’ve worked as a software developer for some years, and (unfortunately) decided to try out AI to “help me with coding” for a period of time in 2024. That brief experience only made me dumber and more stressed, and in no way more productive. Imo relying on chatbots only stops you from learning new things, and distracts you from getting into the rhythm of what you already know. Believe me, writing bad code and good code can both be done much better and faster without the help of LLMs. There are a ton of great resources out there for learning, and they only got better since I was new to it. This matches with the experiences of other developers I talked to.

I also have some other reasons why I’m trying to avoid this technology: It’s pushed by dubious corporations into anything and everything, even if it’s not wanted or needed. It’s largely build on stolen work. It is beginning to be used in mass surveillance and warfare. It’s a highly centralized technology in the hands of a few organizations, and neither of them seems trustworthy at all. It also produces a ton of pollution, guzzling up electricity and drinking water like crazy.

I’m not condemning people who ask a few questions from a chatbot now and then, especially since all the search engines are garbage lately, but I also don’t think vibecoding is just “using a new tool”. The best metaphor I can think for it is standing in line for a chance to get stolen jewelry for free. Even if someone gets something that looks valuable, that doesn’t make them a master jeweler, or even a master thief. They’re only getting better at filling up queues and waiting for things to happen.