Taxes and vibe-coding--what could go wrong?

cadamsdotcom a day ago | parent | next [-]

Wikipedia in its early days was not a high quality source of information. Assignments citing Wikipedia were graded F, no one trusted the information there, etc etc.

Now look at it! It's a key data source for humans AND AI. When did the flip happen? How did it happen?

Your views on vibecoding are going to become wrong similarly: gradually then all at once.

So keep looking for the signs and be ready to change your views - it'll happen fast to vibecoding too.

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jraph a day ago | parent [-]

> Assignments citing Wikipedia were graded F

They still should, because:

> It's a key data source for humans

It shouldn't. It's not Wikipedia's project to be a source. You should use it as a good entry point to whatever topic you're researching, and use the cited sources. (and sure, acknowledge Wikipedia, but it's not a source)

	▲	TeMPOraL a day ago \| parent [-]
		That's what you should be doing, especially if you want to claim to be an authoritative source yourself, you need to play the knowledge provenance game. Everyone else that just need information for practical reasons? Wikipedia has long proven its stochastic guarantees are more than enough. (Even if you need to cite primary sources in the end, it makes more sense to go with Wikipedia early on, and track back the sources for citation once whatever you're working on pans out.)

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mattm a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I used Claude for my taxes last year. It was fine.

Previously, I used Free Fillable Forms which does force me to know more about tax forms than a more abstract software program. Most people's tax situation does not change very much year to year so it's fairly easy to verify - you can check if my tax return looks fairly similar to the previous year taking into account any differences.

If you have a substantially different year for whatever reason, sure get an accountant to double check. But if you're paying for an AI frontier agent, there's really no need to pay for a 3rd party program anymore.