I knocked up a VSCode plugin in a few hours that extracted a JSON file from a zip file generated by the clang C++ static analyzer, parsed it into the VSCode problems and diagnostic view and provided quick fixes for simple things. All of this without hardly knowing or caring about java script or how the NPM tool chains work. Just kept taking screen shots of VSCode and saying what I wanted to go where and what the behaviour should be. When I was happy with certain aspects such as code parsing and patching I got it to write unit tests to lock in certain behaviours. If anyone tells you LLM's are just garbage generators they are not using the tools correctly.
Vibe coding is the fast fashion industry of software engineering
21–30 of 74 posts
Re: Vibe coding is the fast fashion industry of software engineering
#22Why do you think AI is producing low quality code? Before I started using AI, my code was often rejected as "didn't use thing X" or "didn't follow best practice Y" but ever since I started coding with AI, that was gone. Works especially well when the code is being reviewed by a person who is clueless about AI.
> Why do you think AI is producing low quality code?
I asked for a very, very simple bash script to test code generation abilities once. The AI got it spectacularly wrong. So wrong that it was ridiculous. Here's my reason why I think it does produce low quality code; because it does.
Re: Vibe coding is the fast fashion industry of software engineering
#23Vibe coding is not a 0/1 skill. LLMs generate code as the prompt says, so when you ask what you want, you get it. If you want a specific pattern or architecture, explicitly ask for that. It works really well when you (not the LLM) drive the development.
This has not been my experience. Many times I ask explicitly what I want, and the tools fail to deliver. Of course, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, plenty of times they are helpful and can really deliver 10x improvements. The key is recognizing the patterns when these tools can deliver and when they can’t. Don’t forget to reevaluate every couple of weeks, as the tools improve all the time.
Re: Vibe coding is the fast fashion industry of software engineering
#24Everybody loathes fast fashion but look at their revenue.
Clothes (today) are fungible. Some products are, like prototype experiences. Those are so uncommon that developers who got to do green field coding were making their peers jealous. This is because most software lasts for a long time. So long, in fact, that prototypes ”turning into” production systems for many years is a meme. If you look at the value built in large companies today, it’s not code, but predominantly data. If we didn’t have to care about data from legacy systems, we’d be a lot faster too.
Is there a market for such fast rotating code? Yes. And that market will probably grow, due to it getting flooded with cheap labor and attention – I’m sure people will find new use cases as well. But, crucially, this is not the market we have. You can bet all you want on AI, but in all likelihood the market needs will largely remain the same.
Re: Vibe coding is the fast fashion industry of software engineering
#25Many of the statements in the article would have been correct in 2023. OP sounds like he is judging stuff he doesn't have a lot of experience with, a bit like my grandma when she used to tell me how bad hip hop music is.
This doesn't make any sense, a lot of the statements are especially true now, and would've been wrong in 2023. Your comment sounds like a weak defense instead, like saying "ahh you just don't get hip hop, you're too old" to your grandma.
Re: Vibe coding is the fast fashion industry of software engineering
#26I knocked up a VSCode plugin in a few hours that extracted a JSON file from a zip file generated by the clang C++ static analyzer, parsed it into the VSCode problems and diagnostic view and provided quick fixes for simple things. All of this without hardly knowing or caring about java script or how the NPM tool chains work. Just kept taking screen shots of VSCode and saying what I wanted to go where and what the beha…
I feel like no one has read the article, instead anyone jumps on the defense and says "but my AI code is good!!!!". It's not even about the quality, and no one said that AI just produces garbage, especially with newer models.
Re: Vibe coding is the fast fashion industry of software engineering
#27It seems to me that the ongoing “vibe coding” debate on HN, about whether AI coding agents are helpful or harmful, often overlooks one key point: the better you are as a coder, the less useful these agents tend to be.
Years ago, I was an amazing C++ dev. Later, I became a solid Python dev. These days, I run a small nonprofit in the digital rights space, where our stack is mostly JavaScript. I don’t code much anymore, and honestly, I’m mediocre at it now. For us, AI coding agents have been a revelation. We are a small team lacking resources and agent let us move much faster, especially when it comes to cleaning up technical debt or handling simple, repetitive tasks.
That said, the main lesson I learned about vibe coding, or using AI for research and any other significant task, is that you must understand the domain better than the AI. If you don’t, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Re: Vibe coding is the fast fashion industry of software engineering
#28Why do you think AI is producing low quality code? Before I started using AI, my code was often rejected as "didn't use thing X" or "didn't follow best practice Y" but ever since I started coding with AI, that was gone. Works especially well when the code is being reviewed by a person who is clueless about AI.
This is because AI-generated code will always be mediocre. There is so much poor-quality code in the training base that it will dilute the high-quality sources. AI is not a craftsman who builds on his own high standards, but rather a token grinder tool calibrated to your prompts. Even if you describe your problem (prompt) to a high standard, there is no way it can deliver a solution of the same standard. This will be true in 2025 as it was in 2023 and probably always will be.
Re: Vibe coding is the fast fashion industry of software engineering
#29> TL;DR: My take on AI for programming and "vibe coding" is that it will do to software engineering what fast fashion did to the clothing industry: flood the market with cheap, low-quality products and excessive waste.
This metaphor is too limiting though. You can do so much more with software than you can with clothes. Take a look at what injidup wrote. People are creating small home brewed projects for personal use.
So a lot of "fast fashion software" is going to be used at home. And let's face it, for our own home brewed projects for personal use, standards have always been lower because we know our own requirements.
I think in this "shadow economy of personal software use", LLMs are a boon.
Re: Vibe coding is the fast fashion industry of software engineering
#30I knocked up a VSCode plugin in a few hours that extracted a JSON file from a zip file generated by the clang C++ static analyzer, parsed it into the VSCode problems and diagnostic view and provided quick fixes for simple things. All of this without hardly knowing or caring about java script or how the NPM tool chains work. Just kept taking screen shots of VSCode and saying what I wanted to go where and what the beha…
LLM naysayers don't care about the real world use cases or logic. They care about their agenda.