51–60 of 74 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I feel like I don't need to read articles with inflammatory headlines.
It 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,…
I don't know what fast fashion is, but we definitely get production grade high quality code from AI.
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 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.
It 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,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wasn't the original definition of vibe coding asking us to "forget that the code even exists"?
It was, but annoyingly a lot of people now use "vibe coding" to mean any form of AI-assisted development. It's got to the point where if someone talks about "vibe coding" you have to confirm with them which definition they are using, because otherwise you risk people talking right past each other because they're not actually talking about the same thing.
Just like every HN thread about vibe coding!
However, I find the analogy a bit off the mark. LLMs are, fundamentally, tools. Their effectiveness and the quality of output depend on the user's expertise and domain knowledge. For prototyping, exploring ideas, or debugging (as the author's Docker Compose example illustrates), they can be incredibly powerful (not to mention time-savers).
The risk of producing bloated, unmaintainable code isn't new. LLMs might accelerate the production of it, but the ultimate responsibility for the quality and maintainability still rests with the person pressing the proverbial "ship" button. A skilled developer can use LLMs to quickly iterate on well-defined problems or discard flawed approaches early.
I do agree that we need clearer definitions of 'good quality' and 'maintainable' code, regardless of AI's role. The 'YMMV' factor is key here: it feels like the tool amplifies the user's capabilities, for better or worse.
Why 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.
If someone on my team who was a software engineer and not very junior consistently produced such low quality code I would put them on a performance improvement plan.
I don't know what fast fashion is, but we definitely get production grade high quality code from AI.
But if it’s production code then surely you are scrutinising it heavily. That’s hardly “vibe coding” it’s just using a LLM to aid development.
It 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,…
Domain knowledge is key I agree. I think we’re going to see waterfall development come back. Domain experts, project managers and engineers gathering requirements and planning architecture up front in order to create the ultra detailed spec needed for the agents to succeed. Between them they can write a CLAUDE.md file, way of working (“You will do TDD, update JIRA ticket like so”) and all the supporting context docs.…