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Vibe engineering

simonwillison.net

141–150 of 759 posts

Re: Vibe engineering

#141
post #134

I think we should just accept that vibe-coding has now semantically shifted to mean all AI-assisted coding. Actually, it makes sense to me even when a human is interacting directly with the code, because it feels a lot like pair-programming. As such, I really am "vibing" with the AI. But then the original meaning of vibe-coding -- as in, "Take the wheel, LLama of God" -- does need a new term, because that will also b…

Clanker Coding ™

Re: Vibe engineering

#142
post #136
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They choke on anything that isn’t a greenfield project and consistently produce unwanted results. That was true 8 months ago. It's not true today, because of the one-two punch of modern longer-context "reasoning" models (Claude 4+, GPT-5+) and terminal-based coding agents (Claude Code, Codex CLI). Setting those loose an an existing large project is a very different experience from previous LLM tools. I've watched C…

I guess we just have to take your word for this, which is somewhat odd considering most of your comments link back to some artifact of yours. Are you paid by any of these companies?

I'm not paid by any of them, but I occasionally get preview access to models or invites to events. I attended OpenAI's DevDay on Monday for free, for example.

I have a disclosures section on my blog here: https://simonwillison.net/about/#disclosures

Re: Vibe engineering

#143
post #134

I think we should just accept that vibe-coding has now semantically shifted to mean all AI-assisted coding. Actually, it makes sense to me even when a human is interacting directly with the code, because it feels a lot like pair-programming. As such, I really am "vibing" with the AI. But then the original meaning of vibe-coding -- as in, "Take the wheel, LLama of God" -- does need a new term, because that will also b…

What about slop-coding?

Nicely verbable too: “I vibed this out earlier” -> “Me and Claude slopped together this PR, ptal”

Re: Vibe engineering

#144
post #134

I think we should just accept that vibe-coding has now semantically shifted to mean all AI-assisted coding. Actually, it makes sense to me even when a human is interacting directly with the code, because it feels a lot like pair-programming. As such, I really am "vibing" with the AI. But then the original meaning of vibe-coding -- as in, "Take the wheel, LLama of God" -- does need a new term, because that will also b…

I made a claude slash command `/yolo` for when I just want it to do do something without further guidance, so I agree :)

Re: Vibe engineering

#145
post #134

I think we should just accept that vibe-coding has now semantically shifted to mean all AI-assisted coding. Actually, it makes sense to me even when a human is interacting directly with the code, because it feels a lot like pair-programming. As such, I really am "vibing" with the AI. But then the original meaning of vibe-coding -- as in, "Take the wheel, LLama of God" -- does need a new term, because that will also b…

Disagree, I think vibe coders should become synonymous with no-code and continue to be somewhat of a pejorative.

I don't like the term vibe engineer, but do agree there needs to be a term to signifiy the difference.

It's also possible in the future just being called a developer/engineer already implies you use coding agents and the people who do it "by hand" will not be the norm.

Re: Vibe engineering

#146
post #15

I’d just call it “coding” – it’ll be the default soon enough. For the old way: “hand-coding”

I feel a certain way when I hear about older programmers who used to program using punch cards, I guess everyone in the future will think about us in the same way?

You don't "program" with punch cards any more than you "program" with text files. They were just the mechanism to get your code into the computer before hard drives and compilers existed.

Re: Vibe engineering

#148
What I’d really like to see is a company that completely does away with the code review step. Because if you think about it a code review is already being done by the invoker of the LLM. That way the velocity will actually be faster. It feels like at the moment most of the velocity is blocked by the outdated notion of code review.

It’s also why these tools feel great in green field projects, since these ones don’t typically have any code review in place (i.e. one dev going brrr)

Re: Vibe engineering

#149

What I’d really like to see is a company that completely does away with the code review step. Because if you think about it a code review is already being done by the invoker of the LLM. That way the velocity will actually be faster. It feels like at the moment most of the velocity is blocked by the outdated notion of code review. It’s also why these tools feel great in green field projects, since these ones don’t ty…

I hope this is a joke...

Re: Vibe engineering

#150

What I’d really like to see is a company that completely does away with the code review step. Because if you think about it a code review is already being done by the invoker of the LLM. That way the velocity will actually be faster. It feels like at the moment most of the velocity is blocked by the outdated notion of code review. It’s also why these tools feel great in green field projects, since these ones don’t ty…

I hope this is a joke...

Partially serious. I mean what’s the point of being able to open 100 PRs in one day if your coworkers can only reliably review 5 of them?
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