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Vibe engineering

simonwillison.net

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Re: Vibe engineering

#211

Post by energy123 »

sph wrote: post #173
subarctic wrote: post #151

I just feel so discouraged reading this somehow. I used to have this hard-to-get, in-demand skill that paid lots of money and felt like even though programming languages, libraries and web frameworks were always evolving I could always keep up because I'm smart. But now with these people like Simon Willison writing about the new way of coding with these agents and multiple streams of work going on at a time and it so…

Keep your head up, the gravy train is not gonna run forever, and they will need serious engineers to untangle the piles of bullshit creates in these past few years. But also yes, look into moving into a different field. Professional software engineering is gonna be infected with AI bullshit for a long while. Move into a field where hand-crafted code can make a difference, but not where you're paid for the line commit…

I don't really agree. The writing is on the wall, if not now then in 2 years or 4 years. I arrive at this view not so much based on the capabilities of the tools right now, but based on the property of software being verifiable, which like mathematics, makes it amenable to synthetic data pipelines, with only relatively small remaining details needing to be worked out (such as how to endow architectural taste). This is not nearly the first industry where 'artisans' have been initially augmented by innovation, only to be eventually replaced by it, which in my view will occur likely within my own career-span.

Re: Vibe engineering

#212

Post by deanCommie »

simonw wrote: post #165
subarctic wrote: post #151

I just feel so discouraged reading this somehow. I used to have this hard-to-get, in-demand skill that paid lots of money and felt like even though programming languages, libraries and web frameworks were always evolving I could always keep up because I'm smart. But now with these people like Simon Willison writing about the new way of coding with these agents and multiple streams of work going on at a time and it so…

I'm really sorry to hear this, because part of my goal here is to help push back against the idea that "programming skills are useless now, anyone can get an LLM to write code for them". I think existing software development skills get a whole lot more valuable with the addition of coding agents. You can take everything you've learned up to this point and accelerate the impact you can have with this new family of too…

I don't think OP thinks his skills are useless per se now, but that the way to apply those skills now feels less fun and enjoyable.

Which makes perfect sense - even putting aside the dopamine benefits of getting into a coding flow state.

Coding is craftsmanship - in some cases artistry.

You're describing Vibe Engineering as management. And sure, a great manager can make more of an impact increasing the productivity of an entire team than a great coder can make by themselves. And sure, some of the best managers are begrudging engineers who stepped up when needed to and never stepped down.

But most coders still don't want to be managers - and it's not from a lack of skill or interest in people - it's just not what they chose.

LLM-based vibe coding and engineering is turning the creative craftsmanship work of coding into technical middle management. Even if the result is more "productivity", it's a bit sad.

Re: Vibe engineering

#213

Post by prerok »

ruszki wrote: post #195
selcuka wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, it's probably only the impostor syndrome. Your development skills are still relevant. Think of agents as junior developers that assist you in coding tasks, whom you constantly need to mentor, review, and correct.

So my development skills are still relevant because I need to use my managerial skills?

I would not call these managerial skills: these are skills of lead engineers. Management does not really look at the code, right?

Re: Vibe engineering

#214

Post by jmfldn »

Seeing all the experienced engineers on this thread who feel discouraged is really depressing.

Not because I disagree with you, I don't! It's because I fear a gradual brain drain of people who actually love their craft and know how to build things properly. I fear we'll end up with worse software thats simply 'good enough', built a atop a pile of AI slop.

If it's cheaper but with acceptably worse results, I fear this is good enough for a lot of companies.

Re: Vibe engineering

#215

Post by [deleted] »

bryzaguy wrote: post #138
keeda wrote: 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?

[deleted]

Re: Vibe engineering

#216

Post by globular-toast »

taylorlunt wrote: post #104

These seem like a lot of great ways to work around the limitations of LLMs. But I'm curious what people here think. Do any career software engineers here see more than a 10% boost to their coding productivity with LLMs? I see how if you can't really code, or you're new to a domain, then it can make a huge difference getting you started, but if you know what you're doing I find you hit a wall pretty quickly trying to…

All I've found is the LLM just makes me work more. It's hard to talk about % boost when you're just simply working more hours.

It's like having a faster car with a bigger engine. Big deal. I want a faster car with a smaller engine. My ideal is to actually go home and stop working at the end of the day.

I also don't want to use it for my day job because I'm afraid my brain will atrophy. You don't really need to think when something is already done for you. I don't want to become someone who can only join together LLM output. I don't feel like I'll miss out on anything by not jumping on now, but I do feel like I'll lose something.

Re: Vibe engineering

#217

Post by 000ooo000 »

Slapping 'engineering' on something to try and trade on the good name of real engineers is the express lane to losing all of your credibility. Guess I should get ahead of the curve and update my title to Slop Surgeon.

Re: Vibe engineering

#218

Post by matt3210 »

I took a look at youtube but I haven't seen any real examples of AI being used to ship anything significant (as in, other than toy apps which are available as templates already or copy pastable from tutorial websites).

Re: Vibe engineering

#219

Post by huntercaron »

> it’s surprisingly effective, if mentally exhausting!

this sadly seems to sum up most of this new wave of work. hopefully we can find a better workflow that still feels as good as coding used to

Re: Vibe engineering

#220

Post by manmal »

simonw wrote: post #124
agentultra wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think people are good at self-reporting the “boost” it gives them. We need more empirical evidence. And historically we’re really bad at running such studies and they’re usually incredibly expensive. And the people with the money aren’t interested in engineering. They generally have other motives for allowing FUD and hype about productivity to spread. Personally I don’t see these tools going much further than…

> 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…

Indeed, Codex CLI is quite useful even for demanding tasks. The current problem is that it might gather context for 20 minutes before doing the actual thing. The question is whether this will be sped up significantly.
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