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Vibe engineering

simonwillison.net

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Re: Vibe engineering

#321

Post by sevenseacat »

ares623 wrote: post #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 It feels like at the moment most of the velocity is blocked by the outdated notion of code review.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 ty…

I realize this is likely being facetious, but just in case - code reviews are so much more than just 'check the syntax and style of the code'. They check the intention, check the actual functionality, find issues on the larger scale that LLMs literally can't.

Yes, PRs start piling up because devs can vibe code them faster than they can be competently reviewed. This is a problem with the vibe code process, not the code review process.

Re: Vibe engineering

#322

Post by s_dev »

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 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.

Tools always empower those with knowledge further than those without knowledge.

Re: Vibe engineering

#323

Post by sevenseacat »

000ooo000 wrote: post #217

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.

my tongue-in-cheek job title has been 'professional string concatenator' for a long time now

Re: Vibe engineering

#324

Post by philipwhiuk »

I hope this term doesn't catch on - the whole point of 'engineering' is basing decisions on experience and understanding. The whole point of 'vibe' is the opposite.

If this sort of term is adopted we are in 'literally not being literally' territory.

Fortunately, I imagine that engineering outside software already has people vibing physical infrastructure solutions and call that vibe engineering so I don't think it will stick.

Re: Vibe engineering

#325

Post by philipwhiuk »

TrackerFF wrote: post #292
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…

Wasn't the original meaning of "vibe coding", as posted by Ilya Sutskever on twitter, that you just feed the model prompts and blindly run whatever results you get. No analysis or review, just copy/paste and hit run.

Sure, but English isn't defined by the first usage for all time or nearly all words would not mean what you think they mean right now.

(To be clear, I'm not saying the current meaning is not what you say, just that English isn't prescriptivist like this)

Re: Vibe engineering

#326

Post by zwnow »

ako wrote: post #305
zwnow wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its reasonable to stay away from something one considers dystopian considering the industry is not even sure about the usefulness of coding agents in professional environments. When the tractors replaced the horses, everyone could agree they outperform horses. The result was easily measurable. Its not that simple with LLM agents owned by big corporations.

Sure, it's not yet clear what impact LLMs will have on software development, but the impact it will have will not depend on if developers like to use it or not. If it is going to make software development 10x faster, companies will adopt it, whether devs like it or not.

Yup absolutely, and its a shame because it takes the joy out of it for a lot of people. I'll have a lot more paid leave if I dont like my job is all im going to say to this.

Re: Vibe engineering

#327

Post by codr7 »

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 still haven't seen any evidence to match these repeated claims of increased efficiency. What I have seen is reports that makes a lot of sense to me claiming it's all in the user's head.

Re: Vibe engineering

#329

Post by skor »

Don't worry — if we all have access to the same tools, the playing field is level. What sets you apart are the human qualities. Employers and clients want to be at the top, same as before LLMs. The market is large, and there's room for everyone. Don't be afraid of someone without any/little engineering knowledge making something, they were already copy/pasting code from SO before LLMs.

Re: Vibe engineering

#330

Post by mettamage »

Didn't read the article, reacting to the title.

To add as a data point: I've met founders that are business founders and are vibe coding entire businesses with React, Supabase and Netlify.

LLMs allow for amazingly high fidelity interaction designs to receive funding and prove out certain PoCs. Whether his stuff will stay up in production remains to be seen.

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