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Vibe engineering

simonwillison.net

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Re: Vibe engineering

#521

Post by robjellinghaus »

pron wrote: post #504
schwartzworld wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> incredibly impressive and completely unreliable. There have been methods of protecting against this since before AI, and they still apply. LLMs work great with test driven development, for example. I would say that high-level knowledge and good engineering practices more important than ever, but they were always important.

Test-driven development helps protect against wrong code, but it's not code I'm interested in, and it's not wrong code that I'm afraid of (I mean, that's table stakes). What I need is something that would help me generate understanding and do so reliably (even if the performance is poor). I can't exercise high-level knowledge efficiently if my only reliable input is code. Once you have to work at the code level at ev…

In my experience with Claude Code and Sonnet, it is absolutely possible to have architectural and design-oriented conversations about the work, at an entirely different and higher level than using a (formerly) high-level programming language. I have been able to learn new systems and frameworks far faster with Claude than with any previous system I have used. It definitely does require close attention to detect mistakes it does not realize it is making, but that is where the skill comes in. I find it being right 80% of the time and wrong 20% of the time to be a hugely acceptable tradeoff, when it allows me to go radically faster because it can do that 80% much quicker than I could. Especially when it comes to learning new code bases and exploring new repos I have cloned -- it can read code superhumanly quickly and explain it to me in depth.

It is certainly a hugely different style of interaction, but it helps to think of it as a conversation, or more precisely, a series of individual small targeted specific conversations, each aimed at researching a specific issue or solving a specific problem.

Re: Vibe engineering

#522

Post by acron0 »

pron wrote: post #504
schwartzworld wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> incredibly impressive and completely unreliable. There have been methods of protecting against this since before AI, and they still apply. LLMs work great with test driven development, for example. I would say that high-level knowledge and good engineering practices more important than ever, but they were always important.

Test-driven development helps protect against wrong code, but it's not code I'm interested in, and it's not wrong code that I'm afraid of (I mean, that's table stakes). What I need is something that would help me generate understanding and do so reliably (even if the performance is poor). I can't exercise high-level knowledge efficiently if my only reliable input is code. Once you have to work at the code level at ev…

Without meaning to sound flippant or dismissive, I think you're overthinking it. By the sounds of it, agents aren't offering what you say you need. What are _are_ offering is the boilerplate, the research, the planning etc. All the stuff that's ancillary. You could quite fairly say that it's in the pursuit of this stuff where details and ideas emerge and I would agree, but sometimes you don't need ideas. You need solutions which are run-of-the-mill and boring.

Re: Vibe engineering

#523

Post by rhetocj23 »

bartread wrote: post #519
oblio wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is that software engineering is a very unorganized and fashion/emotion driven domain. We don't have reliable productivity numbers for basically... anything. I that I'm more productive with statically typed languages but I haven't seen large scale, reliable studies. Same with unit tests, integration tests, etc. And then there are all the types of software engineering: web frontend, web API, mobil…

The other problem is the perennial, how much of what we do actually has value? Churning out 5x (or whatever - I’m deliberately being a bit hyperbolic) as much code sounds great on the face of it but what does it matter if little to none of it is actually valuable? You correctly identify that software development is often driven by fashion and emotion but the much much bigger problem is that product and portfolio mana…

"I suppose the big advantage of being more “productive” is that you can churn through more wrong ideas more quickly and thus perhaps improve your chances of stumbling across something that is valuable."

But I think there is a very big danger here - you build in the action but completely neglect the deep thinking behind a vision, strategy etc.

So yes you produce more stuff. But that stuff means more money spent - which is generally a sunk cost too.

In a bizarre way, I predict we will see the failure rate of software firms rise. Despite the fact these 'productivity' tools exist.

Re: Vibe engineering

#524

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Vibe engineering

#525

Post by hollowturtle »

nc wrote: post #517
hollowturtle wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook didn't solved any real problem, "Move fast and break things" is for investors not hackers. Famously gmail was very good quality web app and code(can't say the same today) surely not the product of today's "fast iteration" culture

Meta has a 1.79T market cap, they definitely solved some very real problems to get there. There are lots of companies doing well producing high quality products out of the gate today though, look at Linear. Both approaches are valid for building sustainable enduring businesses.

> Meta has a 1.79T market cap, they definitely solved some very real problems to get there.

Sure exploiting human attention to sell them ads, it's not technological marvel, I'd say psychological

Re: Vibe engineering

#526

Post by Bjorkbat »

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 think people underestimate the degree to which fun matters when it comes to productivity. If something isn’t fun then I’ll likely put it off. A 15 minute task can become hours, maybe days long, because I’m going to procrastinate on doing it.

If managing a bunch of AI agents is a very un-fun way to spend time, then I don’t think it’s the future. If the new way of doing this is more work and more tedium, then why the hell have we collectively decided this is the new way to work when historically the approach has been to automate and abstract tedium so we can focus on what matters?

The people selling you the future of work don’t necessarily know better than you.

Re: Vibe engineering

#527

Post by spopejoy »

spyckie2 wrote: post #508
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…

Sales isn’t easy either!

Well-put. Sw eng is so much better, assuming you are comfortable in the role, for types who want to punch a clock doing something they don't hate.

Sales is the definition of high-pressure, and your output is always threatened by forces beyond your control. It doesn't consistently reward intelligence or any particular skill other than hustle.

There's nothing like sw dev that lets you sit at your desk and ignore the outside world while getting paid for delivering biz-critical milestones. Even creatives don't have this kind of potential autonomy.

Re: Vibe engineering

#528

Post by DenisM »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #120

A better term is agentic coding, agentic software engineering, etc. rather than being vibe based. My process starts from a Claude Code plan, whose first step is to write a spec. I use TDD, and enforce my "unspoken rules of code quality" using a slew of generated tools. One tiny tool blocks code which violates our design system. Another tool blocks code which violates our separation of layering - this forces the HTTP…

> Another tool blocks code which violates our separation of layering - this forces the HTTP route handler code to only access the database via service layer.

Is that an llm agent or some other type of tool (e.g. language service or build toolset)?

Re: Vibe engineering

#529

Post by timcobb »

WOTERMEON wrote: post #346
s_dev wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

For a while

Life is for a while, everything is for a while

Re: Vibe engineering

#530

Post by tuveson »

nc wrote: post #517
hollowturtle wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook didn't solved any real problem, "Move fast and break things" is for investors not hackers. Famously gmail was very good quality web app and code(can't say the same today) surely not the product of today's "fast iteration" culture

Meta has a 1.79T market cap, they definitely solved some very real problems to get there. There are lots of companies doing well producing high quality products out of the gate today though, look at Linear. Both approaches are valid for building sustainable enduring businesses.

Phillip Morris has a 238B market cap. What problems are they solving?
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