Vibing a non-trivial Ghostty feature • Hacker News Board

Re: Vibing a non-trivial Ghostty feature

#21

Post by j45 » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

sjdjsin wrote: post #12

tptacek wrote: post #5

Tip: I very often use AI for inspiration. In this case, I ended up keeping a lot (not all) of the UI code it made, but I will very often prompt an agent, throw away everything it did, and redo it myself (manually!). I find the "zero to one" stage of creation very difficult and time consuming and AI is excellent at being my muse. This right here is the single biggest win for coding agents. I see and directionally agre…

> This is the part where I simply don't understand the objections people have to coding agents Because I have a coworker who is pushing slop at unsustainable levels, and proclaiming to management how much more productive he is. It’s now even more of a risk to my career to speak up about how awful his PRs are to review (and I’m not the only one on the team who wishes to speak up). The internet is rife with people who…

Maybe it's possible to use AI to help review the PRs and claim it's the AI making the PR's hyperproductive?

Re: Vibing a non-trivial Ghostty feature

#22

Post by WD-42 » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:25 PM UTC

This post demonstrates one area where ai agents are a huge win: ui frameworks. I have a very similar workflow on an app I’m currently developing in Rust and GTK.

It’s not that I don’t know how to implement something, it’s that the agent can do so much of the tedious searching and trial and error that accompanies this ui framework code.

Notice that Mitchell maintains understanding of all the code through the session. It’s because he already understands what he needs to do. This is a far cry from the definition of “vibe coding” I think a lot of people are riding on. There’s no shortcut to becoming an expert.

Loving Ghostty!

Re: Vibing a non-trivial Ghostty feature

#23

Post by dlvhdr » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:26 PM UTC

commandersaki wrote: post #15

I really respect Mitchell's response to the OpenAI accident, even if it is seen in positive light for ghostty. Can't think of any software vendor that actively tries to eliminate nag / annoyances (thinking specifically of MS Auto Update), so this is welcome. Also this article shows responsible use of AI when programming; I don't think it fits the original definition of vibe coding that caused hysterics.

yeah the usage of "vibe coding" here doesn't fit at all. That term is so overused.

Re: Vibing a non-trivial Ghostty feature

#24

Post by Razengan » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Vibing a non-trivial Ghostty feature

#25

Post by hoppp » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

I think as long as a human audit passes its good I also generated some pretty great code before, but I went in to review every single line to make sure

Re: Vibing a non-trivial Ghostty feature

#26

Post by XenophileJKO » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:34 PM UTC

j45 wrote: post #21

sjdjsin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the part where I simply don't understand the objections people have to coding agents Because I have a coworker who is pushing slop at unsustainable levels, and proclaiming to management how much more productive he is. It’s now even more of a risk to my career to speak up about how awful his PRs are to review (and I’m not the only one on the team who wishes to speak up). The internet is rife with people who…

Maybe it's possible to use AI to help review the PRs and claim it's the AI making the PR's hyperproductive?

Yes, this. If you can describe why it is slop, an AI can probably identify the underlying issues automatically.

Done right you should get mostly reasonable code out of the "execution focused peer".

Re: Vibing a non-trivial Ghostty feature

#27

Post by fn-mote » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:36 PM UTC

wilg wrote: post #17

sjdjsin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the part where I simply don't understand the objections people have to coding agents Because I have a coworker who is pushing slop at unsustainable levels, and proclaiming to management how much more productive he is. It’s now even more of a risk to my career to speak up about how awful his PRs are to review (and I’m not the only one on the team who wishes to speak up). The internet is rife with people who…

Not sure what to tell you, if there's a problem you have to speak up.

And the longer you wait, the worse it will be.

Also, update your resume and get some applications out so you’re not just a victim.

Re: Vibing a non-trivial Ghostty feature

#28

Post by nextworddev » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:38 PM UTC

Haven’t used Ghostty but why is HN putting it on front page every other week? What’s the main attraction to it

Re: Vibing a non-trivial Ghostty feature

#29

Post by JasonSage » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:38 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #20

sjdjsin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of your argument is: Because agents are good on this one specific axis (which I agree with and use fwiw), there’s no reason to object to them as a whole My argument is: The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. The small win (among others) is not worth the amounts of slop devs now have to deal with.

Sounds like a very poorly managed team.

I have to agree. My experience working on a team with mixed levels of seniority and coding experience is that everybody got some increase in productivity and some increase in quality.

The ones who spend more time developing their agentic coding as a skillset have gotten much better results.

In our team people are also more willing to respond to feedback because nitpicks and requests to restructure/rearchitect are evaluated on merit instead of how time-consuming or boring they would have been to take on.

Re: Vibing a non-trivial Ghostty feature

#30

Post by ttiurani » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #5

Tip: I very often use AI for inspiration. In this case, I ended up keeping a lot (not all) of the UI code it made, but I will very often prompt an agent, throw away everything it did, and redo it myself (manually!). I find the "zero to one" stage of creation very difficult and time consuming and AI is excellent at being my muse. This right here is the single biggest win for coding agents. I see and directionally agre…

> the moment I can get a project up on its legs, to where I can interact with some substantial part of its functionality and refine it, I'm off to the races. [...] This is the part where I simply don't understand the objections people have to coding agents.

That's what's valuable to you. For me the zero to one part is the most rewarding and fun part, because that's when the possibilities are near endless, and you get to create something truly original and new. I feel I'd lose a lot of that if I let an AI model prime me into one direction.