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If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

stephenramsay.net

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Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#161

Post by lunar_mycroft »

epolanski wrote: post #128
mdavidn wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're the one in denial? AI makes some things faster, like working in a language I don't know very well. It makes other things slower, like working in a language I already know very well. In both cases, writing code is a small percentage of the total development effort.

No I'm not, I'm just sick of these edgy takes where AI does not improve productivity when it obviously does. Even if you limit your AI experience to finding information online through deep research it's such a time saver and productivity booster that makes a lot of difference. The list of things it can do for you is massive, even if you don't have it write a single line of code. Yet the counter argument is like "bu..…

It "obviously" does based on what, exactly? For most devs (and it appears you, based on your comments) the answer is "their own subjective impressions", but that METR study (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.09089) should have completely killed any illusions that that is a reliable metric (note: this argument works regardless of how much LLMs have improved since the study period, because it's about how accurate dev's impressions are, not how good the LLMs actually were).

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#162

Post by lowbloodsugar »

ActorNightly wrote: post #109
markstos wrote: post #105

I have successfully vibe-coded features in C. I still don't like C. The agent forgets to free memory latter just like a human would and has to go back and fix it later. On the other hand, I've enjoyed vibe coding Rust more, because I'm interested in Rust and felt like my understanding approved along they way as I saw what code was produced. A lot of coding "talent" isn't skill with the language, it's learning all the…

> The agent forgets to free memory latter just like a human would and has to go back and fix it later. I highly recommend people learn how to write their own agents. Its really not that hard. You can do it with any llm model, even ones that run locally. I.e you can automate things like checking for memory freeing.

Sure. Or you can let the language do that for you and spend your tokens on something else. Like, do you want your LLM to generate LLVM byte code? It could, right? Buy why wouldn't you let the compiler do that?

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#163

Post by pmdr »

INTPenis wrote: post #154

Because I don't know C well enough. My philosophy regarding AI is that you should never have it do something you couldn't do yourself. Of course people break this rule, or the concept of vibe coding wouldn't exist. But some of us actually get a lot of value from AI without succumbing to it. It just doesn't make sense to me to trust a machine's hallucinations for something like programming code. It fabricates things w…

> Because I don't know C well enough.

Same here. I can read and understand most of it, but not enough to debug it. And outsourcing that task to Claude is like taking a long winding path through thick, dark woods.

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#164

Post by jszymborski »

I also don't _love_ vibe coding and do it just for exploration/recreation, but I also have long thought an LLM trained and tuned specifically for a language that is best for LLMs might be ideal.

Currently, using Claude to vibe code Rust is _much_ more hit-or-miss than using it for Python... so Python has become the lingua franca or IR I use with it.

Often I'll ask Claude to implement something in Python, validate and correct the implementation, and in a separate session ask it to translate it from Python to Rust (with my requirements). It often helps.

Claude is particularly bad at hallucinating the APIs of Crates, something it does a lot less for python.

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#165

Post by ModernMech »

epolanski wrote: post #123
geraneum wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to refute your point but I’ve met overly confident people with “AI skills” who are “extremely productive” with it, while producing garbage without knowing, or not being able to tell the difference.

You're describing lack of care and lack of professionalism, fire these people, nothing to do with the tools, it's the person using it the problem.

We're trying very earnestly to create a world where being careful and professional is a liability. "Move fast and break things, don't ask permission, don't apologize for anything" is the dominant business model. Having care and practicing professionalism takes times and patience, which just translate to missed opportunities to make money.

Meanwhile, if you grift hard enough, you can become CEO of a trillion dollar company or President of the United States. Young people are being raised today seeing that you can raise billions on the promise building self driving cars in 3 years, not deliver even after 10 years, and nothing bad actually happens. Your business doesn't crater, you don't get sued into oblivion, your reputation doesn't really change. In fact, the bigger the grift, the more people are incentivized to prop it up. Care and professionalism are dead until we go back to an environment that is not so nurturing for grifts.

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#166

Post by mrweasel »

mavamaarten wrote: post #40
gitremote wrote: post #33

Software development jobs must be very diverse if even this anti-vibe-coding guy thinks AI coding definitely makes developers more productive. In my work, the bigger bottleneck to productivity is that very few people can correctly articulate requirements. I work in backend, API development, which is completely different from fullstack development with backend development. If you ask PMs about backend requirements, th…

Yup. I would never be able to give my Jira tickets to an LLM because they're too damn vague or incomplete. Getting the requirements first needs 4 rounds of lobbying with all stakeholders.

We had a client who'd create incredibly detailed Jira tickets. Their lead developer (also their only developer) would write exactly how he'd want us to implement a given feature, and what the expected output would be.

The guy is also a complete tool. I'd point out that what he described wasn't actually what they needed, and that there functionality was ... strange and didn't actually do anything useful. We'd be told to just do as we where being told, seeing as they where the ones paying the bills. Sometimes we'd read between the lines, and just deliver what was actually needed, then we'd be told just do as we where told next time, and they'd then use the code we wrote anyway. At some point we got tired of the complaining and just did exactly as the tasks described, complete with tests that showed that everything worked as specified. Then we where told that our deliveries didn't work, because that wasn't what they'd asked for, but couldn't tell us where we misunderstood the Jira task. Plus the tests showed that the code functioned as specified.

Even if the Jira tasks are in a state where it seems like you could feed them directly to an LLM, there's no context (or incorrect context) and how is a chatbot to know that the author of the task is a moron?

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#167

Post by 2bluesc »

Traditionally, I used Python for personal tools optimizing for quick coding and easy maintenance. These tools commonly feed UI elements like waybar, shell, and tmux, requiring frequent, fast calls.

My approach is evolving due to NixOS and home-manager with vibe coding to do the lifting. I increasing lean on vibe coding to handle simple details to safely write shell scripts (escaping strings, fml) and C/C++ apps. The complexity is minimized, allowing me to almost one-shot small utilities, and Nix handles long-term maintenance.

With NixOS, a simple C/C++ application can often replace a Python one. Nix manages reading the source, pulling dependencies, and effectively eliminating the overhead that used to favor scripting languages while marking marginal power savings during everyday use.

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#168

Post by peteforde »

INTPenis wrote: post #154

Because I don't know C well enough. My philosophy regarding AI is that you should never have it do something you couldn't do yourself. Of course people break this rule, or the concept of vibe coding wouldn't exist. But some of us actually get a lot of value from AI without succumbing to it. It just doesn't make sense to me to trust a machine's hallucinations for something like programming code. It fabricates things w…

I'm working on a serious embedded app written in C, and Opus has been invaluable to me. I don't consider myself a C developer, but by carefully reviewing the changes and making lots of my own contributions, I'm finding that I've progressed from junior to intermediate C comprehension. A lot of the idioms are still fuzzy, but I no longer find it intimidating. That's wonderful, because learning C has been something I'd put off for 40 years and microcontrollers were the thing that forced my hand.

I think that there's a real rift between people who use LLMs to rough out large swathes of functionality vs people who took the "vibe coding" brain fart way, way too literally. I'm kind of horrified that there are people out there who attempt to one-shot multiple copies of the same app in different instances and then pick the best one without ever looking at the code because "vibe coding". That was always supposed to be a silly stupid thing you try once, like drinking Tide pods or whatever the kids do for fun... not something people should be debating a year later.

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#169

Post by geraneum »

9rx wrote: post #140
geraneum wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to refute your point but I’ve met overly confident people with “AI skills” who are “extremely productive” with it, while producing garbage without knowing, or not being able to tell the difference.

Garbage to whom? Are we talking about something that the user shudders to think about, or something more like a product the user loves, but behind the scenes the worst code ever created?

A lot of important details/parts of a system (not only code) that may seem insignificant to the end user could be really important in making a a system work correctly as a whole.

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#170

Post by badRNG »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #64
gitremote wrote: post #33

Software development jobs must be very diverse if even this anti-vibe-coding guy thinks AI coding definitely makes developers more productive. In my work, the bigger bottleneck to productivity is that very few people can correctly articulate requirements. I work in backend, API development, which is completely different from fullstack development with backend development. If you ask PMs about backend requirements, th…

I have done both strict back-end, strict front-end, full stack, QA automation and some devops as well, I worked in an all Linux shop where we were encouraged by great senior devs to always strive for better software all around. I think you're right, it mostly depends on your mindset and how much you expose yourself to the craft. I can tackle obscure front-end things sometimes better than back-end issues despite hatin…

> Speaking of vibe coding in archaic languages

Well, I think we can say C is archaic when most developers write in something that for one isn't C, two isn't a language itself written in C, or three isn't running on something written in C :)

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