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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?

#301

Post by OkayPhysicist »

naths88 wrote: post #23

I have been coding as an autodidact for 20 years now. In the past months, I have been vibe coding a lot, with multiple AIs at the same time. I have achieved to code a full webapp (React and Next.js for the front, RestJS for the back) in five days. Refactoring, adding features and writing the right tests for everything to work has been procuring me with the same problem solving and endorphin kicks as usual programming…

Either you contradicted your own advice in a 5 sentence comment, or you suggested that you couldn't code a web app despite 20 years of experience. Either is pretty damning.

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

#302

Post by mikewarot »

godelski wrote: post #225
omnicognate wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software development jobs must be very diverse if even this anti-vibe-coding guy thinks AI coding definitely makes developers more productive. As a Professor of English who teaches programming to humanities students, the writer has had an extremely interesting and unusual academic career [1]. He sounds awesome, but I think it's fair to suggest he may not have much experience of large scale commercial software devel…

Hard to say but to back his claim that he was programming since the 90's his CV shows he was working on stuff that's clearly more than your basic undergraduate skill level since the early 2000's. I'd be willing to bet he has more years under his belt than most HN users. I mean I'm considered old here, in my mid 30's, and this guy has been programming most my life. Though that doesn't explicitly imply experience, or m…

>I'm considered old here, in my mid 30's

I'm 62, and I'm not old yet, you're just a kid. ;-)

Seriously, there are some folks here who started on punch cards and/or paper tape in the 1960s.

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

#303

Post by Yeask »

remexre wrote: post #296
Yeask wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made it up, that is why you can't find it.

How's [0] or [1] for historical sources? It's not surprising that Google doesn't turn these up, the golden era of this complaining was pre-WWW. [0]: https://www.ee.torontomu.ca/~elf/hack/realmen.html [1]: https://melsloop.com/

Have you not noticed that the story you reference is so well know because... literally every single developer thinks people like Mel are crazy?

Mel or Terry Adams are the exception to the rule... Having that image of greybeards only come if you have never worked with one in real life, sorry you are biased.

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

#304

Post by IshKebab »

ux266478 wrote: post #291
IshKebab wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rust doesn't prevent programs from having logic errors. Nobody ever claimed that. The claims are: 1. Rust drastically reduces the chance of memory errors. (Or eliminates them if you avoid unsafe code.) 2. Rust reduces the chance of other logic errors. Rust doesn't have to eliminate logic errors to be a better choice than C or assembly. Significantly reducing their likelihood is enough.

Can these claims back themselves up with a study showing that over a large population size with sufficient variety, sourced from a collection of diverse environments, LLM output across a period of time is more reliably correct and without issue when outputting Rust? Otherwise this is nothing but unempirical conjecture.

Ah the classic "show me ironclad evidence of this impossible-to-prove-but-quite-clear thing or else you must be wrong!"

Although we did recently get pretty good evidence of those claims for humans and it would be very surprising if the situation were completely reversed for LLMs (i.e. humans write Rust more reliably but LLMs write C more reliably).

https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust-in-android-move...

I'm not aware of any studies pointing in the opposite direction.

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

#305

Post by llbbdd »

Yeask wrote: post #255
colechristensen wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of things that are only real in your mind... Am I outraged? And yes, there absolutely was a vocal group of a certain type of programmer complaining about high level languages like C and their risks and inefficiency and lack of control insisting that real programmers wrote code in assembly. It's hard to find references because google sucks these days and I'm not really willing to put in the effort.

You made it up, that is why you can't find it.

https://xkcd.com/378/

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

#307

Post by ModernMech »

impulsivepuppet wrote: post #203
ModernMech wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

While I circumstantially agree, I hold it to be self-evident that the "optimal amount of grift is nonzero". I leave it to politicians to decide whether increased oversight, decentralization, or "solution X" is the right call to make.

A little grift is expected. The real problem for us is when it's grift all the way down, and all the way up, to the extent even the President is grifting. Leaving it to the politicians in that case just means enabling maximum, economy-scale grift.

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

#309

Post by godelski »

mikewarot wrote: post #302
godelski wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to say but to back his claim that he was programming since the 90's his CV shows he was working on stuff that's clearly more than your basic undergraduate skill level since the early 2000's. I'd be willing to bet he has more years under his belt than most HN users. I mean I'm considered old here, in my mid 30's, and this guy has been programming most my life. Though that doesn't explicitly imply experience, or m…

>I'm considered old here, in my mid 30's I'm 62, and I'm not old yet, you're just a kid. ;-) Seriously, there are some folks here who started on punch cards and/or paper tape in the 1960s.

Thanks. I meant is more of in a joking way, poking fun at the community. I know I'm far too young to earn a gray beard, but I hope to in the next 20-30 years ;-) I still got a lot to learn till that happens

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

#310

Post by pacifika »

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…

Ah lingo, where the programming metaphor was a theatre production!
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