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Vibe coding creates fatigue?

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Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#21

Post by ares623 »

Avicebron wrote: post #18
Zigurd wrote: post #10

I don't want to be that contrarian guy, but I find it energizing to go faster. For example, being able to blast through a list of niggling defects that need to be fixed is no longer a stultifying drag. I recently used a coding agent on a project where I was using an unfamiliar language, framework, API, and protocol. It was a non-trivial project, and I had to be paying attention to what the agent was doing because it…

Can you share why it was non-trivial? I'm curious about how folks are evaluating the quality of their solutions when the project space is non trivial and unfamiliar

A little bit of Dunning-Kruger maybe?

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#22

Post by crazygringo »

happytoexplain wrote: post #7
JohnMakin wrote: post #3

There probably needs to be some settled discussion on what constitutes "vibe coding." I interpret this term as "I input text into $AI_MODEL, I look at the app to see my change was implemented. I iterate via text prompts alone, rarely or never looking at the code generated." vs. what this author is doing, which seems more like agent assisted coding than "vibe" coding. With regard to the subject matter, it of course ma…

Yes, I'm getting increasingly confused as to why some people are broadening the use of "vibe" coding to just mean any AI coding, no matter how thorough/thoughtful.

It's because the term itself got overapplied by people critical of LLMs -- they dismissed all LLM-assisted coding as "vibe coding" because they were prejudiced against LLMs.

Then lots of people were introduced to the term "vibe coding" in these conversations, and so naturally took it as a synonym for using LLMs for coding assistance even when reading the code and writing tests and such.

Also because vibe coding just sounds cool.

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#25

Post by vidarh »

colechristensen wrote: post #15
xnorswap wrote: post #13

I feel this. I take breaks. But I also get drawn to overworking ( as I'm doing right now ), which I justify because "I'm just keeping an eye on the agent". It's hard work. It's hard to explain what's hard about it. Watching as a machine does in an hour what would take me a week. But also watching to stop the machine spin around doing nothing for ages because it's got itself in a mess. Watching for when it gets lazy,…

Build tools to keep it in check.

Really, this. You still need to check its work, but it is also pretty good at checking its work if told to look at specific things.

Make it stop. Tell it to review whether the code is cohesive. Tell it to review it for security issues. Tell it to review it for common problems you've seen in just your codebase.

Tell it to write a todo list for everything it finds, and tell it fix it.

And only review the code once it's worked through a checklist of its own reviews.

We wouldn't waste time reviewing a first draft from another developer if they hadn't bothered looking over it and test it properly, so why would we do that for an AI agent that is far cheaper.

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#26

Post by johnsmith1840 »

celeryd wrote: post #9
JohnMakin wrote: post #3

There probably needs to be some settled discussion on what constitutes "vibe coding." I interpret this term as "I input text into $AI_MODEL, I look at the app to see my change was implemented. I iterate via text prompts alone, rarely or never looking at the code generated." vs. what this author is doing, which seems more like agent assisted coding than "vibe" coding. With regard to the subject matter, it of course ma…

I don't see a distinction. Vibe coding is either agent assisted coding or using chatbots as interpreters for your design goals. They are the same thing.

"Vibe" has connotations of easy and fun neither of which are true when building something difficult

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#27

Post by CPLX »

xnorswap wrote: post #13

I feel this. I take breaks. But I also get drawn to overworking ( as I'm doing right now ), which I justify because "I'm just keeping an eye on the agent". It's hard work. It's hard to explain what's hard about it. Watching as a machine does in an hour what would take me a week. But also watching to stop the machine spin around doing nothing for ages because it's got itself in a mess. Watching for when it gets lazy,…

My least favorite part is where it runs into some stupid problem and then tries to go around it.

Like when I'm asking it to run a bunch of tests against the UI using a browser tool, and something doesn't work. Then it goes and just writes code to update the database instead of using the user element.

My other thing that makes me insane is when I tell it what to do, and it says, "But wait, let me do something else instead."

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#28

Post by layer8 »

unshavedyak wrote: post #6
JohnMakin wrote: post #3

There probably needs to be some settled discussion on what constitutes "vibe coding." I interpret this term as "I input text into $AI_MODEL, I look at the app to see my change was implemented. I iterate via text prompts alone, rarely or never looking at the code generated." vs. what this author is doing, which seems more like agent assisted coding than "vibe" coding. With regard to the subject matter, it of course ma…

> There probably needs to be some settled discussion on what constitutes "vibe coding." I interpret this term as "I input text into $AI_MODEL, I look at the app to see my change was implemented. I iterate via text prompts alone, rarely or never looking at the code generated." Agreed. I've seen some folks say that it requires absolute ignorance of the code being generated to be considered "vibe coded". Though i don't…

Maybe read the original definition: https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383

Or here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibe_coding

Not looking at the code at all by default is essential to the term.

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#30

Post by skdhshdd »

Zigurd wrote: post #10

I don't want to be that contrarian guy, but I find it energizing to go faster. For example, being able to blast through a list of niggling defects that need to be fixed is no longer a stultifying drag. I recently used a coding agent on a project where I was using an unfamiliar language, framework, API, and protocol. It was a non-trivial project, and I had to be paying attention to what the agent was doing because it…

> But not having to spend hours here and there getting up to speed on some mundane but unfamiliar aspect of the implementation

At some point you realize if you want people to trust you you have to do this. Otherwise you’re just gambling, which isn’t very trustworthy.

It’s also got the cumulative effect of making you a good developer if done consistently over the course of your career. But yes, it’s annoying and slow in the short term.

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