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Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like

simonwillison.net

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Re: Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like

#21

Post by jf22 »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #7

People in the future are going to wonder what the hell we were thinking, when 30 years down the line everything is a hot mess of billions of lines of code generated by LLMs that no human has read almost any of it and is no longer possible for anyone to maintain neither with nor without LLMs. And the LLM generated garbage will have drowned out all of the good quality code that ever existed and no one will be able to f…

First, most software is already a hot mess.

Second, LLM code can be less of a hot mess than human written code if you put in the time to train/prompt/verify/review.

Generating perfect well patterned SOLID and unit tested code with no warnings or anti-patterns has never been easier.

Re: Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like

#22

Post by cj »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #7

People in the future are going to wonder what the hell we were thinking, when 30 years down the line everything is a hot mess of billions of lines of code generated by LLMs that no human has read almost any of it and is no longer possible for anyone to maintain neither with nor without LLMs. And the LLM generated garbage will have drowned out all of the good quality code that ever existed and no one will be able to f…

> Makes me want to just give up programming forever and never use a computer again.

LLMs aren’t the first thing to come along and change how people develop applications.

You had the rise of frameworks like Django, Rails, etc. Also the rise of SPAs. And also the rise of JS as a frontend+backend language.

In a 3-5 yeats we’ll have adapted to the new norm like we have in the past

Re: Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like

#23

Post by KumaBear »

kurthr wrote: post #14
ativzzz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By then, the fix will be easy. Fire up the latest LLM, point it at your codebase and tell it "rewrite this from scratch. do it well. fix the architecture mistakes"

"Write me a really cool game, that will make me lots of money, fast!"

Make me a 1hr episode of my favorite book. Make it as lore accurate as possible. Plot out the script for the next 100 episodes.

Re: Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like

#24

Post by zarzavat »

Perhaps I've missed a few weeks worth of progress, but I don't think that AIs have become more trustworthy, the errors are just more subtle.

If the code doesn't compile, that's easy to spot. If the code compiles but doesn't work, that's still somewhat easy to spot.

If the code compiles and works, but it does the wrong thing in some edge case, or has a security vulnerability, or introduces tech debt or dubious architectural decisions, that's harder to spot but doesn't reduce the review burden whatsoever.

If anything, "truthy" code is more mentally taxing to review than just obviously bad code.

Re: Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like

#25

Post by _jss »

This is a timely observation and feels right to me. I needed to get a relatively simple batch download -> transform -> api endpoint stood up. I wrote a fairly detailed prompt but left a lot of implementation details out, including data sources.

Opus 4.7 built it about 90% the same way I would, but had way more convenience methods and step-validations included.

It's great, and really frees me up to think about harder problems.

Re: Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like

#26

Post by xienze »

> And that feels about right to me. I can plumb my house if I watch enough YouTube videos on plumbing. I would rather hire a plumber.

I don't buy this argument at all. I think if we could pay $20/month to a service that would send over a junior plumber/carpenter/electrician with an encyclopedic knowledge of the craft, did the right thing the majority of the time, and we could observe and direct them, we'd all sign up for that in a heartbeat. Worst case, you have to hire an experienced, expensive person to fix the mess. Yes, I can hear everyone now, "worst case is they burn your house down." Sure, but as we're reminded _constantly_ when we read stories about AI agent catastrophes -- a human could wipe your prod database too. wHy ArE yOu HoLdInG iT tO a DiFfErEnT sTaNdArD???

The business side of the house is getting to live that scenario out right now as far as software goes. Sure you've got years of expertise that an LLM doesn't have _yet_. What makes you think it can't replace that part of your job as well?

Re: Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like

#27

Post by genghisjahn »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #7

People in the future are going to wonder what the hell we were thinking, when 30 years down the line everything is a hot mess of billions of lines of code generated by LLMs that no human has read almost any of it and is no longer possible for anyone to maintain neither with nor without LLMs. And the LLM generated garbage will have drowned out all of the good quality code that ever existed and no one will be able to f…

I'm generally pro "llm assisted coding" or whatever you want to call it. But I do somethings think about the Butlerian Jihad from Dune.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune:_The_Butlerian_Jihad

Re: Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like

#28

Post by cortesoft »

suzzer99 wrote: post #4
singpolyma3 wrote: post #3

I think I'm just too opinionated to go there. If I see something that works fine, but isn't the way I'd do it, it doesn't matter if a human or an LLM wrote it I'm still in there making it match my vision.

100%. I don't think any senior programmer ever looks at another developer's code and says, "Oh yeah, that's just the way I'd do it."

But I assume you don't go and change all your co-workers code just because they didn't do it how you would have done it?

Re: Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like

#29

Post by devin »

jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #11
QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #7

People in the future are going to wonder what the hell we were thinking, when 30 years down the line everything is a hot mess of billions of lines of code generated by LLMs that no human has read almost any of it and is no longer possible for anyone to maintain neither with nor without LLMs. And the LLM generated garbage will have drowned out all of the good quality code that ever existed and no one will be able to f…

If that is the case market forces would likely favor hand written code and all the slop will be forgotten (unless the slop works fine and is stable).

This is wishful thinking. The force of the market is "number go up". Quality increasingly has less and less of a role in the equation. You will eat your slop, and you will like it. It will be the only choice you have.

Re: Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like

#30

Post by hirvi74 »

suzzer99 wrote: post #4
singpolyma3 wrote: post #3

I think I'm just too opinionated to go there. If I see something that works fine, but isn't the way I'd do it, it doesn't matter if a human or an LLM wrote it I'm still in there making it match my vision.

100%. I don't think any senior programmer ever looks at another developer's code and says, "Oh yeah, that's just the way I'd do it."

I concur, and I think that is one of the most difficult aspects of reviewing another's code. It's difficult for me to sometimes differentiate between what is acceptable vs. what I would have done. I have to be very conscious to not impose my ideals.
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