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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

#101

Post by faizshah »

devin wrote: post #39

> If you can go from producing 200 lines of code a day to 2,000 lines of code a day, what else breaks? The entire software development lifecycle was, it turns out, designed around the idea that it takes a day to produce a few hundred lines of code. And now it doesn’t. It is so embarrassing that LOC is being used as a metric for engineering output.

I experimented with vibe coding (not looking at the code myself) and it produced around 10k LOC even after refactors etc.

I rewrote the same program using my own brain and just using ChatGPT as google and autocomplete (my normal workflow), I produced the same thing in 1500 LOC.

The effort difference was not that significant either tbh although my hand coded approach probably benefited from designing the vibe coded one so I had already though of what I wanted to build.

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

#102

Post by copypaper »

mohsen1 wrote: post #31

I am experimenting with writing en entire TypeScript compiler[1] with AI assistant. I've spent 4 months on it already. It might not be successful at the end of the day but my thinking is that if LLMs are going to write a lot of the code I better learn how this can and can not work. I've learned a lot from this project already. I think we're still in charge of design and big ideas even if all of the code is written by…

>25k commits in 4 months or about 1 commit every 7 minutes

How do you manage/orchestrate this? I'm genuinely curious.

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

#103

Post by christoff12 »

zarzavat wrote: post #24

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 archite…

This has generally been the case, though. As mentioned in the post, "You want solutions that are proven to work before you take a risk on them" remains true and will be place where the edges are found.

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

#104

Post by michelb »

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 30 years down the line I still have to look at code, maintain code, or even worry in the slightest about code, something went deeply wrong.

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

#105

Post by Izkata »

hermitShell wrote: post #70
genghisjahn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you like sci-fi takes on software systems, check out Vernor Vinge "A Fire upon the deep" and sequels. I recall ship systems software is something like all the code humanity has ever written, plus centuries of LLM churn. One of the protagonists is a space faring software developer particularly good with legacy code. We are used to thinking about software like in the article, a program that runs deterministically in…

Sounds like a recipe for Star Trek holodeck malfunctions.

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

#106

Post by yakattak »

murukesh_s wrote: post #75
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…

Hello from assembly programmers to present day javascript folks. Joke aside, I sometimes think how VS Code is written in such layers and layers of code - ~200mb of minified code - Java based IDEs were worser with almost 1GB of code (libs/dependencies). And VS Code did beat native editors (Sublime) of its time to dominate now - may be because of the business model (open & free vs freemium). But it does the job quite w…

[dead]

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

#107

Post by saltyoldman »

For work I do agentic engineering. As the code that I submit for a code review is hand reviewed by me. I know every line and file that I submit.

My side project is 80% vibe code. Every now and then I look and see all the bad stuff, then I scold Codex a bit and it refactors it for me. So I do see the author's point.

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

#108

Post by yakattak »

jf22 wrote: post #21
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.

The only people who are going to put in the time, are people who care enough to. The problem is you have people who didn’t care before who were equipped with a garden hose. Now that they have a fully pressurized fire hose they can make more of a mess faster.

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

#109

Post by DonHopkins »

estimator7292 wrote: post #61
kurthr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I see your point, however: EA sports has been doing this for literally the entire lifetime of gaming as an industry

Electronic Sharts slogans and franchises:

"Shit's in the Game!"

"Chunder Everything"

"Maddening NFL 26"

"FIFiAsco 26"

"UFC 26 (Un Finished Code)"

"The Shits 4"

"Battlefailed"

"Need for Greed"

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

#110

Post by ButyTh0 »

etothet wrote: post #51
devin wrote: post #39

> If you can go from producing 200 lines of code a day to 2,000 lines of code a day, what else breaks? The entire software development lifecycle was, it turns out, designed around the idea that it takes a day to produce a few hundred lines of code. And now it doesn’t. It is so embarrassing that LOC is being used as a metric for engineering output.

Agreed. And, LOC has historically been one of the things we've collectively fought against management for how to evalute a "productive" developer!

Why?

We should have gone the other way; generated a lot of code and demanded pay raises; look at the LOC I cranked out! Company is now in my debt!

If they weren't going to care enough as managers to learn and line go up is all that matters to them, make all lines go up = winning

You all think there's more to this than performative barter for coin to spend on food/shelter.

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