Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

simonwillison.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 958 posts

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

#311

Post by overfeed »

ryandrake wrote: post #224
nathan_compton wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just that they believe this - they want a business model where this is how it works. For a big company a star coder is a liability - they have strong labor power, they can leave and they are hard to replace, etc. Companies want workflows that work with mediocre programmers because they are more like interchangeable parts. This is the real secret to why AI programming will work in a lot of places. If you look…

To these kinds of companies, what's even better than a rack of mediocre programmers? AI agents that you can just conjure up and prompt. They take up no facility space, don't require lunch breaks or vacations, obey all commands and direction, and produce a predictable and consistent amount of output per dollar. This is the earworm the leaders of these companies have allowed into their minds. Like Agent Mulder, they Wa…

> This is the earworm the leaders of these companies have allowed into their minds. Like Agent Mulder, they Want To Believe in this so badly...

If you assume they are not idiots and analyze the FOMO incentives via a little game-theory, it becomes clear why.

Assuming the competition has adopted AI, leadership can ignore it, or pursue it. If they adopt it, then they are level with the completion whether AI actually succeeds or fails - they get to keep their executive job.

If leadership ignores AI, and it actually delivers the productivity gains to the competition, they will be fired. If they ignore AI and it's a bust, they gain nothing.

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

#312

Post by rvz »

keeda wrote: post #246

I think all coding will become vibe coding, but it will be no less an engineering discipline. Note: I still review pretty much every line of code that I own, regardless of who generates it, and I see the problems with agents very clearly... but I can also see the trends. My take: Instead of crafting code, engineering will shift to crafting bespoke, comprehensive validation mechanisms for the results of the agents' wo…

This is complete insanity for anyone that actually works on production-grade, hundred billion dollar systems that are critical to the function of the global economy.

Other than for your own pet projects, almost all of what you said has no place for "vibe engineering" / or "vibe coding" on serious software engineering products that are needed in life and death situations.

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

#313

Post by galkk »

BowBun wrote: post #142
galkk wrote: post #139

Given rapidly decelerating quality of, at least, claude code output, the agentic coding use may decrease. It is insane how bad the results of background agents are now: constant hallucinations, nonsensical outputs.

The heavy users of Claude at my job disagree (me included), our work gets shipped and the quality has increased by all metrics. Are you talking about enterprise or consumer Claude subscriptions? I think they're serving drastic different quality depending on how much $ you fork up.

I don't see much sense to have hn as support thread, but here are quotes from my single claude investigation session, and that happens in every claude code session that I have, especially with 4.7

* The first agent's claim that was 3.x-only was wrong * is nice-to-have but doesn't target our exact case as cleanly as the agent claimed. * The agent's "direct fix for yyy" is overstated. * not 57% as the earlier agent claimed

etc etc etc

And I forgot how many times my session with claude starts: did you read my personal CLAUDE.md and use background agents for long running operations?

I use enterprise subscription, max effort, was with both 4.6 and 4.7.

And please refrain from comments like "you're using it wrong", as the drop in output quality is very clear and noticeable.

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

#314

Post by sumeno »

hintymad wrote: post #302
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…

> I don't think that AIs have become more trustworthy, the errors are just more subtle. Honest question: what about the counter-argument that humans make subtle mistakes all the time, so why do we treat AI any differently? A difference to me is that when we manually write code, we reason about the code carefully with a purpose. Yes we do make mistakes, but the mistakes are grounded in a certain range. In contrast, AI…

Humans can't make mistakes at the sheer scale that AI can.

Yes, as an engineer I make mistakes, but I could never make as many mistakes per day as an LLM can

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

#315

Post by Daishiman »

salawat wrote: post #278
Daishiman wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this different from every single technological iteration?

Because there is a certain point where barrier to entry prevents meaningful competition once winner-take-all power laws start kicking in, and stability hitherto has been predisposed on having a plurality of non interrelated competitors to ensure no one man's quirks drives too much of societies theoretical output. AI will make this dynamic worse, and it's got the extra danger of the default banal way of applying the t…

I don't really see it that way because most software companies overestimate the importance of fantastic software vs merely adequate software, and most times good sales development, support, and negotiation skills are what helps actually sell.

I also don't think that the commodification of programming is a substitute for things like understanding your customers, having good taste for design, and designing software in a way that is maximally iterable.

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

#316

Post by [deleted] »

sumeno wrote: post #314
hintymad wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think that AIs have become more trustworthy, the errors are just more subtle. Honest question: what about the counter-argument that humans make subtle mistakes all the time, so why do we treat AI any differently? A difference to me is that when we manually write code, we reason about the code carefully with a purpose. Yes we do make mistakes, but the mistakes are grounded in a certain range. In contrast, AI…

Humans can't make mistakes at the sheer scale that AI can. Yes, as an engineer I make mistakes, but I could never make as many mistakes per day as an LLM can

[deleted]

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

#317

Post by Daishiman »

callc wrote: post #247
Daishiman wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two sides to the AI mandates. The degenerate side is clueless upper management and fad-driven engineering. We have talked extensively about this. There is a more rational side to it that I've seen in my org: some engineers absolutely refuse to use AI and as a consequence they are now, clearly and objectively, much less productive than other engineers. The thing is, you still need to learn how to use the tool,…

Ah yes, we must force these obstinate engineers to the right path! Only after getting everyone to see the light will they understand and thank us for boundless productivity!! /s Perhaps these “obstinate” engineers have good reason in their decision. And it should be their decision! To be so confident in what is “the right way (TM)” and try to force it onto others is... revealing.

I ran the statistics myself and my company is spending 40% less time doing feature development since AI agents began to be used en masse and pushing 50% more tickets without any noticeable increase in regressions.

After 18 months the hard evidence is in place. And much like replacing bare-metal servers for many use cases where evidence shows that the burden of k8s or the substitution of shell scripts for Terraform, it's time to move on.

I don't really see a place for no AI usage in line-of-business software apps anymore.

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

#318

Post by anal_reactor »

nathan_compton wrote: post #211
ryandrake wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same, if anything, the opposite seems to be true, the ones that I'd call "good engineers" were slower Unfortunately, a lot of workplaces are ignoring this, believing their engineers are assembly line workers, and the ones who complete 10 widgets per minute are simply better than the ones who complete 5 widgets per minute.

It isn't just that they believe this - they want a business model where this is how it works. For a big company a star coder is a liability - they have strong labor power, they can leave and they are hard to replace, etc. Companies want workflows that work with mediocre programmers because they are more like interchangeable parts. This is the real secret to why AI programming will work in a lot of places. If you look…

Bingo. This is something that many people fail to understand.

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

#319

Post by jsemrau »

etothet wrote: post #33

Vibe Coding (and LLMs) did not create undisciplined engineering organizations or engineers. They exposed and accelerated them. Plenty of engineers have loose (or no!) standards and practices over how they write coee. Similarly, plenty of engineering teams have weak and loose standards over how code gets pushed to production. This concept isn't new, it's just a lot easier for individuals and teams who have never reall…

The same applies to banks and lending standards. In the end it is a function of governance and professional conduct.

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

#320

Post by alishayk »

wek wrote: post #230

What an excellent article by a smart, humble, still-learning person! Favorite quote:" There are a whole bunch of reasons I’m not scared that my career as a software engineer is over now that computers can write their own code, partly because these things are amplifiers of existing experience. If you know what you’re doing, you can run so much faster with them. [...] I’m constantly reminded as I work with these tools…

What do you do if you don't have that existing experience? How do you build it up?
Post reply on HN