Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by apsurd » Thu, May 07, 2026, 1:55 AM UTC

xmprt wrote: post #431

apsurd wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've drank the AI koolaid so I'm not a hater, but to say "you're just not prompting right" is such a cop-out. Prompting right takes a metric fuck ton of effort. I'm actually kinda agreeing with you, if you make it to where you're dev environment is sufficiently harnessed, then you can give it one-liner magic prompts. But getting there, learning to get there, paying that cost, hot mother of god it's a lot of effort. C…

I'll go in the other direction and say that if you're spending a lot of your time learning to prompt better then you're wasting it because LLMs are only going to get better at understanding your intent regardless of "prompt engineering". The JSON API example to wire up a database can be one-shot pretty easily by the latest models without much context and without setting up any harness. The more time you spend perfect…

but then how can the parent comment land? "you're just not prompting right"

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

#452

Post by adithyassekhar » Thu, May 07, 2026, 1:56 AM UTC

hnuser123456 wrote: post #399

jwpapi wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want every verb implemented, I also dont want an IETF standard. I want as little as possible, so I have to worry about as little as possible in the future. Use-cases differ, you described a complete REST API, which can be as much of a problem as a too little.

I see you haven't encountered an API where a GET command can modify the database.

Now why would you make such a monstrosity? Audit logs? I was having good day till now.

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

#453

Post by apsurd » Thu, May 07, 2026, 1:57 AM UTC

phpnode wrote: post #435

apsurd wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've drank the AI koolaid so I'm not a hater, but to say "you're just not prompting right" is such a cop-out. Prompting right takes a metric fuck ton of effort. I'm actually kinda agreeing with you, if you make it to where you're dev environment is sufficiently harnessed, then you can give it one-liner magic prompts. But getting there, learning to get there, paying that cost, hot mother of god it's a lot of effort. C…

it does take a little while to get good at this new skill, yes. Just like, say, learning a new programming language and the ecosystem around it takes some effort. After you get over the hump it's really very straightforward and mostly a matter of knowing the kinds of mistakes the LLM is likely to make ahead of time, and then kindly asking it to do something smarter. If you've successfully mentored junior engineers yo…

that's well put. But i'd stress mentoring junior engineers is really a high effort, high leverage, high demand skill. A good teacher is gold. and not common.

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

#454

Post by rvz » Thu, May 07, 2026, 1:58 AM UTC

keeda wrote: post #349

rvz wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That may be true for highly critical systems, but those are a tiny, tiny, tiny minority of all software projects. I mean, how many engineers work on aviation or automotive or X-ray machine or other life-and-death code compared to pretty much anything else? And not all "production-grade, hundred billion dollar systems" are that critical. Like, Claude Code as we all know is clearly vibe-coded and is already a 10-billio…

This is you:

>> I think all coding will become vibe coding...

Nope. First of all, Let's get the true definition of "vibe coding" completely clear from the first mention of it from Karpathy. From [0]:

>> "There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists." [0]

>> "I "Accept All" always, I don't read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I'd have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can't fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away." [0]

So with the true definition, you are arguing that all coding will become "vibe-coding" and that includes in mission critical software. Not even Karpathy would go as far as that and he's not even sure that he even knows that it works..."mostly".

Responsibility is what cannot be vibe-coded. The major cloud providers and the tech companies that own them have contracts with their customers which is worth billions to their revenue. That is why they cannot afford to "vibe-code" infra that causes them to lose $100M+ a hour when a key part of their infra goes down or stops working.

So:

> Like, Claude Code as we all know is clearly vibe-coded and is already a 10-billion (and rapidly increasing!) dollar system.

That is not vibe-coded anymore and it is maintained by software engineers who look at the code at all times, daily before merging any changes; AI generated or not.

> Google Search and various Meta apps meet those criteria and people are already using LLMs on that code, and will soon be "vibe coding" as I described it.

Nope. As Karpathy described it, that would never happen and human software engineers will be reviewing the agents code all the times. But that would not be vibe-coding would it?

> AWS meets that criteria and has already had an LLM-caused outage!

Are they vibe coding now after that outage? I bet that they are not.

> After all, all the cloud providers have been having outages long before the age of LLMs.

That isn't the point. Someone was held to account for the outages and had to explain why it happened.

They will lose trust + billions of dollars if they admitted that they vibe-coded their entire infra and had 0 engineers who don't understand why it went wrong.

> The thing most people are missing is that code is cheap, and so automated validations are cheap, and you get more bang for the buck by throwing more code in the form of extensive tests and validations at it than human attention.

The risk is amplified with the companies reputation on the line and it's very expensive to lose. I'm talking in the hundreds of billions annually and a 10% loss of global revenues due to constant outages can cause the stock to fall.

So you do understand the contradiction you said earlier about AWS indeed strengthens my point on the limitations on vibe coding especially on mission critical software?

[0] https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383

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

#455

Post by linuxhansl » Thu, May 07, 2026, 1:58 AM UTC

I guess it all depends on what you use it for.

I work on database optimizers and other database related stuff, and I can assure Claude Code - with all the highest settings - does make mistakes. It will generate a test that does not actually test what it "thinks" it tests. It will confidently break stuff.

Do not get me wrong. It is still awesome! It takes much of grunt work off me. It can game out designs decisions even when that needs to refactor a lot of code. If you point out a mistake more often than not it can fix it itself.

It's just for a critical project I would never ship it without understanding every line of code - with the exception perhaps of some of the test code. Maybe in a year or two that will be different.

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

#456

Post by apsurd » Thu, May 07, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

eddieroger wrote: post #437

apsurd wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've drank the AI koolaid so I'm not a hater, but to say "you're just not prompting right" is such a cop-out. Prompting right takes a metric fuck ton of effort. I'm actually kinda agreeing with you, if you make it to where you're dev environment is sufficiently harnessed, then you can give it one-liner magic prompts. But getting there, learning to get there, paying that cost, hot mother of god it's a lot of effort. C…

I disagree it's a cop-out, but I agree it's hard to get good at writing prompts and takes a lot of effort. But so is programming. We're trading one skill set for another and getting a bigger return on it. I started as a skeptic and have similarly drank the kool-aid. The reality is AI can read code faster than I can, including following code paths. It can build and keep more context than I can, and do it faster as wel…

yep fully agree. i'm taking issue with the flippant "not prompting right" as if they're holding it upside down vs it's actually a meaningful skill to have to invest in so it's fully believable that someone trained in normal code gen is much more proficient up front.

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

#457

Post by nananana9 » Thu, May 07, 2026, 2:00 AM UTC

user34283 wrote: post #257

xantronix wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know there are good uses of LLMs out there. I do. But. The current fever pitch mandates from above seem to want it applied liberally, and pushing back against that is so discouraging and often career-limiting as to wear the fabric of one's psyche threadbare. With all the obvious problems being pointed out to people, there are just as many workarounds; and these workarounds, as is often revealed shortly thereafter,…

In my opinion you are just wrong. It’s an absolute game changer, and it can now multiply your productivity fivefold if it’s a solo greenfield project. Maybe half a year ago it was as you said. You had to wait for the agent to finish, you had to review carefully, and often the result was not that great. You did not save a lot of time. Now I can spin up 3+ parallel conversations in Codex, each in a git worktree. My wor…

> and it can now multiply your productivity fivefold if it’s a solo greenfield project.

Why do I not see 5x as many interesting greenfield projects than before?

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

#458

Post by wek » Thu, May 07, 2026, 2:01 AM UTC

keeganpoppen wrote: post #304

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…

it’s sad that i had to triple-read this to determine you weren’t being sarcastic. sad for whom? i don’t know. but the amplifier take is exactly the right one.

I kind of felt the same way reading the article! It felt so unusual to encounter someone who is both smart and humble and willing to admit they were learning. And I was happy to encounter it and sad that I was so surprised by it.

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

#459

Post by xantronix » Thu, May 07, 2026, 2:02 AM UTC

empthought wrote: post #275

callc wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Engineers that didn't move past src.v35.final.zip version control don't really have jobs today, either.

There is an absolute embarrassment of modern tooling in other categories I have no problem whatsoever embracing. I'm not a holdout for being stuck in my ways. Maybe I value things other than expediency at massive cost. Maybe I speak just as well to computers as I do to humans.

I'm sure I will have no problem whatsoever remaining in the employ of a firm that trusts me to make products and tooling that still push the envelope of what's possible without having to resort to the sheer brute force of trillion parameter-scale models.

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

#460

Post by bananaboy » Thu, May 07, 2026, 2:04 AM UTC

u8 wrote: post #440

The disconnect for AI is that it is a jagged frontier and it only really shines when one of its jagged frontiers extends counter to one of your valleys. If you've been writing Perl for 30 years, you might not want to learn JavaScript just to make a little fun idea in your head to show your wife. Vibe code that shit man. Who cares? Your wife does not care about LOC or those internal design decisions you made. If you'r…

100% agree!