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

simonwillison.net

511–520 of 958 posts

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

#511
It makes sense that they merge over time; it's a mark of the progress being made. The ultimate end is to make them indistinguishable, where the purely vibe coded app will have the quality of the app that has been well engineered over significant time thanks to good user feedback.

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

#512
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…

Some people actually don't really like to learn new things. If the machine spits out plausible working code, they'd be perfectly happy with that. Personally I think AI is doing a lot more harm than good and I can't wait for the bubble to burst.

I don’t think it’s going to burst like how other people expect. The technology is already out there, when it loses steam people aren’t suddenly going to stop using it. I predit it’ll be more like the dot come crash where companies that can survive the downturn come out dominant.

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

#513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad engineers continue being bad, good engineers continue being good. I personally don’t know any colleagues who were good engineers just because they wrote code faster. The best engineers I know were ones who drew on experience and careful consideration and shared critical insights with their team that steered the direction of the system positively. > Claude, engineer a system for me, but do it good. Thanks!

>> Bad engineers continue being bad, good engineers continue being good. I don't know if good engineers can necessarily continue to be good. There is limit to how much careful consideration one can give if everything is on an accelerated timeline. Regardless good or not, there is limit on how much influence you have on setting those timelines. The whole playing field is changing.

When there is all that crap out there, good engineer may simply just carry out, call it good and leave the industry. Personally seeing the proliferation of wibe coded apps has made me hesitant of publishing and promoting my AI free apps.

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

#514
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…

AI is just revealing the two types of people in this line of work. Those who don’t actually like software and just do it because it’s lucrative, and the actual nerds who care.

A much more charitable framing: people who enjoy the process vs people who enjoy the result.

(Though, granted, the results are a lot better if you craft it by hand)

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

#515
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…

Some people actually don't really like to learn new things. If the machine spits out plausible working code, they'd be perfectly happy with that. Personally I think AI is doing a lot more harm than good and I can't wait for the bubble to burst.

To use an analogy, LLMs are like the Ring of Power in Lord of the Rings. The Ring of Power does not corrupt one nor does it magically turn one evil. Rather, the Ring just serves as a catalyst for what is already inside the bearer.

Many that wore the Ring had pure and righteous intentions. The thought of, "If I were in power, I would..." was the arrogance and corruption which the Ring amplifies.

So, I cannot agree that it is AI doing the harm. Rather, AI just gives us the power to do the harm, the shortcuts, the cheats, etc. we have always desired. And just like the Ring, I believe much of the harm from LLMs often comes from people that started with good intentions, and the power it grants is just too tempting for many.

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

#516
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…

When I started spending 40-60 hours a week programming and wanted to spend my remaining time doing other things.

I imagine my future will involve spending 40–60 hours a week using LLMs to do the work of multiple roles instead of just one, while wishing I could spend my remaining time doing other things.

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

#517
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…

AI is just revealing the two types of people in this line of work. Those who don’t actually like software and just do it because it’s lucrative, and the actual nerds who care.

Why exactly does "actual nerds who care" stipulate writing code?

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

#518
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Bad engineers continue being bad, good engineers continue being good. I don't know if good engineers can necessarily continue to be good. There is limit to how much careful consideration one can give if everything is on an accelerated timeline. Regardless good or not, there is limit on how much influence you have on setting those timelines. The whole playing field is changing.

An old comic I like: - I've taken a controversial new pill that accelerates my brain. -- So you're smart now? - I'm stupid faster! That being said, being stupid faster can work if validation is cheap (and exists in the first place). Turns out "eh close enough" for AGI is just stupidity in an "until done" loop. (Technically referred to as Ralphing.)

So the chimpanzees on the keyboard thing is real.

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

#519

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…

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

I think you can understand that line of reasoning, but you can question its feasibility. You might not have any “star coders”, nor need them day-to-day, but I think the cost of not having one true expert, or having a completely vibe coded system that crashes in production will be extremely high.

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

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I know the answer to all these questions, wiring it together takes me LESS time than passing it to Claude Code. That's just not true, and if it is in your case, then you're not great at writing prompts yet. > Take the todo_items table in Postgres and build a Micronaut API based around it. The base URL should be /v1/todo_items. You can connect to Postgres with pguser:pgpass@1.2.3.4 That's about all it takes these…

>you’re not great at writing prompts yet How do you reconcile that with your example prompt, which demonstrates no skill requirement whatsoever. It’s the first thing any developer would think of.

It’s simple but contains all the necessary info. You can say “build an endpoint to get user data” and it will absolutely do something, but it might be stupid, and when you compound 1000 stupid prompts like that you get spaghetti.
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