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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

#551

Post by nozzlegear »

eric_cc wrote: post #406
jwpapi wrote: post #373

> I know full well that if you ask Claude Code to build a JSON API endpoint that runs a SQL query and outputs the results as JSON, it’s just going to do it right. It’s not going to mess that up. You have it add automated tests, you have it add documentation, you know it’s going to be good. I feel like this is just not true. An JSON API endpoint also needs several decisions made. - How should the endpoint be named - W…

You can also just talk it out loud to Claude while you’re on a walk getting some sunshine. Done.

Now you're working when you should be taking a break and enjoying your surroundings. Not good!

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

#552

Post by satvikpendem »

kyykky wrote: post #537
bulbar wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving a precise description of what the computer is supposed to do is exactly what programming is. The more specific your requirements the closer you get to natural language not being useful anymore.

I code mostly in APL and J. It’s much faster to type the code than explain everything to AI.

The exceptions that prove the rule. When your programming language is built up of singular Unicode characters with specific meanings, of course that's faster than typing out in English what you want.

What do you use them for? For most AI users it's usually CRUD and I've never seen a web server or frontend in APL like languages.

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

#553

Post by _pdp_ »

About two years ago I was using the term "agentic engineer" to describe someone who builds AI agents - not a vibe coder.

Agentic Engineer does not make much sense to be applied to a developer.

It is weird and confusing to call a web designer that uses AI assisted coding tools "agentic engineer".

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

#554

Post by duskdozer »

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…

It's also true that a lot of times, it doesn't even matter how shitty the code is. For example, I'm locked in to a company whose web "app" hasn't functioned for me for the vast majority of the last two to three years. I can't leave without effectively being required to leave my job. So, they still get my business.

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

#555

Post by skydhash »

sanderjd wrote: post #429
kdnxownxkwkd wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah! I mean, who needs to LEARN how to to these things properly when you can just let an autocorrect on steroids hallucinate the closest thing to “barely working”. Right? 10 to 30 hours saved on not learning new things! Hurray!

I genuinely don't understand what you're talking about with this comment. Learn how to do what things properly? I've been writing software for two decades... I'm not primarily in a learning phase, I'm in a doing phase. I'll take advantage of tools that save me time and energy in my work (for the right price). Why wouldn't I? What do you mean by "barely working"? I can now put more iterations into getting things worki…

My one question for you: What’s your level of editor fluency? Because I would really like to know if there’s a correlation between claiming these kind of time savings and not using advanced features in your editor.

My time is spent more on editing code than writing new lines. Because code is so repetitive, I mostly do copy-pasting, using the completion and the snippets engine, reorganize code. If I need a new module, I just copy what’s most similar, remove everything and add the new parts. That means I only write 20 lines of that 200 lines diff.

Also my editor (emacs) is my hub where I launch builds and tests, where I commit code, where I track todo and jot notes. Everything accessible with a short sequence of keys. Once you have a setup like this, it’s flow state for every task. Using LLM tools is painful, like being in a cubicle reading reports when you could be mentally skiing on code.

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

#556

Post by overfeed »

untrust wrote: post #433
overfeed wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 suc…

What if the outcome is the competition burns their money on LLM usage for little to no gain? If you're an exec and you jumped into LLMs as well then you also lose any advantage you would have had by saving your money or hiring a few more humans.

> What if the outcome is the competition burns their money on LLM usage for little to no gain?

The company does better than the money-burning competition, but the executives personally gain nothing; there are no bonuses just because the competition took a misstep.

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

#557

Post by ori_b »

beeandapenguin wrote: post #432
ori_b wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's deeper. We used to mock architects that stepped back and stopped coding, because they generated trash. There's a cycle that is needed for good system design. Start with a problem and an approach, and write some code. As you write the code, you reify the design and flesh out the edge cases, learning where you got the details wrong. As you learn the details, you go back to the drawing board and shuffle the puzzle…

Reminds me of Gall’s Law from his book Systemantics. A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gall_(author)#Gall's_law

I find that the learning and iteration tends to lead to a simplified system, if you're willing to look hard enough at the shapes needed.

When there's a lot of complexity, it's often repetitive translation layers, and not something fundamental to the problem being solved.

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

#558

Post by djhn »

user34283 wrote: post #263
zarzavat wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about responsibility. If I get pwned because my AI agent wrote code that had a security vulnerability, none of my users are going to accept the excuse that I used AI and it's a brave new world. I will get the blame, not Anthropic or OpenAI or Google but me. The same goes for if my AI generated code leads to data loss, or downtime, or if uses too many resources, or it doesn't scale, or it gives out error messages…

On the other hand, I don’t need to review carefully every line of code in my thumbnail generator and associated UI. My nonexistent backend isn’t going to be pwned if there is a bug in the thumbnail generation. After the QA testing on my device, a quick scroll through of the code is enough. Maybe prompt „are errors during thumbnail generation caught to prevent app crashes?“ if we‘re feeling extra cautious today. And j…

But a thumbnail generator is a 1 hour task at best if you’re on a solo greenfield project and it’ll still be a 6 week project at an enterprise, even with AI.

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

#559

Post by necovek »

lmeyerov wrote: post #548
notnullorvoid wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us do actually have intimate knowledge in certain areas where guidance of an AI takes longer than doing it yourself. It's not about typing speed, it's that when you know something really really well the solution/code is already known to you or the very act of thinking about the problem makes the solution known to you in full. When that happens it's less text to write that solution than it is to write a suffic…

Maybe a failure to automate? The volume of people successfully adopting agentic engineering practices suggests this stuff isn't rocket science, but it is a learned skill and takes setup. A year later into heavy AI coding, my experience is what you're describing should aid in being able to run 5+ agents simultaneously on a project because you know what you're doing, you set it up right, and you know how to tell agents…

You seem to have missed OP's point: some things are only encoded in our brains when you are sufficiently experienced.

Translating that into code can happen directly by you, or into prompt iterations that need to result in the same/similar coded representation.

In other words, when it matters how something works and it is full of intricate details, you do not need to specify it, you just do it (eg. as an example which is probably not the best is you knowing how to avoid N+1 query performance issue — you do not need a ticket or spec to be explicit, you can just do it at no extra effort — models are probably OK at this as it is such a pervasive gotcha, but there are so many more).

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

#560

Post by gspr »

bulbar wrote: post #531
notnullorvoid wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us do actually have intimate knowledge in certain areas where guidance of an AI takes longer than doing it yourself. It's not about typing speed, it's that when you know something really really well the solution/code is already known to you or the very act of thinking about the problem makes the solution known to you in full. When that happens it's less text to write that solution than it is to write a suffic…

Giving a precise description of what the computer is supposed to do is exactly what programming is. The more specific your requirements the closer you get to natural language not being useful anymore.

This is actually my biggest gripe with vibecoding. The single best feature of any programming language is that it is precise. And that is what we throw out?! I favor of natural language, of all things?! We're insane!
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