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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

#691

Post by Zecc »

larodi wrote: post #565
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…

Care to explain which particular intimate knowledge allowed you in the last 6-9 months to be faster than AI in certain area? Honestly, I'm still faster than AI cooking scrambled eggs, but definitely not faster than neither AI (or compiler) in translating stuff into code.

If you're good at SQL, or SQL-like languages like Linq, it might be more efficient precisely writing a reasonably complex query than trying to explain it in detail to an AI.

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

#692

Post by coldtea »

drmajormccheese wrote: post #65

There are techniques for improving our confidence in our software: unit testing, integration testing, fuzz testing, property-based testing, static analysis, model checking, theorem proving, formal methods, etc. The LLM is not only a tool for generating lines of code. It can also generate lines of testing. The goal is that the tests are easier to audit by the humans than the code.

>There are techniques for improving our confidence in our software: unit testing, integration testing, fuzz testing, property-based testing, static analysis, model checking, theorem proving, formal methods, etc. The LLM is not only a tool for generating lines of code. It can also generate lines of testing.

Which is the same issue of lack of understanding and care and accountability from the human operator, with extra steps and a false sense of security.

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

#693

Post by aimiraclemag »

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…

[flagged]

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

#694

Post by redhale »

I want to agree, I do. But this point is plainly wrong in my observations:

> The enterprise version of that is I don’t want a CRM unless at least two other giant enterprises have successfully used that CRM for six months. [...] You want solutions that are proven to work before you take a risk on them.

Perhaps not for every category of software and every company. But in practice, any SaaS app that is just CRUD with some business logic + workflows is, imo, absolutely vulnerable to losing customers because people within their customers' orgs vibe coded a replacement.

They are perhaps even more at risk because would-be new customers don't ever even bother searching to find them as an option because they just vibe code a competitor in-house.

The vulnerability lies primarily in the fact that most of these SaaS apps were talking about are _wrong_ to some meaningful degree. They don't fully fit how your company works, and they never did. There is something about them that you are forced to work around in some way. This is true because it is impossible to build a universally perfect product, to perfectly fit it to every business requirement of every user in every company.

But now it is relatively cheap to build the perfect version for your company in-house. Or maybe even just for YOU.

I think medium/long-term this will mean a redistribution of technical talent from SaaS companies to industry companies. Instead of paying millions for SaaS subscriptions, industry companies will spend fewer millions building precisely what they need in-house with the help of AI. Not every SaaS and not every company, but I already see this happening at my company right now.

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

#695

Post by larodi »

Zecc wrote: post #691
larodi wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain which particular intimate knowledge allowed you in the last 6-9 months to be faster than AI in certain area? Honestly, I'm still faster than AI cooking scrambled eggs, but definitely not faster than neither AI (or compiler) in translating stuff into code.

If you're good at SQL, or SQL-like languages like Linq, it might be more efficient precisely writing a reasonably complex query than trying to explain it in detail to an AI.

I am very good at SQL, I worked half my life with SQL and teached it and know all kinds of SQL flavour. But good luck getting ahead of AI on a complex query with recursive CTEs, left outers, 625-column tables that change semantics conditional to certain prop, and then some obscure Oracle package APIs.

No way U beat an LLM on this, even on trivial ones. LLMs are better at that since at least 2024, if you haven't noticed, then you're not doing enough SQL perhaps.

But, of course it took years for people to realize they cannot outpace Visual Studio in the 90s by being very good at x86 assembly.

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

#696

Post by larodi »

tdeck wrote: post #568
larodi wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain which particular intimate knowledge allowed you in the last 6-9 months to be faster than AI in certain area? Honestly, I'm still faster than AI cooking scrambled eggs, but definitely not faster than neither AI (or compiler) in translating stuff into code.

Not the parent but I've had this happen when debugging for sure. Sometimes I ask Claude Code to help me debug something and it makes a wrong assumption and just churns in circles burning tokens. While it's doing that I realize the problem and fix it.

..but then you ignore all other times CC got it right, and statistically I would put my bets CC does it right (or Codex (or PI)) than you would, and more often is right than tis not.

besides it is a system that you query, it responds. I'm sure your dbs are not always 'right' and particularly when you as the wrong questions.

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

#697

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#698

Post by mittensc »

lmeyerov wrote: post #588
necovek wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's the failure to automate. The AI isn't telepathic, so agentic engineers not automating this stuff is skipping out on the engineering part. You setup the environment and then you do the work. Unless you are switching employers every week, you invest in writing that stuff down so the generation is right-ish and generate validation tooling so it auto-detects the mistakes and self-repairs.

sometimes you write the feature and write it well so it's reusable.

imagine you have to implement a specific algorithm for a quantum computer.

There's no value setting up AI to do the writing for you. That might be orders of magnitude harder then writing the algorithm directly.

For highly specialized one-off features, it doesn't always pay off.

On the other hand, if all you do are some generic items that AI can do well... then I'm not sure you're going to have a job long term, your prompts and automation will be useful for the new junior hires that will be specialized in using these and cost effective.

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

#699

Post by stephenr »

skinfaxi wrote: post #674
stephenr wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs get more intelligent The Spicy Autocomplete koolaid club is out in force today I see. We clearly have different ideas of what the word "intelligent" means.

Explaining your idea of intelligent would have been a better comment than name calling and shallow dismissal.

Your views might carry more weight if the crux of your rebuttal wasn't manufactured outrage that I used a laughably accurate nickname for a type of software.

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

#700

Post by stephenr »

aquariusDue wrote: post #651
stephenr wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've posited for a while now that the people who find spicy autocomplete to be exciting are the people who can't really do what it does. I played with Image Playground last year some time. It was really fun. You know why? I can't draw, and I can't paint, to save my life. It's letting me do something I can't do well/at all on my own. Using an LLM to do something I can do, with the caveat that it's pretty mediocre at t…

Initially I wanted to write more but I can boil it down to taste and context mismatch. By that I mean some people see LLM output as tasteless or kitsch (which I ascribe to generally) and another set of people (though sometimes overlapping more often than not) hold disdain or at the very least look funny at heavy LLM users like gym-goers would look at someone in the middle of the gym loudly suggesting using a dolly or…

> more so the attitude of people heavily invested in it

Exactly.

LLM bros are just the new blockchain/crypto bros, but they aren't necessarily even writing their own spruiking comments any more.

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