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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

#771

Post by MrScruff »

stephenr wrote: post #747
MrScruff wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what?

.... that an IDE providing a suggestion about what comes next as you type is not new, and the entire basis of how an LLM works is "what word probably comes next". I'd have thought someone who's so enamoured with the tech would have at least a basic understanding of how it works.

Indeed. To be honest, I think everyone on HN is aware of how LLMs work at this point, it’s not actually adding a great deal to the discussion to keep going on about autocomplete or ‘stochastic parrots’.

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

#772

Post by simonw »

timr wrote: post #684
simonw wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it's still a good counter to "a month of work".

No it isn't. There's basically no upper bound on the number of commits an LLM can generate. If the LLM takes 10,000 commits to do what a human would do in 10, then the comparison is meaningless. I don't know anything about the code quality of OpenClaw, but telling me the number of commits tells me precisely nothing of use.

OK, now do that for 369,293 stars, 76,193 forks, 138 releases and 2,133 contributors.

I expect there is no number I could bring up here that won't be instantly shot down as telling "precisely nothing". My mistake for bringing up any numbers at all.

OpenClaw is a good example of a completely new project written using coding agents that made a significant impression on the world and would not have been built without them.

I'm surprised this is a hill I have to die on, but there we are.

(I'm not even a user of OpenClaw! I don't think it's secure or safe enough to use in my own life.)

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

#773

Post by krater23 »

simonw wrote: post #623
mjr00 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenClaw is definitely not a "5 years" project pre-AI though. That was more like a month of greenfield work compressed into a weekend -- which is still really impressive, don't get me wrong! -- but I think the point is we're not seeing mature , legacy codebases get outcompeted by new, agile, AI-driven codebases; we're seeing greenfield projects get spun up faster. Which, again, is still impressive and valuable. If ag…

41,964 commits is a lot more than "a month of greenfield work". https://tools.simonwillison.net/github-repo-stats?repo=OpenC...

My bashscript can do that in some hours. The git repo contains no working software after that, but when that is what you want to meassure...

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

#774

Post by jatora »

jwpapi wrote: post #596
dreambuffer wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes: - that you spend no amount of time looking things up, reorganising, or otherwise getting stuck - that you have a solution to the problem ready to go at all times - that your solution is better than the LLM's solution I highly, highly doubt that all 3 of these are true. I doubt even 1 of them is true, I think you just don't know how to use LLMs in a focused way.

I use AI to look things up and I try to learn. That part is speed up, but once I know how X works I’m faster doing it myself. My assumption is that most people seeing things differently, compare their performance of not knowing how X works with Claude, but not with someone who’s really good at X. Which makes a lot of sense given LLMS are prediction generators. My take is that the best use of AI is to get you to the p…

> but once I know how X works I’m faster doing it myself.

Survey says: Legacy coder.

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

#775

Post by theshrike79 »

latexr wrote: post #707
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…

> Also, when did we stop liking to learn? I suspect it happened when we achieved a level of such constant stimulation (there is a pocket computer always on us with infinite effortless distraction) that we’re never bored and never engage the default mode network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orQKfIXMiA8 When you’re bored, your mind goes to places it wouldn’t otherw…

> When you’re bored, your mind goes to places it wouldn’t otherwise go. Curiosity kicks in. Curiosity is a precursor to learning. Learning engages the brain and is fun. But it’s not fun all the time, some of it is challenging and frustrating (which is good, that’s the process that teaches you).

And I love how I can go from a curious brainfart "hmm, could I do a movie catalogue app that uses a web page + phone camera + OpenAI API to identify physical DVDs by front/back cover instead of trying to find a reliable barcode database" to it actually working in maybe two hours of real time. Just paused the movie I was watching, typed the idea to Claude Code on mobile and kept watching.

After the movie went back to my computer, merged the changes and tested whether it worked. It mostly did. The UI/UX was horrible etc, but the basic idea was functional. It even got some of the movie extras correctly.

I didn't try to turn it into a product, didn't buy a domain for it or advertise it on Reddit or Show HN. But now I know it CAN be done. Curiosity sated.

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

#776

Post by simonw »

0gs wrote: post #742
simonw wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Andrej Karpathy coined vibe coding as: https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383 > where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists [...] It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I'm building a project or webapp, but it's not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mo…

https://x.com/karpathy/status/2019137879310836075

Yeah, Andrej thinks "agentic engineering" is a good candidate too. Note that he's not claiming to have coined it there:

> Many people have tried to come up with a better name for this to differentiate it from vibe coding, personally my current favorite "agentic engineering"

Andrej posted that on 4th of February. I first saw the term "agentic engineering" used by OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger in October 2025 (a month before he wrote the first line of code for OpenClaw) https://steipete.me/posts/just-talk-to-it

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

#777

Post by edrobap »

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…

[dead]

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

#778

Post by theshrike79 »

stingraycharles wrote: post #712
timschmidt wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out an awful lot of precision (plenty for many things) lives in library and web APIs, documentation, header files and dependency manifests. Language can literally just point at it without repeating it all. Avoidance of mistake through elimination of manual copying in things like actuarial and ballistics tables was what the original computers were built for.

Custom written code can also point at those APIs and libraries without repeating it all? Or am I missing your point?

API Glue is the easy and boring part in programming. Nobody really enjoys wiring API A to API B, combining the results and using API C to push it forwards.

Any semi-competent AI Agent can do that with a plan you've written in 5 minutes.

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

#779

Post by hgoel »

gspr wrote: post #560
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.

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!

That's because very often the precision is just common sense that can be derived, either from general knowledge, or from your existing code.

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

#780

Post by latexr »

gchamonlive wrote: post #768
latexr wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this has been repeated so much that I believe everyone, at least everyone that is actively participating in HN discussions is aware of this. I promise you that is incorrect. People who actively participate on HN are a group more diverse than is often given credit, and I strongly believe there is nothing “everyone knows” here. https://xkcd.com/1053/ Just nine days ago, someone on HN was vaguely aware of the…

Fair enough. It's always tricky to generalize like this, so I wont defend that position. However, for those who know, I don't think this is blaming the victim. I think victim blaming is a form of debate simplification in this case, just like "this is life" or "shit happens". Sure there are billions of dollars invested in attention stealing mechanisms, just as there are billions of dollars invested in gambling sites,…

> gambling sites, in alcohol, tobacco and highly processed foods, or in the scamming industry

Those are great examples because they show that leaving it all up to the individual is not enough. All of those are regulated by the state because we as a society recognised they were doing their damnest to screw everyone else for their own gain. Social media is going the same route, with several countries already introducing bills to prohibit them to minors.

There is another discussion to be had if we’re going about it the right way (I certainly do not support privacy invasion in the form of age checks), but it does show we’re recognising its harm.

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