Vibe coding works great with test driven development. You can have AI write the tests as well, but you need to confirm yourself because it's lying all the time. AI coding is like when you first started out, it's copying random bits and pieces from the web into your code until it works... Good for one shots and proof of concept. But for any long living project I think you are better off rewriting it from scratch yourself. Abstractions let you work faster, especially when you have it all in your head.
I'm going back to writing code by hand
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Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bought domains for projects minutes after the idea. I don’t think it’s that weird to not look at the code if it’s a side project and you follow along incrementally via diffs. It’s definitely a different way of working but it’s not that crazy.
> I don’t think it’s that weird to not look at the code if it’s a side project and you follow along incrementally via diffs. Its not weird to not look at the code, as long as you're looking at the code? (diffs?) Uh, ok
The article explicitly says that the author looked at the diffs; it distinguishes this from "sitting down and actually reading the code", which they didn't do. So when plastic041 says the author spent 7 months vibe coding "without ever looking at source code", it's not unreasonable for dewey to assume that "looking at source code", in this context, actually means something stronger and excludes just looking at the diffs.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#113> The other change is simpler: I'm doing the design work myself, by hand, before any code gets written. Not a vague doc. Concrete interfaces, message types, ownership rules. That’s the hard part of coding. If you have an architecture then writing the code is dead simple. If you aren’t writing the code you aren’t going to notice when you architected an API that allows nulls but then your database doesn’t. Or that it d…
This is the only way for me to use Agents without completely hating and failing at it. Think about the problem, design structures and APIs and only then let AI implement it.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#114It's pretty simple to vibe code for months without producing slop. And it's the same recipe one used before AI:
1. make it work
2. make it pretty
3. make it fast
Omit 2. and 3. long enough -> slop beyond recovery
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#115> The other change is simpler: I'm doing the design work myself, by hand, before any code gets written. Not a vague doc. Concrete interfaces, message types, ownership rules. That’s the hard part of coding. If you have an architecture then writing the code is dead simple. If you aren’t writing the code you aren’t going to notice when you architected an API that allows nulls but then your database doesn’t. Or that it d…
You need to be checking every thing it does. This is what seems to be lost on so many. As someone with relatively little code experience, I find myself learning more than ever by checking the results and what went right/wrong. This is also why I don't see it getting better anytime soon. So many people ask me "how do you get your claude to have such good output?" and the answer is always "I paid attention and spotted…
How do you know what good output should look like with little code experience?
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#116Luddite.
Seems to be an unstated assumption that the Ludds were wrong.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#117Title says > back to writing code by hand But what they are doing is > doing the __design work__ myself, by hand, before any code gets written. So... Claude still is generating the code I guess? And seriously, I can't understand that they thought their vibe coded project works fine and even bought a domain for the project without ever looking at source code it generated, FOR 7 MONTHS??
In short, it is simply a click-bait title.
And the goal of the article is to draw attention to their project.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#118I am still mostly coding by hand, other than meeting the KPIs of AI use at the company, required trainings, use of agents and whatever. Eventually like every hype wave the dust will settle, and lets see where we stand. By now all the AI companies have consumed all human knowledge so they either learn to actually think for themselves, or that is it. Either way, that won't change the ongoing layoffs while trying to pur…
> Either way, that won't change the ongoing layoffs while trying to pursue the AI dream from management point of view.
I think most companies doing layoffs are bloated to begin with, AI is just the scapegoat to do the layoffs.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#119I've set a few rules for working with coding agents: 1. If I use a coding agent to generate code, it should be something I am absolutely confident I can code correctly myself given the time (gun to my head test). 2. If it isn't, I can't move on until I completely understand what it is that has been generated, such that I would be able to recreate it myself. 3. I can create debt (I believe this is being called Cogniti…
I was trying to follow similar rules, until one day I had to solve a hard mathematical problem. Claude is a phd level mathematician, I am not. I, however, know exactly the properties of the desired solution and how to test it’s correct. So I decided to keep Claude’s solution over my basic, naive one. I mentioned that in the pull request and everyone agreed that was the right call. Would you open exceptions like that…
> Claude is a phd level mathematician , I am not
I’m going to guess that this is Gell-Mann amnesia more than anything, and it’s going to get a lot of organizations into a lot of weird places.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#120I don't understand the people who "get the agent to do everything" for them. It just makes a mess if you do that. Yet if I spend a little bit of time setting a project up properly (including telling my minions exactly what to do) I can then get it to do the boring things for me.
The very worst things you can do in a codebase are (a) not deeply understand how it works (have it be magic) and (b) be lazy and mess up the structure.
How do you fix a problem which happens at 2:00am and takes your system down if you don't have an excellent understanding of how it works?
Over time we're already bad at (a) because most developers hate writing documentation so that knowledge is invariably lost over time.