121–130 of 213 posts
This is common sense. The whole article read like they asked ChatGPT to fluff one sentence "review vibe code with a human before pushing to prod" into an entire article.
What percentage of companies can hire an engineer who writes better code than o3?
Given that o3 just spun its wheels endlessly trying to correct a CSS issue by suggesting to create a "tailwind.config.X" file despite being given the package JSON which contained a clear reference to Tailwind 4x - I'd say any engineer capable of reading and learning from basic documentation. For reference, Tailwind 4 will not read in config files by default (which is the older behavior) - the encouraged practice is t…
This all reminds me a lot of the early 2000's, when big corporations thought they could save a lot of money by outsourcing development work to low-income countries and have their expensive in-house engineers only write specifications. Turns out most of those outsourcing parties won't truly understand the core ideas behind the system you're trying to build, won't think outside the box and make corrections where necess…
I worked at [insert massive retailer here] a few years ago and this mindset is still very much alive.
So what have we redefined vibe coding to mean exactly? The original tweet[1] talked very specifically about not caring about quality, just accepting whatever code the AI produces blindly, as long as you get the black box output you're looking for, and just randomly try again if you didn't. Are people now using this term to mean "giving an AI agent broad tasks"? [1] https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383?la…
I asked ChatGPT for help, and it was quite helpful.
However, its code was really verbose, and fairly “messy.” Even though it worked, it didn’t work well.
I used it as guidance for training myself in the tech, and developed an approach that is far better. I had to learn the tech, and refactored the code example in a pretty major way.
Maybe some of the other tools are better, but I haven’t gotten any code that I would even consider shipping; pretty much exactly like my experience with Stack Overflow, for years.
Are today's juniors never gonna reach senior levels because of AI assisted coding ? Do you think AI assisted coding has a negative impact on developer's growth ? Is the need for developers gonna increase in the longterm but decrease in shortterm ? Those are just some of the questions that are in my head lately. I would appreciate other people's opinion.
> Do you think AI assisted coding has a negative impact on developer's growth?
Almost certainly. Easier to do things the easier way, but you never learn unless you do it the hard way. Maybe that won't matter -- i.e., the skills that one would've learned are now to be subsumed by AI. But as long as humans are needed, it will be necessary to build deep skills and understanding of systems, which AI coding does not seem to give us.
> Are today's juniors never gonna reach senior levels because of AI assisted coding?
Some definitely will, same as some people today get really good at programming in assembly. Almost certainly fewer will -- at least to what we today consider "senior".
> Is the need for developers gonna increase in the longterm but decrease in shortterm?
It all depends on the shape of the curve -- how far AI coding will be able to take us, and how fast.
It turns out to mostly serve the same purpose as low-code/no-code, where devs are needed to do 'serious' work and mixing the two becomes difficult? I doubt there'll be a slump at all.
It turns out to obviate the need for devs entirely, but only for certain common tasks -- or, it speeds up devs across the board by enough that significant double-digit (e.g. 40-50%) percentages of their work is now handled by AI? Then yes I expect we'll see a slump of some degree. But if it's not close to a 2x multiplier I expect we slump back to the first category, given just how much code it's clear there is still to be written.
On the other hand, though: if AI continues to advance and actually replaces developers 1-to-1 at lower cost? We're probably in for a sharp exponential and the question isn't how many developer jobs will be left, it's how long humanity has left.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not disagreeing with you. Just an observation though: There seems to be a world in software where "it works" well enough to grow a large user base to achieve a a large valuation and then dip out is also a viable option. Growing/evolving the code does not matter because the product no longer matters after the founders have made a large sum of money.
I hear what you're saying; but the implications seem ... net harmful? If you're actively hacking something together with the intent of boosting a valuation, selling your company and GTFOing before your purchasers figure out the bag of unmaintainable garbage you've sold them, that ... You're harming: * your customers who trusted you * the people that purchased your product I think "grift" is a good term (GPT recommend…
I was not trying to imply that it was not. Just observing that when money is on the table there appears little incentive in some cases to build a good product.
Or to follow good engineering practices because the founders & investors already made money without it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wrote about this last month: "Not all AI-assisted programming is vibe coding" - https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/vibe-coding/ Vibe coding is when you don't review the code at all. If you're using LLMs to help you write code but you're actually reviewing what they produce (and iterating on it) that's not vibe coding any more. This battle is almost certainly lost already, but dammit I'm gonna keep fighting anywa…
I don't know if it's you and I (and some others) who are just uptight sticklers or something, but it bothers me a ton too. Same thing happening with "open source" in connection to LLMs, where suddenly some companies have decided to try to redefine the meaning, people lack the care to make the distinction. In a dream world, each new terminology goes through an RFC to figure out a meaning we all (some of us) can agree…
So what have we redefined vibe coding to mean exactly? The original tweet[1] talked very specifically about not caring about quality, just accepting whatever code the AI produces blindly, as long as you get the black box output you're looking for, and just randomly try again if you didn't. Are people now using this term to mean "giving an AI agent broad tasks"? [1] https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383?la…
From that tweet: > I don't read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it That sums up vibe coding, imo. The article talks about code quality with vibe coding, but I think that misses the point. The real problem is code knowledge. When a vibe coder inevitably needs to debug something, if they have no idea what any of the code does, or why it is the w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where did Andrej say it was "the future of software engineering"? He very clearly described vibe coding as an entertaining way to hack on throwaway weekend projects. Try reading the whole tweet! https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383 "Would you yourself want vibe-coded software that is in highly critical systems such as in aeroplanes, hospitals, or in energy infrastructure?" Of course not. That's why…
> Where did Andrej say it was "the future of software engineering"? He very clearly described vibe coding as an entertaining way to hack on throwaway weekend projects. ... And then a few weeks later, my boss' boss scolded the team for not having heard of the term, and told us to learn and use vibe coding because it's the future.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Saying that Andrej Karpathy is "an AI researcher, but not a software engineer" isn't a very credible statement. If you read to the end of his tweet, he specifically says "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 mostly works."
> Saying that Andrej Karpathy is "an AI researcher, but not a software engineer" isn't a very credible statement. Broadly I agree with the two other replies: his 'day job' has not been coding in some time, so I would put him in the same bucket as e.g. a manager who got promoted out of writing code 5-10 years ago. I do want to understand where you're coming from here -- do you think that's a fair characterization?