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Vibe coding creates fatigue?

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Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#121

Post by closewith »

lukan wrote: post #44
observationist wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something exhilarating about pushing through to some "everything works like I think it should" point, and you can often get there without doing the conscientious, diligent, methodical "right" way of doing things, and it's only getting easier. At the point where everything works, if it's not just a toy or experiment, you definitely have to go back and understand everything. There will be a ton to fix, and it m…

"It was a non-trivial project, and I had to be paying attention to what the agent was doing" There is a big difference between vibe coding and llm assisted coding and the poster above seems to be aware of it.

Vibe coding is the name for LLM assisted coding, whether you like it or not.

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#122

Post by bcrosby95 »

observationist wrote: post #34
Zigurd wrote: post #10

I don't want to be that contrarian guy, but I find it energizing to go faster. For example, being able to blast through a list of niggling defects that need to be fixed is no longer a stultifying drag. I recently used a coding agent on a project where I was using an unfamiliar language, framework, API, and protocol. It was a non-trivial project, and I had to be paying attention to what the agent was doing because it…

There's something exhilarating about pushing through to some "everything works like I think it should" point, and you can often get there without doing the conscientious, diligent, methodical "right" way of doing things, and it's only getting easier. At the point where everything works, if it's not just a toy or experiment, you definitely have to go back and understand everything. There will be a ton to fix, and it m…

If you're hanging your features off a well trodden framework or engine this seems fine.

If frameworks don't make sense for what you're doing though and you're now relying on your LLM to write the core design of your codebase... it will fall apart long before you reach "its basically working".

The more nuanced interactions in your code the worse it'll do.

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#123

Post by crazygringo »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #119
crazygringo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but there are tons of examples of things that started out as insults or negative only to be claimed as the proper or positive name. Impressionism in painting, for a start. The Quakers. Queer. Punk. Even "hacker", which started out meaning only breaking into computer systems -- and now we have "Hacker News." So vibe coding fits in perfectly. In other words, everyone's in on the joke.

> Even "hacker", which started out meaning only breaking into computer systems No. The Etymology of Hacker in the technical scene started at MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club in the late 1950s/early 1960s, "hack" described clever, intricate solutions, pranks, or experiments with technology. A hacker is one who made those clever solutions, pranks, and technology experiments. "Hacker News" is trying to take it back from c…

TIL, thanks! Growing up I was only aware of the criminal version -- I didn't realize it grew out of an earlier meaning. I just saw the shift in the tech scene in the 1990s and more broader culturally in the 2000s with "life hacks" and hackathons. What's old is new again...

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#124

Post by frio »

OptionOfT wrote: post #80
Zigurd wrote: post #10

I don't want to be that contrarian guy, but I find it energizing to go faster. For example, being able to blast through a list of niggling defects that need to be fixed is no longer a stultifying drag. I recently used a coding agent on a project where I was using an unfamiliar language, framework, API, and protocol. It was a non-trivial project, and I had to be paying attention to what the agent was doing because it…

If you do this on your personal stuff, eh, I wouldn't do it, but you do you. But we're seeing that this becomes OK in the workplace, and I don't believe it is. If you propose these changes that would've normally taken you 2 weeks as your own in a PR, then I, as the reviewer, don't know where your knowledge ends and the AI's hallucinations begin. Do you need to do all of these things? Or is it because the most commonl…

This is far and away the biggest problem I have atm. Engineers blowing through an incredible amount of work in a short time, but when an inevitable bug bubbles up (which would happen without AI!), there's noone to question. "Hey, you changed the way transactionality was handled here, and that's made a really weird race condition happen. Why did you change it? What edge case were you trying to handle?" -- "I don't know, the AI did it". This makes chasing things down exponentially harder.

This has always been a problem in software engineering; of course -- sometimes staff have left, so you have to dig through tickets, related commits and documentation to intuit intent. But I think it's going to make for very weird drags on productivity in _new_ code that may not counter the acceleration LLMs provide, but will certainly exist.

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#125

Post by Nashooo »

closewith wrote: post #121
lukan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It was a non-trivial project, and I had to be paying attention to what the agent was doing" There is a big difference between vibe coding and llm assisted coding and the poster above seems to be aware of it.

Vibe coding is the name for LLM assisted coding, whether you like it or not.

One means (used to mean?) actually checking the LLM's output one means keep trying until it outputs does what you want.

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#126

Post by tjr »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #113
pyrophane wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recently used a coding agent on a project where I was using an unfamiliar language, framework, API, and protocol. You didn’t find that to be a little too much unfamiliarity? With the couple of projects that I’ve worked on that were developed using an “agent first” approach I found that if I added too many new things at once it would put me in a difficult space where I didn’t feel confident enough to evaluate what…

> I didn’t feel confident enough to evaluate what the agent was doing So don't. It is vibe coding, not math class. As long as it looks like it works then all good.

Is there any software you think should not be developed with this approach?

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#127

Post by uberman »

While the productivity can be exciting. I personally observe the sa.e fatigue as described. I chock it up to the speed or frequency of context switching as a result of faster implementation.

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#128

Post by burningChrome »

tjr wrote: post #117
burningChrome wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> even if it takes longer than the programming the conventional way, who cares, right? Longer than writing code from scratch, with no templates or frameworks? Longer than testing and deploying manually? Even eight years ago when I left full-stack development, nobody was building anything from scratch, without any templates. Serious questions - are there still people who work at large companies who still build things…

What do you mean by "the conventional way"?

I was referencing OP's statement.

"conventional programming"

Key Characteristics of Conventional Programming:

Manual Code Writing

- Developers write detailed instructions in a programming language (e.g., Java, C++, Python) to tell the computer exactly what to do.

- Every logic, condition, and flow is explicitly coded.

Imperative Approach

- Focuses on how to achieve a result step by step. Example: Writing loops and conditionals to process data rather than using built-in abstractions or declarative statements.

High Technical Skill Requirement

- Requires understanding of syntax, algorithms, data structures, and debugging. No visual drag-and-drop or automation tools—everything is coded manually.

Longer Development Cycles

- Building applications from scratch without pre-built templates or AI assistance. Testing and deployment are also manual and time-intensive.

Traditional Tools

- IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) like Eclipse or Visual Studio. Version control systems like Git for collaboration.

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#129

Post by iwontberude »

Nashooo wrote: post #125
closewith wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vibe coding is the name for LLM assisted coding, whether you like it or not.

One means (used to mean?) actually checking the LLM's output one means keep trying until it outputs does what you want.

Given that the models will attempt to check their own work with almost the identical verification that a human engineer would, it's hard to say if human's aren't implicitly checking by relying on the shared verification methods (e.g. let me run the tests, let me try to run the application with specific arguments to test if the behavior works).

Re: Vibe coding creates fatigue?

#130

Post by ahtihn »

iwontberude wrote: post #129
Nashooo wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One means (used to mean?) actually checking the LLM's output one means keep trying until it outputs does what you want.

Given that the models will attempt to check their own work with almost the identical verification that a human engineer would, it's hard to say if human's aren't implicitly checking by relying on the shared verification methods (e.g. let me run the tests, let me try to run the application with specific arguments to test if the behavior works).

> Given that the models will attempt to check their own work with almost the identical verification that a human engineer would

That's not the case at all though. The LLM doesn't have a mental model of what the expected final result is, so how could it possibly verify that?

It has a description in text format of what the engineer thinks he wants. The text format is inherently limited and lossy and the engineer is unlikely to be perfect at expressing his expectations in any case.

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