They're also very good at demoralizing people who actually code for a living. Or at least the hype surrounding them is. Up until a couple years ago I'd simply dive into a new coding assignment and be excited to solve all the problems. Some new widget? Maybe I could find a way to make the UX flow better, or add a couple neat little transitions, or heck even improve the mechanics or the business logic. I now find myself looking at assignments and thinking: Is this a waste of my time? I know how I'd do it, but I'm prone to a lot of yak-shaving and perfectionism. Should I just ask Claude to do it?
So alright, let's see what Claude does.
And then I get presented with a piece of code and a product that I wouldn't have chosen - but in some cases would be perfectly sufficient for minor work I shouldn't be yak-shaving. On the other hand, going beyond the simplest or most obvious is how I built my business. Bringing ideas to the table and executing them. So then I discard the Claude code and sit down to write it from scratch.
It is at that exact point that I start to wonder: does anyone even care?
People who take the time to think deeply through their work, and who "hammer in the extra nail" as my grandpa used to say (he was a general contractor) do so most often for their own sense of pride in a job well done, and for the trust that comes from their clients or employers knowing that they will go the extra mile and do a job well. But what happens when employers or clients don't treat the work as important - and when they would be okay with a bad or mediocre version on the cheap? That's not a new problem - usually I just won't work for those people.
But I just hate the pessimistic feeling I get about doing what I always loved to do - writing bespoke code - when I constantly keep asking myself do these vibe coders know something more than I do? Should I try yet again on that route? Worse, am I just wasting my time perfecting something that no one else will appreciate?
To anyone outside engineering, writing code looks like wizardry. I think the most common and most demoralizing outcome of LLM vibe coding has been to incorrectly make them think it's suddenly easier. And a new crop of vibe coders who think they don't have to think for themselves? They're not engineers. They may even be enemies of good engineering. They have more in common with the bosses and clients we've always had who said "hey, this should be a very easy request, can you just add a button to the customer app that will (fill in the blank with some wildly complicated business transaction that definitely can't be handled in one click).
All of it is sapping my motivation to do what I was good at, which is, solving problems and writing well tested code.
Sorry for the rant.