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No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

kenneth.io

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Re: No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

#21

Post by techpineapple »

martinald wrote: post #10
LauraMedia wrote: post #5

The problem with this little post is, that vibe coding just is not a "better" way to code. It strips development of something from all the fun developing, from circling around an idea, from figuring out something with your own brain, from trying and testing new stuff, from actually working as a developer... If you genuinely "vibe-code 24/7", you don't develop software, you are translating business logic rules to a se…

That's literally what has been happening forever though. Think how complex the abstractions are from something like SQL to the actual CPU instructions that are being executed on a modern OS. The thing I'm most excited about with 'vibe coding' isn't really existing software developers making things. It's people with deep domain knowledge who can't program can now build stuff. It's more of an excel replacement imo as i…

I think the problem with vibe coding though is it’s not bi-directional, like if you have deep domain knowledge, unless you know how to code, how do you know that the code it just created actually does what you want it to, especially as it gets more complex and your new code changes old code. You could ask, but the devil is often in the details, especially if your domain is highly technical.

Re: No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

#22

Post by pjerem »

LauraMedia wrote: post #5

The problem with this little post is, that vibe coding just is not a "better" way to code. It strips development of something from all the fun developing, from circling around an idea, from figuring out something with your own brain, from trying and testing new stuff, from actually working as a developer... If you genuinely "vibe-code 24/7", you don't develop software, you are translating business logic rules to a se…

Or you are like me and you love having ideas, you love solving business and technical problems but you don't like the "execution" part.

Because from my experiment at "vibe coding", LLMs for code are good at following the rules, not at being intelligent. They are especially bad at keeping the "big picture" in their context.

In fact you can talk to your IA at the level of abstraction you want :

1 - You can ask it to create an entire app and, for sure, that'll be a black box full of unknown bugs.

2 - Or you can just give it precise instructions : "create the model for x entity with exactly those characteristics". "Now let's create the controller for the API but pay attention to this or that".

If you are good at describing things, LLMs are excellent at doing what you are already good at. They'll write exactly the code you would have wrote, they'll take care of the boilerplate, they'll self correct if needed except they'll do it in seconds while it would have took you hours between just typing the whole thing, debugging your own mistakes, going back and forth files, refactoring your implementation ...

Sure it takes more time than just asking "make me a snake game in pygame" but it also takes so much less time than writing it yourself.

Also, but that's only my personal experience, working with LLMs, even with a lot of iterations helps me a lot with staying in flow.

Re: No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

#23

Post by righthand »

> Natural language is proving to be a more powerful interface than drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editors.

Completely disagree. What “vibe-coding” weirdos are experiencing is that 99% of the time they need code for a solved problem. However this magical vibe coding falls apart as soon as you need nuance.

There is a difference between “generate me a nextjs app with typescript and unit tests” and “create-next-app” with typescript and unit tests. The first is guessing at what you need the latter is pushing out what you need exactly according to a template. Vibe coding falls apart when you need to spend time tweaking your typescript config because the LLM just used the most popular collection of code strings it found that leads to a working app instead of create-next-app.

A wysiwyg editor provides better interface because you know what you are getting when you click the button. You aren’t asking a computer to infer your intent. Vibe coding requires writing natural language that then needs to be parsed into intent. There is your error gap right there, going from “I need this” and “hoping” a computer grasps your intent correctly.

There are also people actively poisoning the well for LLMs with LLMs so your prompt will always be at risk to be misinterpreted. That is not “production grade”.

Re: No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

#24

Post by stldev »

"Production-grade" is a stretch. These AI coding tools can generate impressive prototypes, but there's still a massive gap between what they produce and code that's actually ready for production.

I don't understand the disconnect between engineers who work with these tools daily and the investor/exec/founder/influencer-types who constantly hype them. My LinkedIn feed has become a comedy.

I feel like any senior SWE who's tried to maintain an AI-generated codebase, coach a junior who's found themselves reliant on Cursor; or found themselves in an undo, yell, repeat cycle in Cline, knows they still require significant expertise to build production-safe code.

Where's the disconnect, or what am I missing?

Re: No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

#25

Post by fjighkifj »

stldev wrote: post #24

"Production-grade" is a stretch. These AI coding tools can generate impressive prototypes, but there's still a massive gap between what they produce and code that's actually ready for production. I don't understand the disconnect between engineers who work with these tools daily and the investor/exec/founder/influencer-types who constantly hype them. My LinkedIn feed has become a comedy. I feel like any senior SWE wh…

[dead]

Re: No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

#26

Post by dinfinity »

lukev wrote: post #14

Here's the thing. What you're doing when you're vibe coding is iteratively creating specifications for software, which the LLM is capable of converting to runnable code. Insufficient specs will lead to code that doesn't do the right thing. Chat is fundamentally the wrong interface for this. My instructions to the LLM in a chat session are effectively the software specifications, but chat encourages to treat them as e…

You can do that.

Just write your specs in markdown files (or formal specification formats) in your repo and instruct the LLM to update them in the process.

In fact, you can just work on specs like this. Vibe speccing, I guess?

Re: No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

#27

Post by chrisrickard »

dinfinity wrote: post #26
lukev wrote: post #14

Here's the thing. What you're doing when you're vibe coding is iteratively creating specifications for software, which the LLM is capable of converting to runnable code. Insufficient specs will lead to code that doesn't do the right thing. Chat is fundamentally the wrong interface for this. My instructions to the LLM in a chat session are effectively the software specifications, but chat encourages to treat them as e…

You can do that. Just write your specs in markdown files (or formal specification formats) in your repo and instruct the LLM to update them in the process. In fact, you can just work on specs like this. Vibe speccing, I guess?

This is Userdoc, AI augmented software requirements.

Re: No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

#29

Post by camasaki »

martinald wrote: post #10
LauraMedia wrote: post #5

The problem with this little post is, that vibe coding just is not a "better" way to code. It strips development of something from all the fun developing, from circling around an idea, from figuring out something with your own brain, from trying and testing new stuff, from actually working as a developer... If you genuinely "vibe-code 24/7", you don't develop software, you are translating business logic rules to a se…

That's literally what has been happening forever though. Think how complex the abstractions are from something like SQL to the actual CPU instructions that are being executed on a modern OS. The thing I'm most excited about with 'vibe coding' isn't really existing software developers making things. It's people with deep domain knowledge who can't program can now build stuff. It's more of an excel replacement imo as i…

Except vibe coding doesn’t work for non-programmers except in the hype propaganda. In reality these tools are only powerful in the hands of real programmers who are able to understand what is being produced and can adapt and maintain it.

Re: No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

#30

Post by camasaki »

lukev wrote: post #14

Here's the thing. What you're doing when you're vibe coding is iteratively creating specifications for software, which the LLM is capable of converting to runnable code. Insufficient specs will lead to code that doesn't do the right thing. Chat is fundamentally the wrong interface for this. My instructions to the LLM in a chat session are effectively the software specifications, but chat encourages to treat them as e…

Except most LLMs are not deterministic, the same prompt will, in general, produce different outputs because the sentence completion ist statistical and randomly selected
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