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Vibe engineering

simonwillison.net

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Re: Vibe engineering

#281

Post by TurboHaskal »

ReptileMan wrote: post #251
subarctic wrote: post #151

I just feel so discouraged reading this somehow. I used to have this hard-to-get, in-demand skill that paid lots of money and felt like even though programming languages, libraries and web frameworks were always evolving I could always keep up because I'm smart. But now with these people like Simon Willison writing about the new way of coding with these agents and multiple streams of work going on at a time and it so…

You were never paid to type. You were paid to solve problems. And big part of this is being able to ask the right questions and framing of the problems. The rest were just tools. There are exceptions of course - where you need to squeeze wonders from the hardware - but the majority of dev works boils to understanding the problem and finding the right answers.

You say this because you are on HN, very senior and/or living in a bubble.

In the vast majority of programming jobs out there you are not paid to solve problems: you are told very clearly what to do, how to do it and what technology you have to use for the job.

People don't hire analysts they hire "Java programmers".

Re: Vibe engineering

#282

Post by cindyllm »

saulpw wrote: post #222
simonw wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really sorry to hear this, because part of my goal here is to help push back against the idea that "programming skills are useless now, anyone can get an LLM to write code for them". I think existing software development skills get a whole lot more valuable with the addition of coding agents. You can take everything you've learned up to this point and accelerate the impact you can have with this new family of too…

I appreciate what you're trying to do, but for myself, I'm not depressed because my skills are less valuable. I enjoyed the money but it was never about that for me. I'm depressed because I don't like the way this new coding feels in my brain. My focus and attention are my most precious resources and vibe coding just shatters them. I want to be absorbed in a coding flow where I see all the levels of the system and ca…

[dead]

Re: Vibe engineering

#283

Post by flir »

zwnow wrote: post #272
bananapub wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about the accessibility of software development? Its completely vanishing for people that can not afford to pay for these agents. what do you actually mean by this? it's clearly untrue - anyone get get a laptop and install linux on it and start bashing out code today, just as they could last week and last year and thirty years ago. do you mean that you think at some point in the future tooling for humans to wr…

I mean that this "tooling" becomes inaccessible to people. At least the tooling that is relevant for jobs. Employers will eventually stop hiring human based on their programming competence. It'll translate into a low pay career for people who like to orchestrate agents.

I think it's just another floor in the creaky old tower of abstraction.

Machine code > ASM > 3GLs > 4GLs > visual programming > LLMs

etc etc etc. Thing is, the moment you go off-piste, the LLMs get a lot less useful. I think, if you want to stay closer to the metal, you've got to aim for a niche that has a small internet footprint. So... domain knowledge or esoteric programming knowledge.

One way to incorporate domain knowledge might be to become a hybrid product owner/programmer.

(This is all just opinion - I'm sure a well-argued rebuttal is possible).

Re: Vibe engineering

#284

Post by andrewgleave »

piva00 wrote: post #256
senko wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub's SpecKit is an example: https://github.com/github/spec-kit Spec-Driven Development treats the spec as the source of truth and the code as an artifact. As you develop, you modify/add to the spec and the codebase gets updated to reflect it. Personally I'm doubtful it can compete with traditional artisanal software engineering, as it's (IMHO) boils down to "if only you can spec it precisely enough, it'll work" a…

That was exactly what UML wanted to do, and it almost never worked out in practice. Seems to be just a rehashing of the same idea but instead of XML, and diagrams, it's now some free-text to be interpreted by LLMs, so much less deterministic and will probably fail just like UML failed. People also tend to forget about Peter Naur's take on "Programming as Theory Building" [0], the program is, in itself, the theory of…

Theory building is the secret sauce, and all variants of "this is how to use AI effectively" I've seen are inferior to the epistemologically sound theory Naur outlines in his paper.

Re: Vibe engineering

#285

Post by anabis »

jncfhnb wrote: post #126
taylorlunt wrote: post #104

These seem like a lot of great ways to work around the limitations of LLMs. But I'm curious what people here think. Do any career software engineers here see more than a 10% boost to their coding productivity with LLMs? I see how if you can't really code, or you're new to a domain, then it can make a huge difference getting you started, but if you know what you're doing I find you hit a wall pretty quickly trying to…

For stuff that I’m good at? Not even 10%. For stuff that I’m bad at? Probably more than 1000%. I’ve used it to make a web app, write some shader code, and set up some rtc streaming from unreal engine to the browser. I doubt I would have done them at all otherwise tbh. I just don’t have the energy and interest to conclude that those particular ventures were good uses of my time.

Yeah, its like a GPS navigation system. Useless and annoying in home turf. Invaluable in unfamiliar territory.

Re: Vibe engineering

#286

Post by exe34 »

simonw wrote: post #165
subarctic wrote: post #151

I just feel so discouraged reading this somehow. I used to have this hard-to-get, in-demand skill that paid lots of money and felt like even though programming languages, libraries and web frameworks were always evolving I could always keep up because I'm smart. But now with these people like Simon Willison writing about the new way of coding with these agents and multiple streams of work going on at a time and it so…

I'm really sorry to hear this, because part of my goal here is to help push back against the idea that "programming skills are useless now, anyone can get an LLM to write code for them". I think existing software development skills get a whole lot more valuable with the addition of coding agents. You can take everything you've learned up to this point and accelerate the impact you can have with this new family of too…

> They're also not going to be able to direct three different agents at once in different areas of a large project that they've designed the architecture for.

Neither can I, sadly. I have one brain cell and I can only really do one thing at a time. Doing more than one leads to a corrupted stack and I make exponentially more mistakes.

Re: Vibe engineering

#287

Post by withinboredom »

dpacmittal wrote: post #177
subarctic wrote: post #151

I just feel so discouraged reading this somehow. I used to have this hard-to-get, in-demand skill that paid lots of money and felt like even though programming languages, libraries and web frameworks were always evolving I could always keep up because I'm smart. But now with these people like Simon Willison writing about the new way of coding with these agents and multiple streams of work going on at a time and it so…

I can relate with you. I love programming and building things, gives a different kind of rush when you finally figure out something. I've done vibe coding and don't enjoy it at all. I always thought my love for coding gives me an edge over other engineers who just want to get the job done. Now it's holding me back and I'm not sure if I should continue working in this field or if start doing wood working or something.

I still do all the stuff by hand, but ask the AI to review my work, provide suggestions, and occasionally write the tests (especially if it points out a bug that I disagree with). Its really good at pointing out typos (accidentally using the wrong variable of the same type, and stuff like that) that are also traditionally hard to spot during review.

Re: Vibe engineering

#288

Post by vulk »

subarctic wrote: post #151

I just feel so discouraged reading this somehow. I used to have this hard-to-get, in-demand skill that paid lots of money and felt like even though programming languages, libraries and web frameworks were always evolving I could always keep up because I'm smart. But now with these people like Simon Willison writing about the new way of coding with these agents and multiple streams of work going on at a time and it so…

You shouldn't be discouraged. Now is the best time to create software. You have advantage that very few people have.

Its industry own fault that it is in the position that it is right now, and it will shift and change embrace it. I only wish I had your experience building software in professional environment.

You can literally build anything right now if you have the experience, I personally can't understand if the models are hallucinating hence the lack of experience writing and understanding code. However I always wanted to pivot into the industry but couldn't, hiring practices are brutal, internships are non-existent, junior roles are I think what senior used to be and the whole hr process is I don't know how to put it.

By using LLMs I can now build UIs, build functionality, iterate over design choices, learn about database design, etc. hopefully I will escape the tutorial hell and have my own working full stack web app soon.

Pivot to creating and then sale your product.

Re: Vibe engineering

#289

Post by dist-epoch »

input_sh wrote: post #200
simonw wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a fascinating conversation about this the other day. An engineer was telling me about his LLM process, which is effectively this: 1. Collaborate on a detailed spec 2. Have it implement that spec 3. Spend a lot of time on review and QA - is the code good? Does the feature work well? 4. Take lessons from that process and write them down for the LLM to use next time - using CLAUDE.md or similar That last step is t…

I don't buy your last sentence at all. AGENTS.md is just a place to put stuff you don't want to tell LLMs over and over again. They're not magical instructions LLMs follow 100% of the time, they don't carry any additional importance over what you put into the prompt manually. Your carefully curated AGENTS.md is only really useful at the very beginning of the conversation, but the longer the conversation gets, the les…

The problem is that you get to 100k tokens. Don't do that, split tasks into smaller ones.

Re: Vibe engineering

#290

Post by exe34 »

benterix wrote: post #278
lemming wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is true, I definitely find that the style of the work changes a lot. It becomes much more managerial, and less technical. I feel much more like a mix of project and people manager, but without the people. I feel like the jury is still out on whether I’m overall more productive, but I do feel like I have less fun.

My lessons so far: 1. Less fun. 2. A lot of more "review fatigue". 3. Tons of excess code I'd never put in there in the first place. 4. Frustration with agents being too optimistic which with time verges on the ludicurous ("Task #3 has been completed successfully with 98% tests failing. [:useless_emojis:]") 5. Frustration with agents routinely getting down a rabbit hole or going in circles, the effort needed to get t…

98% tests sounds really great though, give that LLM a raise!
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