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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

#31

Post by TuringTest »

techpineapple wrote: post #21
martinald wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> how do you know that the code it just created actually does what you want it to

I believe that problem can be solved, and will be with the correct new tools.

I think a new type of "low-code" programming language will evolve tailored for domain experts that don't know coding, but understand how to guide an LLM.

The development environment should be a crossover between a project-management tool (Jira or Azure devops style) with literate programming: something that allows organising all the separate parts that compose the program in a way understandable by the human and the AI bot.

Online notebooks are a good first step in that direction, in special the "reactive" kind where the runtime logic does not depend on the order you change things in the page.

Re: No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

#32

Post by TuringTest »

camasaki wrote: post #30
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

Developers are not deterministic either ;-)

What matters is if the current output after each request complies with the given specifications, and if it's possible to solve the bugs until the code converges into stability.

Re: No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

#34

Post by LauraMedia »

101008 wrote: post #11
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…

I did this analogy in the past and I was way downvoted. Just for clarification, I use vibe-coding a lot in side projects where I don't know if I am going to release it at all, or when I know that a mistake in the code won't crash a business. However, when I do vibe-coding, I feel like a PM asking a remote team to do code and I get back the response asap. It could be good or it could be bad, but if I don't check it, I…

I may also just misunderstand the term itself. From what I've seen, "vibe coding" is used as a term for someone who does not want to go into the details, who does not want to check or adapt the code, who just wants to explain their idea to an LLM and expect a fully built feature, without doing any of the development themselves.

I myself use AI all the time, for smaller things, for more math-heavy things, for decisions I already thought about but want to check with best-practices (after all, LLMs are trained with the "hive mind" thoughts of programming). I use it as a companion, a tool akin to JetBrains refactor tools, something I can drop on a specific function to enhance my own work.

Re: No code is dead. Long live vibe coding

#35

Post by LauraMedia »

camasaki wrote: post #29
martinald wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To me, it's always wild to see people trying to prove this is "the future" and "no one will ever code again". And then they try to prove it by building a react todo app, something that has been done millions of times and is really just an advanced hello world project...

I've had great success using AI for some tough things, but not on an entire foreign codebase that requires domain knowledge, no matter how constrained my prompts are. As soon as your use-case goes above the average "building a small tool and make it a $4.99 saas startup", AI really only helps you with the exact code to transfer your already pre-planned pseudo-code/behavior.

And even then, you need the knowledge to understand that what the AI merged out of the millions of StackOverflow answers is actually outdated or a hallucinated API function that never existed.

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