If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C? • Hacker News Board

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#361

Post by Havoc » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 1:11 AM UTC

hu3 wrote: post #211

Havoc wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you write the test yourself or get the agent to do it?

No OP but I also guide LLMs with TDD and it's a mixture of LLMs write tests for happy paths and I write tests for edge cases. Also when I use LLM to fix a bug, I tell it to write a test to prevent regression of the bug at the end of the session, after the bug is fixed.

> Also when I use LLM to fix a bug, I tell it to write a test to prevent regression of the bug at the end of the session, after the bug is fixed.

Oh that’s clever. Thanks

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#362

Post by yoyohello13 » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 1:12 AM UTC

jcelerier wrote: post #47

gitremote wrote: post #33

Software development jobs must be very diverse if even this anti-vibe-coding guy thinks AI coding definitely makes developers more productive. In my work, the bigger bottleneck to productivity is that very few people can correctly articulate requirements. I work in backend, API development, which is completely different from fullstack development with backend development. If you ask PMs about backend requirements, th…

To be honest I've never worked in an environment that seemed too complex. On my side my primary blocker is writing code. I have an unending list of features, protocols, experiments, etc. to implement, and so far the main limit was the time necessary to actually write the damn code.

Man I wish this was my job. I savor the days when I actually don’t have to do requirements gathering and can just code.

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#363

Post by sshadmand » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 1:26 AM UTC

My gut reaction is, if AI was really good at vibe coding all the infra it could be nice, but getting C deployed and productized is the potential challenge. The "roads" we built for hyper scaling apps doesn't strike me as C friendly. And, even with the friendlier deployment strateies on next, python, etc, AI still slips up a lot.

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#364

Post by dmix » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 1:31 AM UTC

sshadmand wrote: post #363

My gut reaction is, if AI was really good at vibe coding all the infra it could be nice, but getting C deployed and productized is the potential challenge. The "roads" we built for hyper scaling apps doesn't strike me as C friendly. And, even with the friendlier deployment strateies on next, python, etc, AI still slips up a lot.

Vibe coding is mostly for solo devs anyway. If you work with a team you need to carefully think out how everything pieces together, how it will be later understood by other devs, what the plan is a few yrs down the road.

AI just gives suggestions but you have to make all the hard choices and fix/simplify a lot of the output

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#365

Post by kesor » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 1:33 AM UTC

gaigalas wrote: post #25

Fascinating. I would appreciate a post with examples, not just prose. It helps to put things in a more grounded reality.

Why you hate on prose? This article has been a joy to read, unlike a lot of the other slop on the internet.

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#366

Post by minimaxir » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 1:33 AM UTC

d-lisp wrote: post #52

I see a lot of "vibe-coding" related articles, but I don't see a lot of shipped projects/products via "vibe-coding". I would like to find some examples instead of this kind of articles ?

Yesterday I released a Rust-with-Python-bindings package that was mostly coded with Claude 4.5 Opus: https://github.com/minimaxir/icon-to-image

I'll write about the process after I've released a few more things as I have some disagreements with the current discourse.

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#367

Post by epsteingpt » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 1:39 AM UTC

stared wrote: post #5

There was a recent discussion, “Why AI Needs Hard Rules, Not Vibe Checks” ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152838 ). We need as many checks as possible - and ideally ones that come for free (e.g., guaranteed by types, lifetimes, etc.) - which is why Rust might be the language for vibe coding. Without checks and feedback, LLMs can easily generate unsafe code. So even if they can generate C or Assembly that wor…

agree 100%

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#368

Post by kesor » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 1:39 AM UTC

barrister wrote: post #31

This author, like many others on this site, seem to imply that AI generates "good" code, but it absolutely does not---unless he's running some million dollar subscription model I'm unaware of. I've tested every AI using simple Javascript programs and they all produce erroneous spaghetti slop. I did discover that Claude produces sufficiently decent Haskell code. The point is that the iterative process requires you kno…

You, like many others, seem to imply that humans write "good" code, but they absolutely do not--unless they are running some million dollar team with checks and cross checks and years of evolving the code over failures. I've tested every junior developer using simple Javascript leetcode quizes and they all produce erroneous spaghetti slop.

The difference is, we forgive humans for needing iteration. We expect them to get it wrong first, improve with feedback, and learn through debugging. But when AI writes imperfect code, you declare the entire approach fraudulent?

We shouldn't care about flawless one-shot generations. The value is in collapsing the time between idea and execution. If a model can give you a working draft in 3 seconds - even if it's 80% right - that's already a 10x shift in how we build software.

Don't confuse the present with the limit. Eventually, in not that many years, you'll vibe in English, and your AI co-dev will do the rest.

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#369

Post by majormajor » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 1:41 AM UTC

To answer the question literally, vs discuss "is vibe-coding good": The more tricky details in a language, the more I've seen LLM-first coding struggle. Rust, for instance, often leads to the model playing whack-a-mole with lifetime or borrow checker issues. It can often get to something that compiles and passes the tests, but the process gives me some pause in terms of "what am I not checking for that the whack-a-mole may have missed."

In C, without anything like a borrow checker or such, I'd be very worried about there being subtle pointer safety issues...

Now, some of that could be volumes of training data, etc, but Rust is widely discussed these days in the places these models are trained on, so I'm not certain it's a training problem vs a attention-to-detail across files problem. I.e., since LLMs are trained to mimic human language, programming languages that are most procedural-human-language-like (vs having other levels o fmeaning embedded in the syntax too) may exactly be those "LLM-friendly" languages.

Re: If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?

#370

Post by kesor » Wed, Dec 10, 2025, 1:41 AM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #34

Do it in Ada, SPARK, Zig, Rust, Pascal, Crystal, etc. Unless it's an existing project where migration is too costly, C is just entering a time wasting pact along with a lot of other people that like suffering for free.

You are missing the whole point of the article.