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

stephenramsay.net

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

#441

Post by jillesvangurp »

Why not:

- The C-compiler. AI tools work better if their automated feedback loop via tools includes feedback on correctness, safety, etc. The C compiler is not great at that. It requires a lot of discipline from the programmer. There mostly isn't a compile time safety net.

- Macros add to this mess. C's macros are glorified string replacements.

- Automated tests are another tool that helps improving quality of vibe coded code. While you can of course write tests for C code, the test frameworks are a bit immature and it's hard to write testable code in C due to the lack of abstractions.

- Small mistakes can have catastrophic consequences (crashes, memory overflows)

- A lot of libraries (including the standard library) contain tools with very sharp edges.

- Manual memory management adds a lot of complexity to code bases and the need for more discipline.

- Weak/ambiguous semantics mean that it's harder to reason about code.

There are counter arguments to each of those things. Compilers have flags. There are static code analyzers. And with some discipline, it gets better. You could express that discipline in additional instructions for your agent. And of course people do test C code. There just are a lot of projects where none of that stuff is actively used. Vibe coding on those projects would probably be a lot harder than on a project that uses more structured languages and tools.

All these things make it harder to work with C code for humans; and for AIs. But not impossible of course. AI coding models are getting quite good at coding. Including coding in C.

But it makes it a poor default language for AI coding. The ideal vibe coding language for an AI would be simple, expressive, have great tools and compilers, fast feedback loops, etc. It means the AI has less work to do: shorter/faster feedback loops, less iterations and reasoning to do, less complex problems to solve, less ambiguity, entire categories of bugs that are avoided, etc. Same reasons as to why it is a poor choice for most human programmers to default to.

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

#443

Post by gt0 »

In loads of projects you can't just pick a language and it's fine.

If I'm making a C#/WPF app, I can't just decide to make part of it C.

I get it's just a generalised criticism of vibe coding, but "why not use a harder language then" doesn't seem to make any sense.

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

#444

Post by TheRoque »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #64
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…

I have done both strict back-end, strict front-end, full stack, QA automation and some devops as well, I worked in an all Linux shop where we were encouraged by great senior devs to always strive for better software all around. I think you're right, it mostly depends on your mindset and how much you expose yourself to the craft. I can tackle obscure front-end things sometimes better than back-end issues despite hatin…

> it takes several months worth of effort and spits it out in a few hours

lol

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

#445

Post by freetonik »

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…

>In my work, the bigger bottleneck to productivity is that very few people can correctly articulate requirements.

Agreed.

In addition, on the other side of the pipeline, code reviews are another bottleneck. We could have more MRs in review thanks to AI, but we can't really move at the speed of LLM's outputs unless we blindly trust it (or trust another AI to do the reviews, at which point what are we doing here at all...)

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

#446

Post by IshKebab »

ux266478 wrote: post #424
IshKebab wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah the classic "show me ironclad evidence of this impossible-to-prove-but-quite-clear thing or else you must be wrong!" Although we did recently get pretty good evidence of those claims for humans and it would be very surprising if the situation were completely reversed for LLMs (i.e. humans write Rust more reliably but LLMs write C more reliably). https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust-in-android-move... I'm n…

Actually it's the classic "inductive reasoning has to meet a set of strict criteria to be sound." Criteria which this does not meet. Extrapolation from a sample size of one? In a context without any LLM involvement? That's not sound, the conclusion does not follow. The point being, why bother making a statistical generalization? Rust's safety is formally known, deduction over concrete postulates was appropriate. > it…

I never claimed to be doing a formal proof. If someone said "traffic was bad this morning" would you say "have you done a scientific study on the average journey times across the year and for different locations to know that it was actually bad"?

> LLMs produce worse results in than humans

We aren't talking about whether LLMs are better than humans.

Also we're obviously talking about Rust code that compiles. Code that doesn't compile is 100% secure!

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

#447

Post by ngc248 »

omnicognate wrote: post #118
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…

> Software development jobs must be very diverse if even this anti-vibe-coding guy thinks AI coding definitely makes developers more productive. As a Professor of English who teaches programming to humanities students, the writer has had an extremely interesting and unusual academic career [1]. He sounds awesome, but I think it's fair to suggest he may not have much experience of large scale commercial software devel…

Exactly, I don't think ppl understand why programming languages even came about anymore. Lotsa ppl don't understand why a natural language is not suitable for programming and by extension prompting an LLM

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

#448

Post by tomekowal »

There is a hidden hypothesis in this article that AI "does not struggle" with things like undefined behaviour, off by one errors and undefined behaviour.

Yes, it can consistently generate code that works and seems to be on top of it all due to a lot of training data. But wouldn't that use up more tokens and computational resources to produce than e.g. the same program in python?

If using more complex languages requires more resources from LLM, the same principles apply. One-off scripts are better in high level languages. Hot paths executed millions of times a second are better in lower level languages with high optimisation potential.

LLMs might slightly shift the correct choice towards lower languages. E.g. a small one-off script in C is much more viable with LLM's help. But the moment one needs to reuse it, it grows, and needs to be modified, one might regret not using higher level language.

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

#450

Post by sputr »

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…

Yeah, the hardest part is understanding the requirements. But it then still takes hours and hours and hours to actually build the damn thing.

Except that now it still takes me the same time to understand the requirements ... and then the coding takes 1/2 or 1/3 of the time. The coding also always takes 1/3 of the effort so I leave my job less burned out.

Context: web app development agency.

I really don't understand this "if it does not replace me 100% it's not making me more productive" mentality. Yeah, it's not a perfect replacement for a senior developer ... but it is like putting the senior developer on a bike and pretending that it's not making them go any faster because they are still using their legs.

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