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The problem with "vibe coding"

dylanbeattie.net

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Re: The problem with "vibe coding"

#51

Post by selcuka »

roncesvalles wrote: post #46
doug_durham wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty weak analogy. Copilot can show you how to make either McDonalds or a Michelin starred restaurant meal. It is endlessly variable.

Asking the LLM for something is like doing an "Ask the Audience" in Who Wants to be a Millionaire . You're basically polling the consensus answer to the question you're asking.

> You're basically polling the consensus answer to the question you're asking.

There is nothing wrong with going with the consensus answer. Sure, you can't invent an O(N) sorting algorithm with the consensus, but LLMs can definitely write good, maintainable code. Michelin star analogy might be an exaggeration, but it can help cook a good homemade meal, possibly even better than most wannabe home cooks.

Re: The problem with "vibe coding"

#53

Post by selcuka »

barotalomey wrote: post #27
llbbdd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obtuse and missing the point on purpose.

Obtuse maybe, but I'm not missing the point. Their point is nonsensical, given that LLM generated code isn't "as good as fast food compared to home made meals" or even comparable to "food". Go ahead and explain why I'm missing the point.

The point is, for most projects there is nothing wrong with writing McDonald's level code. It's not as healthy or tasty as a homemade meal, but it will perform its main function (i.e. prevent you from starving).

Re: The problem with "vibe coding"

#54

Post by barotalomey »

selcuka wrote: post #53
barotalomey wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obtuse maybe, but I'm not missing the point. Their point is nonsensical, given that LLM generated code isn't "as good as fast food compared to home made meals" or even comparable to "food". Go ahead and explain why I'm missing the point.

The point is, for most projects there is nothing wrong with writing McDonald's level code. It's not as healthy or tasty as a homemade meal, but it will perform its main function (i.e. prevent you from starving).

Eh, if that was the point then please, go ahead and show me this magical AI system that produce "edible" level of code then.

All I seen so far is badly generated boilerplate and enough template spaghetti to confuse some CS dropouts by the looks of it.

Re: The problem with "vibe coding"

#55

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

Apocryphon wrote: post #19
charcircuit wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pure definition is to have AI do everything for you without caring about what the actual code is.

They oughta call it YOLO coding, in that case, though I suppose that slang is over a decade out of fashion.

YOLO has a misplaced modifier, they oughta call it YLOO coding (you live only once).

I like to think I learned this from the person who killed YOLO a decade ago (she teaches English).

Re: The problem with "vibe coding"

#56

Post by alganet »

doug_durham wrote: post #34
alganet wrote: post #14

Sometimes I want to cook a home meal. If I wanted to open a large world class fast food chain, I wouldn't be cooking home meals then. That would be silly. Copilot can help me cook the equivalent of a McDonalds special in terms of software. It's good, I think McDonalds is delicious. But it cannot help me cook a home meal software. It will insist that my home made fries must go in a little red box, and my fish sandwich…

Pretty weak analogy. Copilot can show you how to make either McDonalds or a Michelin starred restaurant meal. It is endlessly variable.

It's kind of true story actually.

I found one of my license texts for a hobby project[0] in a Microsoft product[1]. I have no idea how they use it.

Copilot is very poor at understanding how the DSL arrangement of the project works or how to assemble validator trees. Before Copilot many other "enterprise" stuff like JetBrains IDEs had problems auto-completing it. But it was always good enough for me, for my own things.

It obviously have value. Maybe they're lazy and using it for something unrelated like the TLD list. I really don't know. What I know is that something of my amateur dish ended up being served in what I consider to be a fast food chain.

No, copilot is not endlessly variable. It works best with typed languages and an enterprise mindset. That's exactly the point against "vibe coding" they push. MS seems to despise anything that doesn't follow that.

Look, I love typescript and all that stuff. As I said, McDonalds meals are delicious.

But I don't want that approach for everything I code. This project is not the only one with that issue. I noticed the same in a portable shell compatibility layer, it can only help if I make it to look like other script languages.

"You're asking too much, how can copilot help with a language it was not trained on?"

I am not asking it to be good at that. Just don't make asshole posts saying anything other than MS pasteurization is "vibes".

If they paid me, then that would be another story. But they didn't, and used my "vibe" project anyways.

I am not complaining about software I released for free, before anyone tries to go for that.

I am making an observation about kinds of software that copilot can't help with. My kind of software development, in which I might take months to decide a name or redo everything several times just to try a new kind of sauce.

[0]: https://github.com/Respect/Validation [1]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/microsoft-teams-t...

Re: The problem with "vibe coding"

#58

Post by mc3301 »

rvz wrote: post #22

‘Vibe coding’ isn’t software engineering. It throws away decades of software engineering principles in favour of unchecked AI output by clicking “accept all” on the output. You would certainly NOT use ‘vibe coded’ slopware that powers key control systems in critical infrastructure such as energy, banking, hospitals and communications systems. The ones pushing “vibe coding” are the same ones who are all invested in th…

It's like building a decorative bridge over a decorative pond in your backyard out of scrap wood versus building an actual bridge for public traffic.

Re: The problem with "vibe coding"

#59

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

mvdtnz wrote: post #16
charcircuit wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pure definition is to have AI do everything for you without caring about what the actual code is.

Yeah this is how I interpret it. Type text into the chatbot, copy and paste the outputted code. If it fails to compile, paste the error message and get the resulting code. Similar if it fails at runtime. Supply the LLM with additional code files where necessary but don't really look at the code, just copy and paste in, copy and paste out.

The vibes are much better if you just tell it to run a certain command, then it can see the error message and you don't have to paste back and forth so much. You can go make a cup of tea and it'll just iterate on changing files and running that command until it does the desired thing.

Re: The problem with "vibe coding"

#60

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

This is about the problem with vibe coding your way to a product. But if the vibes are strong enough, maybe we don't need products at all?

They do tend to complicate things, with all of their moats and such. I never wanted a product that did the thing, I really just wanted to do the thing. "Works on my machine" might be good enough if you're unlikely to want to repeat yourself on a different machine.

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