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Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work

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Re: Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work

#51

Post by simonw »

SCdF wrote: post #5

So what have we redefined vibe coding to mean exactly? The original tweet[1] talked very specifically about not caring about quality, just accepting whatever code the AI produces blindly, as long as you get the black box output you're looking for, and just randomly try again if you didn't. Are people now using this term to mean "giving an AI agent broad tasks"? [1] https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383?la…

I wrote about this last month: "Not all AI-assisted programming is vibe coding" - https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/vibe-coding/

Vibe coding is when you don't review the code at all. If you're using LLMs to help you write code but you're actually reviewing what they produce (and iterating on it) that's not vibe coding any more.

This battle is almost certainly lost already, but dammit I'm gonna keep fighting anyway!

Salty version: https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3ll2rtxeucs2...

> Feels like I'm losing the battle on this one, I keep seeing people use "vibe coding" to mean any time an LLM is used to write code

> I'm particularly frustrated because for a few glorious moments we had the chance at having ONE piece of AI-related terminology with a clear, widely accepted definition!

> But it turns out people couldn't be trusted to read all the way to the end of Andrej's tweet, so now we are back to yet another term where different people assume it means different things

I found out this anti-pattern where a newly coined term loses its definition as it spreads more widely is called "semantic diffusion": https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/23/semantic-diffusion/

Re: Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work

#52

Post by simonw »

dheera wrote: post #31
SCdF wrote: post #5

So what have we redefined vibe coding to mean exactly? The original tweet[1] talked very specifically about not caring about quality, just accepting whatever code the AI produces blindly, as long as you get the black box output you're looking for, and just randomly try again if you didn't. Are people now using this term to mean "giving an AI agent broad tasks"? [1] https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383?la…

I absolutely hate the polarization around "vibe coding". The whole point of AI agents is to eventually get good enough to do this stuff better than humans do. It's okay to dogfood and test them now and see how well they do, and improve them over time. Software engineers will eventually become managers of AI agents. Vibe coding is just version 0.1 pre-alpha of that future.

"The whole point of AI agents is to eventually get good enough to do this stuff better than humans do"

You can be an enthusiastic adopter of AI tooling (like I am) without wanting them to eventually be better than humans at everything.

I'm very much still in the "augment, don't replace" camp when it comes to AI tooling.

Re: Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work

#53

Post by simonw »

rvz wrote: post #28
SCdF wrote: post #5

So what have we redefined vibe coding to mean exactly? The original tweet[1] talked very specifically about not caring about quality, just accepting whatever code the AI produces blindly, as long as you get the black box output you're looking for, and just randomly try again if you didn't. Are people now using this term to mean "giving an AI agent broad tasks"? [1] https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383?la…

It is a scam. Invented by someone who is an AI researcher, but not a software engineer which the latter rigorously focuses on code quality. "Vibe-coding" as it is defined, throws away all the principles of software engineering and adopts an unchecked approach into using AI generated code with "accept all changes" then duct-taping it with more code on top of a chaotic code architecture or none (single massive file) an…

Saying that Andrej Karpathy is "an AI researcher, but not a software engineer" isn't a very credible statement.

If you read to the end of his tweet, he specifically says "It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I'm building a project or webapp, but it's not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works."

Re: Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work

#54

Post by znpy »

ndepoel wrote: post #18

This all reminds me a lot of the early 2000's, when big corporations thought they could save a lot of money by outsourcing development work to low-income countries and have their expensive in-house engineers only write specifications. Turns out most of those outsourcing parties won't truly understand the core ideas behind the system you're trying to build, won't think outside the box and make corrections where necess…

Have we stopped, really?

Last time i was at a faang my org also had offices in one of those “low-income countries”. So in a way we haven’t stopped.

Also, depending on how you define “low-income” then up to two thirds of the organisation i worked in was in a low-income country.

Re: Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work

#55

Post by spamizbad »

alphazard wrote: post #6

Different people clearly mean different things when they talk about software quality. There is quality as perceived by the user: few bugs, accurately models the problem they have, no more complicated than necessary, etc. Then there is this other notion of quality as something to do with how the software is built. How neat and clear it is. How easy it is to extend or change. The first kind of quality is the only kind…

The second type of quality is necessary to achieve the first type of quality for systems with nontrivial levels of complexity. It doesn’t need to be perfect, or even close to perfect, but it does need to be “good enough” -

Your end users will eventually notice how long bugs take to get fixed, how long and how often outages occur, and how long it takes to get new functionality into your software.

But beyond your end-users, you likely have competitors: and if your competitors start moving faster, build a reputation of dependability and responsiveness, your business WILL suffer. You will see attrition, your CAC will go up, and those costs get absorbed somewhere: either in less runway, less capex/opex (layoffs), higher priced or all of the above. And that’s an entire domain AI isn’t (yet) suited to assist.

There’s no free lunch.

Re: Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work

#56

Post by xnx »

SCdF wrote: post #5

So what have we redefined vibe coding to mean exactly? The original tweet[1] talked very specifically about not caring about quality, just accepting whatever code the AI produces blindly, as long as you get the black box output you're looking for, and just randomly try again if you didn't. Are people now using this term to mean "giving an AI agent broad tasks"? [1] https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383?la…

Vibe coder - someone who uses more coding assistance than I do

Re: Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work

#59

Post by gbear605 »

znpy wrote: post #54
ndepoel wrote: post #18

This all reminds me a lot of the early 2000's, when big corporations thought they could save a lot of money by outsourcing development work to low-income countries and have their expensive in-house engineers only write specifications. Turns out most of those outsourcing parties won't truly understand the core ideas behind the system you're trying to build, won't think outside the box and make corrections where necess…

Have we stopped, really? Last time i was at a faang my org also had offices in one of those “low-income countries”. So in a way we haven’t stopped. Also, depending on how you define “low-income” then up to two thirds of the organisation i worked in was in a low-income country.

In my experience, directly hiring (or hiring through a local company) developers in a “low-income country” - in my experience, Eastern Europe and Latin America - goes a lot better than just contracting out a body of work to a third party. Especially if your company is already fully remote, you’re able to get developers who integrate onto your team just like American devs, and are just as good at coding.

Re: Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work

#60

Post by davb »

dheera wrote: post #31
SCdF wrote: post #5

So what have we redefined vibe coding to mean exactly? The original tweet[1] talked very specifically about not caring about quality, just accepting whatever code the AI produces blindly, as long as you get the black box output you're looking for, and just randomly try again if you didn't. Are people now using this term to mean "giving an AI agent broad tasks"? [1] https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383?la…

I absolutely hate the polarization around "vibe coding". The whole point of AI agents is to eventually get good enough to do this stuff better than humans do. It's okay to dogfood and test them now and see how well they do, and improve them over time. Software engineers will eventually become managers of AI agents. Vibe coding is just version 0.1 pre-alpha of that future.

Anyone who has maintained code that written by engineers new to the industry, who didn’t understand the context of a system or the underlying principles of what they’re writing, may disagree.
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