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Theoretically a PM could say "the code is disposable and obsoleted by the next deployment. let's just document our prompts." I don't know if that's a good idea but a lot of people are going to try it.
This is an obviously terrible idea that will lead to regressions on every deployment.
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Oh yes[1] Then remember when we said tests should be the specs? Then we said the end users are the specs? All of them can be construed as a joke in our erratic search for the correct way to write software without those $150k developers that seem to be the only ones getting the job done, assuming they have a competent management hierarchy and stock options incentives. [1] We have a waterfall software and I wonder whet…
I think this erratic manner of trying to find the correct way is the issue. I am currently nearing my 2nd year at a company A in my industry, and while I did know they all kinda suck in their own special way, I honestly had no idea it was this bad until I had to try to make this craziness somehow work for us. Even if there are standards, I do not see people following them. Last year, the one girl, who did seem to try…
What did your manager say when you said this to them?
I think it is a losing battle. People are energy preserving creatures and we skip paying attention if we can. Because paying attention is effort. Vibe coding is exactly this, low effort development and thus is enticing. Now if we can get away with low effort why shouldn’t we? I am not advocating serious NATO missions to be vibe coded for trajectories, no. When billions are at stake no way. But what if billions are no…
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I don't know if it's you and I (and some others) who are just uptight sticklers or something, but it bothers me a ton too. Same thing happening with "open source" in connection to LLMs, where suddenly some companies have decided to try to redefine the meaning, people lack the care to make the distinction. In a dream world, each new terminology goes through an RFC to figure out a meaning we all (some of us) can agree…
Yeah that "open source" thing is SO frustrating. We have a very well established definition for what "open source" means: https://opensource.org/osd I have a suspicion that Facebook insist on calling their open weights models "open source" because the EU AI act says "This Regulation does not apply to AI systems released under free and open-source licences" but doesn't do a good job of defining what "open-source" mean…
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 anywa…
I think it is a losing battle. People are energy preserving creatures and we skip paying attention if we can. Because paying attention is effort. Vibe coding is exactly this, low effort development and thus is enticing. Now if we can get away with low effort why shouldn’t we? I am not advocating serious NATO missions to be vibe coded for trajectories, no. When billions are at stake no way. But what if billions are no…
Paying attention saves you energy in the long run. In the words of Gus Levy, nothing wrong with being greedy, but there's two types of greed, long term and short term; the latter is stupid.
Of course for a throwaway project it's irrelevant by definition. But the problem is in professional work you cannot get away with low effort, you're just pushing your problems to the back and they'll come back with interest. Vibe coding is simply moving your problems to other people, or to yourself at a later point in time.
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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."
Your comment might make sense when it's scoped down to that article when he coined that term. If you take a look at his larger collection of statements on software engineering recently, it's hard not to put him in the bucket of overenthusiastic AI peddlers of today.
It's his job to sell now. He's selling.
LLMs are to software engineering as 3D printers are to mechanical engineering.
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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 anywa…
So the issue you're taking with 'thing is crap' is not 'thing is not crap', but 'you have redefined thing to be reviewed and held to standards and then called it crap'? And so, what, if we just accept it as it is, it's not crap? Or it is, but it everyone knows it (do they?) so it's not worth calling crap?
"There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. ... I "Accept All" always, I don't read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension ... Sometimes the LLMs can't fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. ..."
So yes, "not reading the code" is baked in quite specifically.