I won't be vibe coding anymore: a noob's perspective

I'm using AI for grepping, analyzing flow, finding cross-project dependencies, etc. It provides a significant speedup. But the generated code is mediocre at best. Changes look like patches on fabric, not woven threads. AI generates too much redundant code.

I’ve had good results using Claude Code by specifically coaching it on how its implementation should be. It’s not always perfect and sometimes I do have to try again, but it’s remarkably effective when given enough guidance.

If only I could figure out how to reliably keep it from adding useless comments or preserving obsolete interfaces for “backward compatibility”…

And if you're not doing it to get a job, it's either much better or worse, though I suspect worse. The other buckets are likely that you're doing it to learn something new (which you won't retain anything and thus it's a waste of time) or you are only interested in the end product, which will be subpar compared to comparable professionally developed products. It's hard to see a good use case for "vibe coding" beyond viral examples like the flight simulator game made by an influencer.

"Vibe coding", handle-turning, button-pushing...

This has been the majority of my professional coding experience since the 90's ::shrug::. Having to take ownership of some Java Spring application felt a lot like stepping through an assembly program or some random ROM. Each line of code just returns values and modifies a bunch of other stuff at the same time and you slowly build up a mental model of what it's doing and what it's trying to do!

The way I approach is, I try to design or solve the issue first to the best of my ability, then I let the LLM give me its solution. Compare and take whatever is useful. I know this is not the most effective way, but it's the way I feel like I'm still thinking and not becoming super dependent.

I find that even though I have to spend time understanding what the llm wrote, it's still faster and less energy sapping than if i write the code myself.

Plus I just get the LLM to write tests for it's code and I make sure the coverage is complete.

But it does make me feel uneasy still, like a dirty little cheat.

It's like importing libraries.

... but without all the signs we look for as proof that a given library must not be too bad, since those signs are traces left by developers and by other users of the library, and LLM-generated code doesn't have any other users (I mean, to the extent it's copying existing code, kinda, but it'll be remixed and removed from its original context, so good luck tracking down the source and double-good-luck figuring out if any proof of quality found there is relevant to what you've got)

i've learned a ton from ai suggestions, but right now its like 5-10% of suggestions. If that number was any higher i might not have the motivation to open the black box

> One problem I have is that AI is writing code I don't understand completely, yet I'm still responsible for it.

With vibe coding, you are as much a reviewer/editor as an author, and as an editor should never accept generated code that you don't understand. Happily, the same technology that generated the code can explain the code.

[dead]

> code I don't understand completely, yet I'm still responsible for it.

Is this different than any given library?

Excellent find. Is this Naur of Backus-Naur fame?

> even as little as 50%

Depending on how you measure that velocity (e.g. including security risks, debugging capabilities, ...) even as little as 5% increase is a no brainer for a business. Whether it's AI, powerful laptops, a fully-fledged IDE, an environment with a good dev experience, anything that gives a few percent increase snowballs into millions over an entire workforce.

Whether the current AI capabilities provide that increase without trade-offs that would be too heavy later one is a question that still seems up to debate.

If AI increases programmer productivity by just 5% it is easily worth it.

I have no doubt that AI, right now saves me 5% of my time. That is 24 minutes a day I am not searching for something in the documentation of some library.

> Code is an implementation detail.

It’s worse. Code is a liability.

"Vibe coding" is a very certain way to use LLMs (one where you treat code the same way a junior Java SWE reads generated JVM bytecode), which is what the OP is about. They agree with your point.

    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.

I physically felt the dragging in my eyes while reading it

Vibe coding is a death trap for juniors just starting out, as it kills critical thinking and understanding what a computer is. And a guaranteed paycheck for people with the experience to clean up the resulting messes. I hope...

Software isn't just built. It has to be maintained over time.

A long, unplanned outage is much more destructive to a brand than a delayed release. Vibe coding prioritizes the latter at the expense of the former.

> Vibe coding is here to stay.

I agree, and it's why I'm not worried about running out of paying work as I head into the latter half of my career.

What is coding without critical thinking?

I never vibe coded, and I don't understand this trend AT ALL.

I read how copilot and such are detrimental to critical thinking, and I am even consciously scaling back on copilot use now whenever possible, and prioritizing Google search, reading documentation, blog posts and stackoverflow now.

> Vibe coding is here to stay.

I would say this is true in the same way that copy-paste coding functioned and that vibe coding isn't fundamentally different. It can be a useful approach to a variety of problems.

Having capable, knowledgable, and skilled employees is important to businesses though. If your business is something easily approachable then you are at risk of being outcompeted from companies with more skilled employees. There are truly hellscapes of codebases out there without the glimmer of hope of being worked on with vibe coding alone. On top of that, I'm getting the feeling that vibe coding is a sure way to hellscape your own codebase. Nothing can take the place of critical thinking.

Yes there are businesses (game companies?) which just want to get a thing out the door, sell it, and move on to the next thing. But I don't think that's how most software businesses function. Usually software is iterated on and maintained, and you've got a problem if nobody has invested time in understanding how that software actually works.

Just coupled with that quote, that’s like saying publishers don’t care about the writing process, they just care about whether the book sells.

Which yeah, of course, that their job. It’s the authors job to write a good book. The publisher needing to sell books doesn’t contradict or supercede the authors need to write well or develop their process.

Virtually all businesses (even non-tech businesses) balance performance, reliability, cost, and revenue. Outages/bugs/crashes cost money, some can be fatal. They care.

+1. Software developers has long leveraged "someone else" writing code for their projects— be that "someone else" another human, via libraries, platforms, frameworks, etc. Or a computer, using codegen tools, compilers, etc. Sometimes it's to save tediousness, sometimes to save time, sometimes to leverage better code than one could've written.

I think AI is best when used in this same way of thinking— not a tool that should handle all the coding for you, but as a very powerful codegen tool that you can leverage in many parts of your project.