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Comment by simonw

4 months ago

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."

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simonw

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alternatex  4 months ago

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.

  • echelon  4 months ago

    > put him in the bucket of overenthusiastic AI peddlers of today.

    It's his job to sell now. He's selling.

rvz  4 months ago

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

I think it is. He is certainly a great AI researcher / scientist, but not really a software engineer.

> 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."

So is that the future of software engineering? "Accept all changes", "Copy paste stuff", "It mostly works" and little to no tests whatsoever as that is what "Vibe coding" is.

Would you yourself want vibe-coded software that is in highly critical systems such as in aeroplanes, hospitals, or in energy infrastructure?

I don't think so.

  • simonw  4 months ago

    Where did Andrej say it was "the future of software engineering"? He very clearly described vibe coding as an entertaining way to hack on throwaway weekend projects.

    Try reading the whole tweet! https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383

    "Would you yourself want vibe-coded software that is in highly critical systems such as in aeroplanes, hospitals, or in energy infrastructure?"

    Of course not. That's why I wrote https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/vibe-coding/#using-llm...

    To save you the click:

    > The job of a software developer is not (just) to churn out code and features. We need to create code that demonstrably works, and can be understood by other humans (and machines), and that will support continued development in the future.

    > We need to consider performance, accessibility, security, maintainability, cost efficiency. Software engineering is all about trade-offs—our job is to pick from dozens of potential solutions by balancing all manner of requirements, both explicit and implied.

    > We also need to read the code. My golden rule for production-quality AI-assisted programming is that I won’t commit any code to my repository if I couldn’t explain exactly what it does to somebody else.

    > If an LLM wrote the code for you, and you then reviewed it, tested it thoroughly and made sure you could explain how it works to someone else that’s not vibe coding, it’s software development. The usage of an LLM to support that activity is immaterial.

achierius  4 months ago

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

Broadly I agree with the two other replies: his 'day job' has not been coding in some time, so I would put him in the same bucket as e.g. a manager who got promoted out of writing code 5-10 years ago. I do want to understand where you're coming from here -- do you think that's a fair characterization?