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Comment by the_af

1 day ago

Doing something badly in 1/10 of the time isn't going to save you that much time, unless it's something you don't truly care about.

I have used AI/LLMs; in fact I use them daily and they've proven helpful. I'm talking specifically about vibe coding, which is dumb.

> By whom? [...] Emphasis on "shifting the programmer's role from manual coding to guiding, testing, and refining the AI-generated source code" which means you don't blindly dump code into the world.

By Andrej Karpathy, who popularized the term and describes it as mostly blindly dumping code into the world:

> 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. It's possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I barely even touch the keyboard. I ask for the dumbest things like "decrease the padding on the sidebar by half" because I'm too lazy to find it. 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, I'd have to really read through it for a while. 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. 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.

He even claims "it's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects", not for actual production-ready and robust software... which was my point!

Also see Merriam-Webster's definition, mentioned in the same Wikipedia article you quoted: https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/vibe-coding

> Writing computer code in a somewhat careless fashion, with AI assistance

and

> In vibe coding the coder does not need to understand how or why the code works, and often will have to accept that a certain number of bugs and glitches will be present.

and, M-W quoting the NYT:

> You don’t have to know how to code to vibecode — just having an idea, and a little patience, is usually enough.

and, quoting from Ars Technica

> Even so, the risk-reward calculation for vibe coding becomes far more complex in professional settings. While a solo developer might accept the trade-offs of vibe coding for personal projects, enterprise environments typically require code maintainability and reliability standards that vibe-coded solutions may struggle to meet.

I must point out this is more or less the claim I made and which you mocked with your CRUD remarks.

> Doing something badly in 1/10 of the time isn't going to save you that much time, unless it's something you don't truly care about.

You're adding "badly" like it's a fact when it is not. Again, in my experience, in the experience of people around me and many experiences of people online AI is more than capable of doing "simpler" stuff on its own.

> By Andrej Karpathy, who popularized the term

Nowhere in your quoted definitions does it say you don't *ever* look at the code. MW says non-programmers can vibe code, also in a "somewhat careless fashion" none of those imply you CANNOT look at code for it to be vibe coding. If Andrej didn't look at it it doesn't mean the definition is that you are not to look at it.

> which you mocked with your CRUD remarks

I mocked nothing, I just disagree with you since as a dev with over 10 years of experience I've been using AI for both my job and personal projects with great success. People that complain about AI expect it to parse "Make an ios app with stuff" successfully, and I am sure it will at some point, but now it requires finer grain instructions to ensure its success.