Comment by kaydub
6 hours ago
How were you "vibe coding" 2 years ago?
There's been such a massive leap in capabilities since claude code came out, which was middle/end of 2025.
2 years ago I MAYBE used an LLM to take unstructured data and give me a json object of a specific structure. Only about 1 year ago did I start using llms for ANY type of coding and I would generally use snippets, not whole codebases. It wasn't until September when I started really leveraging the LLM for coding.
Vibe coding was coined less than a year ago:
https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383
I was vibe coding in November 2024, before the term was coined. I think that is about as early as anyone was doing it, so 1.25 years ago. Cursor added its "agentic" mode around then, I think, but before that there was just "accept all" without looking at changes repeatedly.
I shipped a small game that way (https://love-15.com/) -- one that I've wished to make for a long time but wouldn't have been worth building other wise. It's tiny, really, but very niche -- despite being tiny, I hit brick walls multiple times vibing it, and had to take a few brief breaks from vibing to get it unstuck.
Claude Code was a step change after that, along with model upgrades, about 9 months ago. That size project has been doable as a vibe coded project since then without hitting brick walls.
All this to say I really doubt most claims about having been vibe coding for more than 9-15 months.
To a describe a thing people had been doing since LLMs became available.
No. That’s why he called it “a new kind of coding”.
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When LLMs first came out, they weren't very good at it, which makes all the difference. Sometimes the thing that's really good at something gets a different name. Chef vs cook, driver vs chauffeur, painter vs artist, programmer vs software developer, etc.
Yeah, I laughed when I saw the headline.
Now I expect to start seeing job postings asking for "3 years of experience vibe coding"
I started doing it as soon as ChatGPT 3.5 was out. “Given this file tree and this method signature, implement the method”. The context was only 8k so you had to function by function. About two editor screens worth at a time.
Using an LLM to code isn't the same as vibe coding. Vibe coding, as originally coined, is not caring at all about the code or looking at the code. It was coined specifically to differentiate it from the type of AI-assisted coding you're talking about.
It's used more broadly now, but still to refer to the opposite end of the spectrum of AI-assisted coding to what you described.
Yeah, I've been working with LLMs since openai released that first model. What I'm doing today is VASTLY different than anything we thought possible back then, so I wouldn't call it "vibe coding"
Similar place. I kept trying to get LLMs to do anything interesting and the first time they were able was 4.5 sonnet.
Best case is still operationally correct but nightmare fuel on the inside. So maybe good for one off tools where you control inputs and can vibe check outputs without diaster if you forget to carry the one.
GitHub Copilot came out with AI autocomplete 2-3 years ago I believe.
Using autocomplete is very much not "vibe coding".
same; I think codex with gpt5 changed things for me; then opus 4.5 turned out to be also useful (yet quite pricey)
Typical blogspam clickbait of "I knew what LLMs were 2 years, but maybe didn't know the name for them, so we'll call that vibecoding."