Comment by giancarlostoro
1 day ago
Look at any HN thread that has a project that uses AI in any way, shape or form. People quickly remark that it is slop, without even reviewing the code. If that's not blind hatred of AI, I don't know what is.
There's a huge distinction between Vibe Coding, and actual software engineers using AI tooling effectively. I vibe code for fun sometimes too, nothing wrong with it, helps me figure out how the model behaves in some instances, and to push the limits of what I understand.
Vibe Coding is like porn for programmers. It probably isn't good for you, and you'd probably be better off actually doing the thing yourself, but it feels good and satisfies our desires for instant gratification
Well, take for example, I have ideas I've had for years but no time for because by now the requirements are insane. I want to build a backend that could survive nuclear fallout type stuff. I braindump to Claude, watch it churn out my vision for the last 12 years, its insane.
There's other things too though: my ADD and my impostor syndrome don't matter to Claude, Claude just takes it all in, so as I keep brain dumping, it keeps chugging along. I don't have to worry a bout "can I really do this?" it just does it and I can focus on "what can I do to make it better" essentially.
For me it's beyond "porn coding" its basically fulfilling my vision that's been locked away for years but I've had no time to sit down and do it fully. I can tell Claude to do something, my kid comes up and asks me to go draw with them and I can actually just walk away and look at the output and refine.
I never said it doesn't have use cases (much like porn a lot of the arguments against are just fear mongering) just that it isn't as good as the real thing. I myself like yapping to an LLM about ideas to see how feasible they actually are before taking a crack at it
Bitching about vibe coding is like watching porn. It makes you feel a bit better in the moment, but it doesn't do anything to address whatever problems in your life have lead you seek comfort in bitching about a thing other people are doing.
Yes yes, ironic comment, since I'm bitching about you bitching. Really though, not everybody is looking to spend hours of their life fine tuning their personal coding abilities. Coding is a means to an end, not the end itself, it's a way to solve problems and if vibe coding can get you the solution the fastest then it's foolish to not use it. Doing the job slower with more effort, because in the future you think that effort is somehow going to pay off by boosting your skills, when in the future LLMs will be even more capable vibe coders anyway is very misguided. If coding is the true objective and you aren't doing it to get something else done, then more power to you, but most people code to solve problems, not for the sake of coding.
Comparing bitching about vibe coding to porn is like watching porn. You come away feeling better, but you didn't engage meaningfully with anyone else.
Who's next?
> People quickly remark that it is slop, without even reviewing the code.
I absolutely hate how "slop" has lost its meaning.
"AI slop" was supposed to mean poor-quality content that's obviously AI-generated. But the anti-AI crowd has co-opted it to mean any AI-generated content, regardless of quality. EDIT: Or even the quantity of AI. Expedition 33 had a ton of critical acclaim and ended up winning tons of awards, yet once it was discovered that AI was used to generate some placeholder art, of which NONE of it was actually used in the final product, some people started labeling the game as AI slop. It's utterly ridiculous.
So now, we can't have conversations about AI slop without starting off with making sure everyone is on the same page on what the term even means.
EDIT: "Vibe coding" is suffering a similar fate. If I use AI to write some code, and I examine the code to make sure it doesn't have any obvious bugs or security issues, is that still vibe coding?