Comment by DonHopkins

Instead of "vibe coding" by asking the AI to design and write code, I'm having it refine my own designs, and write code under strict supervision and guidance, that I carefully review and iterate on.

I took a rock carving course in school that really enlightened me about software engineering, and it still applies today, especially to AI. You can't just decide what you want to carve, hold the chisel in just the right spot, and whack it with a hammer just perfectly so all the rock you want falls away leaving a perfect statue behind.

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." -Michelangelo

It's a long drawn out iterative process of making millions of tiny little chips, and letting the statue inside find its way out, in its natural form, instead of trying to impose a pre-determined form onto it.

Vibe coding is hoping your first whack of the hammer is going to make a good statue, then not even looking at the statue before shipping it!

But AI assisted conscientious coding (or agentic engineering as Simon calls it) is the opposite of that, where you chip away quickly and relentlessly, but you still have to carefully control where you chisel and what you carve away, and have an idea in your mind what you want before you start.