Vibe coding in a nutshell
-
These days it more or less explicitly refers to asking an LLM to write your code for you based on prompts.
But on a broader spectrum it is just the idea of (I forget the buzz word) Ticket Driven Development. A manager defines software based on a series of (jira, gitlab, kanban, whatever) tickets/issues and someone below them (in this case, an LLM) implements it.
Done properly? It is incredibly effective as it allows designers and "idea people" to work to their strengths and junior developers to work to theirs. The problem being that, much like when it is a junior dev under them, the person making the tickets likely has no idea what they are doing.
Which is the big problem. Someone who has been writing scripts for decades? Using chatgpt to get the syntax of a function or even to write a utility script is great. They can focus their brainpower on the harder/more fun stuff. Someone who has been writing code for, at most, a year or two? They never learn those foundations and never have a way to do anything the LLM can't (or verify if the LLM is correct).
I’ve been programming for over half my life now, I actually like vibe coding with Claude these days.
It basically gets me through the hump of “ugh this task is going to be annoying as fuck to do” which is where I personally lose most of my efficiency (I have a lot of difficulty forcing myself to do something I don’t want to).
It’s like when I had interns and I’d give them tasks. Describe the work, scope it, add some guard rails to keep it directionally okay, and send it off to get reviewed later. And that works great with modern agents.
I will say vibe coding is damn good at debugging, way better than I am, so I use it for that a lot now.
-
Disclaimer: these tweets aren't real.
Villainously, I'm billing eight-hours
-
who will happily come in and sort out your security issues later
I really doubt anybody will be happy about it, even after considering the size of the fees. And also, you have a very high estimation of the capacity of those people to notice they have to call you, I really doubt it's deserved.
-
Disclaimer: these tweets aren't real.
The tweet is fake.
I don't really think it being edited adds anything to the joke. -
It's just prompt engineering for coding. Let an AI dump a bunch of code for you, debug until it no longer errors, pull request and repeat next sprint.
5% of the time, it works every time
The critical detail being that you don't actually know what's inside (and it's definitely bad). Just using LLM assistance for a your boilerplate code doesn't count.
-
I’ve been programming for over half my life now, I actually like vibe coding with Claude these days.
It basically gets me through the hump of “ugh this task is going to be annoying as fuck to do” which is where I personally lose most of my efficiency (I have a lot of difficulty forcing myself to do something I don’t want to).
It’s like when I had interns and I’d give them tasks. Describe the work, scope it, add some guard rails to keep it directionally okay, and send it off to get reviewed later. And that works great with modern agents.
I will say vibe coding is damn good at debugging, way better than I am, so I use it for that a lot now.
I've been a Jr coming up to two years. When working on tasks I have a rough idea of what I want to achieve and some steps on the way there, but don't know how to actually implement it. I've found using copilot useful to fill in some of the gaps and give me ideas and direction.
I'm concerned that there are skills I am missing out on developing, but at the same time if AI is being pushed so heavily is it not something I should lean into to be better equipped in working with it?
-
Yeah, unlike an outsourcing outfit an AI company won't take the fall when given shit requirement and shit pay they deliver shit work.
-
I've been a Jr coming up to two years. When working on tasks I have a rough idea of what I want to achieve and some steps on the way there, but don't know how to actually implement it. I've found using copilot useful to fill in some of the gaps and give me ideas and direction.
I'm concerned that there are skills I am missing out on developing, but at the same time if AI is being pushed so heavily is it not something I should lean into to be better equipped in working with it?
Ten years and counting here, fuck if anyone knows at this point. My personal (maybe a bit cynical) take is that it really doesn't matter as the amount of coding skill you use maxes out in the first few years of your career (for 90% of us anyhow), after that cat herding skills and pragmatic system architecture is what's important. It becomes more important to know what not to do rather than the opposite.
So it doesn't really matter how fast you are at leetcode if you can navigate the particular brand of spaghetti your workplace is cooking, plus points if you are able and willing to grok new kinds so you can hop jobs because raises are so last century.
-
Yes, as I've said, this is just me getting old rather than any issue with the joke format
I disagree. The joke is meh without the names. If they did the same thing but with 2 made up people or cartoon characters it would fall flat. This format is disingenuous and doesn't hold up without making it seem like celebrities said it.
-
Initially, I had the same thought. However, given that it was clearly fake and meant to be humorous without causing any harm, I believe it's acceptable.
Torvalds bantering with Gates is straight weird.
-
I disagree. The joke is meh without the names. If they did the same thing but with 2 made up people or cartoon characters it would fall flat. This format is disingenuous and doesn't hold up without making it seem like celebrities said it.
I don't really understand why it needs to be in Xitter format aside from creating initial confusion. Using a picture+speechbubble format with Gates and Torvalds has 99% of the same energy, minus the misdirection. It's not like Torvalds has used Xitter in the last decade.
-
But seriously, what IS vibe coding?
Vibe coding is when an AI writes the code for you.
-
Man, I'm getting old. I don't understand why all jokes have to be fake twitter screenshots now.
I'm old, too. Give it a year (basically just blink in old man time) and there will be something totally new and horrifying to annoy you.
-
I've been a Jr coming up to two years. When working on tasks I have a rough idea of what I want to achieve and some steps on the way there, but don't know how to actually implement it. I've found using copilot useful to fill in some of the gaps and give me ideas and direction.
I'm concerned that there are skills I am missing out on developing, but at the same time if AI is being pushed so heavily is it not something I should lean into to be better equipped in working with it?
I have a rough idea of what I want to achieve and some steps on the way there, but don’t know how to actually implement it.
That is literally what the job is. If you can't do that then you aren't an engineer.
I’m concerned that there are skills I am missing out on developing, but at the same time if AI is being pushed so heavily is it not something I should lean into to be better equipped in working with it?
I'll tell you what I told my nephew: Yes, everyone is going to use AI to one degree or another. So why would I hire you over anyone else? Or, more pointedly, why would I hire someone at all?
Getting to that interview gets harder and harder every year (every month, really). But engineers (and even many managers) can immediately tell someone who knows their shit versus someone who "vibe codes" all the "hard parts".
-
I've been a Jr coming up to two years. When working on tasks I have a rough idea of what I want to achieve and some steps on the way there, but don't know how to actually implement it. I've found using copilot useful to fill in some of the gaps and give me ideas and direction.
I'm concerned that there are skills I am missing out on developing, but at the same time if AI is being pushed so heavily is it not something I should lean into to be better equipped in working with it?
I used to have a program that would search docs and I'd read stack overflow all the time. Back then it was RTFM or GTFO, so stack overflow meant I wasn't learning right.
I think you'll be fine. Sometimes it's good to read docs, sometimes it's good to just see how things work in practice and up to AI that last part was hard to come by.
-
Disclaimer: these tweets aren't real.
It's about as entertaining as wathing someone else play a videogame mediocre-badly.
-
Vulnerable, Insecure, Broken Entry
That's me
-
Initially, I had the same thought. However, given that it was clearly fake and meant to be humorous without causing any harm, I believe it's acceptable.
Wasn't very obvious to me and I had to check the comments. Maybe you could just put a disclaimer in description if not the title?
-
Man, I'm getting old. I don't understand why all jokes have to be fake twitter screenshots now.
The same as "text message screenshot jokes" were all the rage a couple years ago
-
Man, I'm getting old. I don't understand why all jokes have to be fake twitter screenshots now.
knock knock
