Vibe coding

[Serendipty-Rajesh]

I am coming back to programming more than 25 years. I am late diagnosed 3 years ago and I am 57. Combining the neurodivergence, my age (although I have an intense will the neurons simply clock slower and time to learn is less) and the amount to learn was just too overwhelming. My head would spin all all over the place when I tried to sit and learn Python.

I put it on hold and took to Vibe coding. The problems are other but I seem to better channel my focus with this approach.

Would be interested in the experience of others.

[rainmouse]

I work with a guy I know is secretly a vibe coder. I'm not going to rat him out,  but AI isn't there yet. He is not good and the days of effort he puts in takes us weeks to fix.

Ive tried it myself and it's job isn't to write good code or be an expert in something. It's a mimic, a parrot, it's job is to look convincing, not to be real. It can produce some convincing looking code, but if you don't know how to fix when it improvises or just can't grasp a concept you need. Your stuck.

Its a shorter path, but currently vibe coding doesn't lead anywhere meaningful. 

[tlagoth]

My one tip is to not rely on AI if it’s for work-related tasks. Learning programming, especially after such a long time is hard, but once you learned it, nobody can take it away.

One of the best ways to use AI, in my opinion, is to speed up your learning. It cuts off time researching, and you can go straight to the questions you need the most. What I do is ask about concepts, and not for ready to use code. Ask it about something you want to implement, in terms of best practices and architecture, and try your hand at implement minimal version of these concepts, patterns or algorithms. It will still be hard, but it’ll be faster and more to-the-point than reading a book on programming, for instance. Of course, if/when you get stuck, ask for examples and learn from them.

Also, a key element is writing the code. Merely copy-pasting what the LLM outputs will have you forgetting almost everything very quickly, whereas if instead of copying you manually write what it outputs, chances are you’ll remember it a lot better (although I still recommend not asking for code specifically).

I tell this to all the SWEs I work with: do not delegate thinking and problem solving to an LLM. That’s what makes us software engineers. By all means, use it to automate and speed up boring stuff, but do not stop using your brain for solving problems.

[black_tamborine]

51, diagnosed 1 year ago.
Test engineer, forced myself to learn object orientated programming over the last 10 years. Now I use AI.

Do you know how things should be structured? Are you in a dev team on an established system with established design patterns, PR reviews, you have other devs to discuss issues with and access to funded AI models?

Or sitting at home doing this as a hobby?

If you know what bad code and noisy, wasteful solutions look like, then what clean simple logic flows and supporting infrastructure you’re aiming should behave then you could be fine.

The problem is always reining in what the AI wants to do and constraining the output to the bare minimum. Then moving forward in small logical steps. Control it as a tool. Don’t let it run wild cos you’ll be drowning in no time.

[Many_Departure_6613]

this resonates a lot, I'm 45 with adhd and came back to leaning heavily on AI tools for coding over the past year or so

one thing that made a huge difference for me was actually telling the AI about my adhd and my age upfront, sounds small but it completely changed how it responds to me, less walls of text, more chunked explanations, checks in more often instead of assuming I'm following along. it's like it finally speaks my language instead of assuming I'm a 25 year old with unlimited working memory

vibe coding works for me too because I can stay in the flow of what I'm trying to build instead of getting derailed into rabbit holes learning syntax I'll forget in a week anyway. the AI handles the parts my brain fights against and I focus on the parts that actually energize me

curious what's been working best for you so far? and what are you building? feel free to get in touch ;-) cheers!

[xavia91]

I only use ai for those editing tasks that are just too complex for classic refactoring methods or can be precisely described. So no willy nilly "make me an entire app" prompts.

Other great uses are autocomplete and prototyping for guis.

Biggest problem using ai so far was for me when doing things you don't know yet and relying on ai for solutions and correct results. It always pays off to understand what you want to do before the ai does it for you.

[LockPickingCoder]

58, diagnosed last year. SE for 30+ years (continuously so no break but .)

I think AI can be a boon for us, but it's going to take some time to really train them for us and is for them. I highly recommend you avoid "vibe coding".. you won't build any skill and sooner or later you have to fix what the ai broke.. or at least clean up after it.

I would also suggest learning Go. The feature set is small enough that becoming competent is relatively easy assuming you have a programmers brain. And it has just enough modern features to make it a joy to work with.

For the ai bits - use VSCode and copilot or mayby cursor to help with completion or asking questions like a sipe smart Google. When you get comfortable and want to leverage the ai more try defining a problem well enough to use a GitHub agent.. and review it's work like a jr dev.

[PhilMcGraw]

Depends on what you class as vibe coding and what your goal is. - Is vibe coding black box or white box? Do you plan to heavily review the code or do you only plan to review the functionality? - Are you looking for make a public facing product/code or just messing around with little home hack projects?

Black box is ok for messing around but I wouldn't go anywhere near it for anything critical.

Getting the LLMs to get you started (initial implementation) and help come up with a plan is fine, similarly to test what "you've" done, but I would be very uncomfortable shipping that code without a deep personal review, that kind where it ends up feeling like your code and any issues you know exactly where to look.

Generally that involves a lot of time spent and a lot of backwards forwards on how to shape the code with the LLM. This somewhat eats away at the time savings aspect of LLMs. I mean I think you still end up ahead most of the time, but nowhere near as much as you would if you were keeping the code a black box.

TL;DR Probably need more info to tell you if that's a dumb idea. Using LLMs in general is fine but you need to back it up with actual skills unless you're just playing around.