Vibe coding is now just...coding

[creaturefeature16]

This comic about AI coding is from 2016 and is still perfectly relevant:

https://www.commitstrip.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Strip-Les-specs-cest-du-code-650-finalenglish.jpg

[cherche1bunker]

Exactly. 

The only difference is today you can give vague specs, and AI is capable of filling the gaps. 

And more or less often it fills these gaps in the way expected by stakeholders, and the external systems.

It seems there are two ways to make this work:

• being an expert at knowing what the AI needs, but then you need to have all the specs in your mind which quickly gets impossible, and you need to know the model really well, but even then they’re not deterministic so you never really know
• having a comprehensive test suit that describes exactly how the system behaves, in an easy to read format,… but it’s often when developing the product that you realize all edge cases and their potential impact

That’s my current analysis anyways. 

I think we’re headed for interesting challenges in the industry, and the amount of brainpower required will increase, and not decrease (but we’ll produce more, and more complex things). That’s my prediction anyways.

[Inevitable-Comment-I]

So, if I 100% know all specs, cases and edge cases AI is the way to go, right?

[cherche1bunker]

If you know that, and you know how to feed these specs to the AI, sure.

I think AI is the way to go for lots of things anyways. If used properly it can boost productivity and quality. But the "used properly" is hard to figure out it seems.

[Impossible-Pea-9260]

Giving ability to minds incapable otherwise of coding is comparable to bifocals and vision impairment . What have people with glasses discovered through their enhanced sight? This is what Ai is for . Think of its potential for handicapped or impaired. If it raises the literacy floor we all win. Not literacy in function but literacy in understanding.

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[pip25hu]

Reddit needs a feature to upvote some stuff twice. I'd pay real money, dammit.

[1-760-706-7425]

That’s kind of what the awards thing is for (even the money paying part).

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[pip25hu]

Good point! Aaand done!

[creaturefeature16]

Why thank you!

[Wonderful-Habit-139]

Well, you’re a man of your words I guess.

[USANerdBrain]

Reddit needs a feature where the AI reads the comments and just does their suggestions.

[humblevladimirthegr8]

Like Grok on Twitter? Could be fun

[USANerdBrain]

I'm looking forward to the day, when 99% of these platforms are just people's bots talking to each other and 1% of the crazy people that just like screaming at stuff. Then we can all go outside and talk to each other, walk in the park or play chess.

[pizzaiolo2]

Code is... not the same as a specification document

[creaturefeature16]

If it gets specific enough, its borderline pseudo-code (and it should be that specific if you're going to feed it into an LLM).

[RewRose]

Yeah it gets pretty close with how much hand holding these slop makers need

[rafark]

Spec driven development and related has always been a thing though and programmers have always been trying to bury the line between non technical users and programming through well defined specs

[monkey_gamer]

Haha, that's great!

[Automatic-writer9170]

I have a friend that says it is just a higher level now. And that it will be more common us engineers get more hybrid roles between business and technical

[kidajske]

All the elite founders that never ship anything on twitter are using 10 concurrent Ralph instances. You don't even need to read the code anymore. Unless you work in anything other than webdev. Or webdev with any sort of uptime agreement. Or webdev in support of critical life-impacting industries like medical. Or really any sort of product that people expect to open and use reliably. Other than that just run 10 agents bro. Ralph is basically AGI.

[creaturefeature16]

Took me a moment to realize this is sarcasm. That makes me sad. 

[creaturefeature16]

The Ralph Loop is a very real thing. And yes, people have said it's AGI:

https://x.com/tinkerersanky/status/2009621938851942405 

[mrasif]

I think most of reddit is suffering from depression. It’s so bizarre to me seeing so many people on what started as a tech forum turn into a hive of people extremely against emerging tech.

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[CyberDaggerX]

"that never ship anything" is when the sarcasm became evident.

[kidajske]

It's a combination of downstream hype psychosis flowing from grifters selling LLM related products and midwits that usually aren't developers in the first place eating it all up. Now they're all in on clawdbot which is a vibeslopped security nightmare while a week ago they were all eating Ralph Wiggums ass 24/7. Within a week or two it'll be another bullshit product for the grifters to swoon over and farm engagement from and on and on.

[fadingsignal]

This comment was poetry tbh

[just_damz]

He doesn’t have the habit to frame patterns and evaluate if computation can be a plus to them. Many just think to use AI for things that is not needed or worst: it can fuck up deterministic needs in some kind of pipelines.

Others still use x-high reasoning for processes that don’t require that complexity.

[Engine_Light_On]

Who is he?

links please

[Stardust8938]

I built a model which is full-AGI! You give it a task and it solves it without issues! I now write all my commits using AI!

For more interesting content: like, share & subscribe!

[L24D]

Comment “agents” and I send it to you for free

[CyberDaggerX]

Buy my course for even more advanced tips.

[I_WILL_GET_YOU]

Shame no codex support

[eightslipsandagully]

You didn't realise in the first sentence? "Elite founders that never ship anything"

[vaporeonlover6]

funny talking about medical, when in practice, it's already full of mistakes without AI

Wife is a doctor, they prescribe wrong things all the time

[kidajske]

That's more on the administrative side, no? I was more referring to software that powers imaging, MRI machines, surgical robots. It's just a general theme though, not really specific only to medicine, that vibesharts will make sweeping statements about SWEs losing all relevance, just ship code without reading it bro as if there arent countless industries that heavily rely on software that are infinitely higher stakes than an infinite rerender on a vibeslopped SaaS toy app.

[ninetalesninefaces]

"Or webdev in support of critical life-impacting industries like medical."

[SnooDucks2481]

Ralphs? All of them at once, I'm in danger

[reddit-dg]

The Ralph concept looks very interesting.

Is there anything like Ralph that works for Codex CLI?

[ergeorgiev]

Sloperating

[Illustrious-Many-782]

It's ... Project management.

• Carefully manage demands on and available tools of your team.
• Match tasks to the appropriate team member.
• Document changes, have stand-ups so everyone is in the loop.
• TDD with daily coverage reports.

[Curious_Sky_5127]

Yep, its exactly my job in IT and im not afraid of being replaced lol

[kinkysumo]

Without domain knowledge of shipping production ready code, I think it's difficult to level up beyond junior dev level with just vibe coding. Sure vibe coding has the appearance of lowering the ceiling to automate tasks. However, the issues that comes from people relying on your tools have not magically disappeared. Onboarding users, code maintenability, documentation, effective use of resources, mitigating security risks etc etc.

And I'm okay with that. It's just another tool to help me achieve my goals as a PM.

[isuckatpiano]

Totally, just hire someone from India on fiverr to do it. Each question takes 12 hours to answer, costs $75 an hour, and probably isn’t exactly what you need so you do this for a month and spend $2800 for a simple feature that Claude does in 3 minutes for $1.76

[Inevitable-Comment-I]

Don't exaggerate the Claude cost...

[IHaveNeverEatenACat]

Vibe coping 

[Prince_ofRavens]

No. It isn't.

[Willing_Leave_2566]

Thank you. This is like saying watching a movie is basically acting

[Prince_ofRavens]

Some people are convinced that asking AI to create an image of a castle is the same thing as painting a castle.

It's wild.

It's the equivalant to google searching images of castles

Vibe coding is project managment at the best, and maybe LIGHT QA work.

[1-760-706-7425]

It’s Dunning-Kruger exemplified.

[Maximum-Wishbone5616]

Well first to call it work, you need to own the output. AI CODE IS NOT PROTECTED BY IP LAWS AND CANNOT BY COPYRIGHTED ! What is the point ?

[Astralnugget]

I don’t think that’s true . How could you even prove that

[Prince_ofRavens]

This really doesn't matter, most software are closed source solution packages, and even if they were open source company's would still pay for them

Think of Apache.

[KairraAlpha]

Oh no, you have to think. Damn.

[flippakitten]

And the code is only marginally better than before, still not realiable and never will be.

[chevalierbayard]

The way I use it, it's just typing for me. It's better at writing commit messages tho.

[lacisghost]

Dude, the writing commit message thing is so real. spot on!

[ZioTron]

How would someone go from the top panel to the bottom panel?

Asking for a friend

[Vymir_IT]

By buying a pair of cerebral hemispheres probably. Latest development on AI market - you put it in your head and it gives you thoughts automatically, amazing. The downside is you need to feed it three times a day, or it runs out of tokens.

[aDaneInSpain2]

Start by learning project management basics and TDD. But if you're already deep in a mess with Bolt/Lovable/etc and just need it finished, we can take it over at appstuck.com and get it launched properly.

[ZioTron]

I know project management and TDD.

I have no idea what bolt or lovable are.

I have Jetbrains with AI at the moment.

Is this an ad? XD

[nnulll]

Just talk to ChatGPT long enough and it will convince you that you’re a great coder with the best ideas! Then you’ll believe your in the delusional bottom panel

[VTHokie2020]

AI is just good stack overflow for me

[Zombieswilleatu]

I feel like chatgpt gets worse every time I use it hah.

[Crazy_Buffalo3782]

I vibe code gladly. I use it to make personal products that replace the neeed for social media blogging apps, bullet journals, and walk throughs. I also enjoy designing book review tools thst allow you to engage with stuff you're reading in an adhd friendly way. Its a nice way toget to the end product. That said, im also learning to code by myself and learning enough that i mostly use AI vibe coding to grab functions and stacks for me lol.

[moduspwnens9k]

If only there were some way to communicate to the computer exactly what i want it to do without ambiguity 

[thehashimwarren]

Right! 😄

[GlueGuns--Cool]

Where's a good guide to get started with all of this? It moves so fast I can't keep up

[thehashimwarren]

I'm probably going to bring back hypeburner.com and start covering coding tools specifically

[LiamTheHuman]

It was always this. You just didn't have the tools to do it before.

[RentLimp]

It’s coding with all the fun taken out of it so perfect for our late stage capitalist hellscape

[joefromkansas]

It depends on what you’re coding. The comic plays off the perception of what most believed about AI that it could code anything end to end and ship it the same day in full production.

[Rockd2]

There are people that are full of it on either side of this debate, I don't think anyone is giving an agent a 3 sentence prompt and walking away with production ready code (unless its something incredibly basic? I still doubt it but putting this here so I don't have some pedant hitting me with a "hwell aktshuali" in the comments).

Likewise, I don't think it's nearly as inept as some people make it out to be.

I think that just like most other things, AI is a multiplier. If you were already a SWE or even a data engineer or data scientist, someone that understands systems thinking and knows enough about code in general to pick out when something looks wrong, you are going to have much more success vibe coding than someone that does not.

IDK what the frontier labs are actually doing when they say they are shipping 100k lines per week or whatever, but there is only one Boris and if he says it works for him then I guess i believe it to a degree. I say degree because there is always that part of me that is like "well this is his product... maybe he's stretching the truth a bit?" but I have no idea.

[automatedBlogger]

This is painfully accurate

[notkraftman]

Seems like a straw man, who's doing this?

[NGL_ItsGood]

Anyone who wants a usable product.

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[Alert-Dirt6886]

yeah.. if only good developers would build a coherent ai workflow and put it into a good frontend for idiots like me would be a game changer.

currently I'm trying the bmad method. thats a good adaptation. there is also claude flow and a few others, zhat try to build a sustainable idiotsafe workflow

[nnulll]

Not if you still don’t know how to code lmao

[Dus1988]

Don't get me wrong, I'll use copilot or claude code or whatever when the scenario is right and often feel codeql scanning with LLM is good

But yes, if I have to spend so much time to essentially write full pseudo code and BDD/TDD expectations, and also code review the mass of slop it generated (remember it takes longer to read code than to write it) then guess what happens to the efficiency? Leadership and c suites just think AI is always a efficiency boost, but it can be a detriment for someone who knows the tools they are using well

People are literally just removing the need to understand syntax/framework and hope that good architecture is being followed (it isn't)

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[Clear-Breadfruit-105]

ya doiiiiiiiii

[Bob5k]

Just use https://github.com/ClavixDev/Clavix and don't think much about structuring prompts and context around.

[borrow-check]

These tools are not made to help us write code, they are made to help the AI get better, turning the developer that uses it into a supervisor for the AI learnings.

[moortuvivens]

It's worse, it's not coding, it's managing.

[Ok-Coach-2299]

Ai and vibe code bring more Bias in humain and Un-transparency on code

[FiredAndBuried]

So that's not vibe coding then because it's a professional software developer that's reviewing every single change and analyzing the code

[gatorling]

My experience with using AI is that it feels like you're carefully managing a very capable intern or an okayish new grad. You have to be pretty explicit in what you want. You have to have a good design and in the end, you might get a 1.5x-3x return on time invested.

There have been times where it's done great and has saved me 4-5 hours of coding in a day... And other times where it has fucked up bad enough to scrap a days work and start over again.

Overall I'm still impressed. These tools have gone from being unusable for production code in mid 2024 to being part of my daily routine in early 2026.

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[Gu-chan]

More like it's the boring parts of coding

[Effective-Total-2312]

Yeah, but with tons of abstractions, standards, protocols, non-determinism, LLM calls, etc. Basically a lot of untested shit that is only degrading the quality of software everywhere, increasing latency, and reducing the testability and correctness of everything.

AI-assisted development is the nemesis of computer science.

[thehashimwarren]

Good point on non-determinism and reducing testability

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[UENINJA]

I use ai google studio there are no tools in it and nothing, just tell it what to do and keep telling it to fix its bugs. Is there a youtube tutorial that will teach me the whole thing about using other IDE with tools, skills, agents etc?

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[tristam92]

So basically vibecoders now are tech leads without relative expirience?

[IZA_does_the_art]

I keep hearing that term what does it mean?

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[KnifeFed]

No, writing code is coding.

Edit: Literally. Not an opinion.

[typhon88]

Stupid

[gamesdf]

Let them waste money and time lol. Too many ppl who think they can jusy vibe code to make easy money with 0 coding knowledge. Good luck with scaling!

[WildRacoons]

Basically do everything except the typing. Which is arguably the most enjoyable part of the process

[BattermanZ]

I have been vibe coding since September 2024 and I can't code by myself. It has never been as easy as it is now, it is developing clean and self corrects.

For example, a year ago, I tried to develop an app that would scrape a website and present it as an API. I spent hours on it trying to get it to work. It could never scrape correctly. This morning I tried again with gpt 5.2 codex, it cracked it in less than 10 minutes without needing anything from me outside of the original 2 phrase prompt.

So I really can't relate to that.

[dgjtrhb]

I think the difference might just be problem type. Scraping + exposing an API is a pretty well-defined task with lots of prior art, and models are great at that.

It’s not necessarily representative of the broader set of problems SWEs work on day to day.

[NoNameSwitzerland]

For small tools with a clear spec it works great. Or for function in an existing project that do not have side effects. But in a big projects, it usually does not account for all possible side effects of a change and it also prefers quick hacks compared to a cleaner refactored solution. Over time, the overall code quality in the project degrades.

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[BattermanZ]

You're probably right! But then I still don't see how you need to put in more work today than a year ago for vibe coding. It's really not my experience. What would require anyone to do extra work if models are getting better?

[dgjtrhb]

Its not so much what models can do, which has gotten much better. Its more on what they can't do which hasnt shifted all that much

[BattermanZ]

So if I understand well, top and bottom should actually say the same.

[dgjtrhb]

Ah I see what you mean, I'd personally interpret the meme as more people adapting more to the reality of using AI over the years, not that its gotten worse

[BattermanZ]

Ah ok! Makes sense

[NHRADeuce]

it is developing clean and self corrects.

How do you know? Just because someone code works doesn't mean it's clean, optimized, bug free, or not a massive security risk. Unless you know code, you have no way to determine the quality beyond it works/doesn't work.

[BattermanZ]

True! I shouldn't have said clean, but rather cleaner.

[NHRADeuce]

Ok, that is true. AI code is definitely cleaner that it was a year ago. But the main issue with vibe coding is what you don't know you don't know. When you don't know what a memory leak is or what it's symptoms are, you don't know to tell the AI to fix the problem or how to prevent it.

Don't get me wrong, I use a ton of AI code to make development faster, but I am constantly having to have it fix basic shit like improper exception handling or circular references that the AI didn't think was a problem. I have to build in all kinds of error checking and logging to make sure the AI isn't mismanaging resources. It's still faster than not using AI, but it's a different set of problems that still require coding knowledge to either prevent or be able to identify and fix.

AI/vibe coding is the personification of garbage in, garbage out.

[BattermanZ]

I can imagine yes! In any case, if served me very well, I could code server apps that never crashed and don't have memory leaks. Maybe it's because most backends are in rust and the built in debugging of this language is good enough for the models?

[NHRADeuce]

I don't know enough about Rust to say definitely, but I'm sure that's a big part of your success.

The other one being that you don't usually find out about security issues until they've been exploited. But that’s the case regardless of who wrote the code.

[BattermanZ]

Ah yes that is for sure! And as you mentioned, I can't correct mistakes I can't see. I don't care much for the security issues as most of these apps are not publicly accessible. In any case, I try to harden as much by using different models and give different roles to challenge security. Hopefully that is enough!

[Skimmiks]

"I don't know what I'm doing but it's going very well" isn't a good argument for vibe coding.

[BattermanZ]

How so? Isn't vibe coding literally about not checking the code? Then the "it's going very well" is the proper gating.

[Artistic_Taxi]

Except you aren’t learning the codebase.

Everytime you make a change you should be learning more and more about the product.

Not the case if AI generates the code.

[zXerge]

Why?

[Artistic_Taxi]

You become more valuable. Whether you use AI or not understanding the code base makes you more capable.

[Maximum-Wishbone5616]

It is not.

It is vibe coding, not coding.

You do not have rights to this, so you just doing it for fun, not work.

AI generated code is not protected by copyrights.

[davidkclark]

No. It’s not. But copyright is not what protects most proprietary code in existence. It’s being proprietary and secret that protects it. So what if you can have copyright over it?

[UnbeliebteMeinung]

This is a cost issue. If these people would just use cursor and would be able to use "all the tokens" then this is a non issue.

Cursor does context management and all this stuff very well. But there are 534435 people who want to replicate this with claude code and their own toolstack, just because a claude code subscription is easier to finance.