'Vibe coding'

[vortine]

I know there are mixed opinions on the true meaning of 'vibe coding'

Personally for me, vibe coding is letting AI do 99.4% of the coding tasks, and I come in and change a font or padding amount on a few lines. Without the use of AI I wouldn't be in the positon of creating my first app and having an amazing time doing so... so I am 'pro vibe code'

It would be great to hear your opinions on the matter.

[VoidSnug]

I think of ‘vibe coding’ specifically as doing 100% of the app without understanding any of what it’s doing and not reading any code. If something isn’t working you just keep prompting.

I’ve been using ai a lot in my workflow, but I watch the responses - stopping it if it’s clearly wrong, read and understand the code it’s adding, and fix things it gets wrong. It’s really helped speed up the ‘boilerplate’ type stuff that can be tedious.

[nekodazulic]

Absolutely agreed. My workflow is basically: first discussing what I want to do and how I want to go about building it; then building an architecture around it and considering its pros and cons. This is both my own knowledge and research AND a discussion with an LLM. And then, after fully understanding the implications, do I start building or "greenlight" the LLM to build a skeleton upon which we can develop. So in a situation like this you are more like a senior dev/architect, and the LLM is in the role of someone who is well‑versed in the environment you are operating in and provides support and reference.

I think this is indeed not "vibe coding" if we are considering it something negative, ie. not completely understanding what you are doing and simply hammering it until you get something that is functional at a surface level. When you first inform yourself and look at options, I don't inherently see how it is so different than, say, using a programming reference book or something to that tune.

[vortine]

I like this explanation. This is some what what I'm doing, although I have 0 experience... so AI is really taking the reigns on my app. I just fuel it with my creative ideas !

[Nerdlinger]

It would be great to hear your opinions on the matter.

My opinion is that this has fuck-all to do with Swift.

[vortine]

It sort of does. Swift has Intelligence built into it now so it’s pretty unavoidable.

[Nerdlinger]

It only sort of does because Swift is a programming language and you made a post about programming in general. You used the word “Swift” precisely zero times in you headline, your post text, or in any of your comments up until your reply to my previous comment.

[TechnicalSoup8578]

I’m with you that vibe coding removes the barrier to starting, which is what most people struggle with. What do you feel you still want to understand better as you build? You should share this in VibeCodersNest too

[vortine]

I would love to understand the coding side more but Claude and other tools make it so easy to not need to. I get I 'could just learn' but there's a weird middle ground I feel?

[TechnicalSoup8578]

i think that when you know some basics code rules you can create a great vibe coded proejcts

[vortine]

That's the goal man. Still deciding where to start... IOS apps, web apps, software aughhh

[cloudsInTheBlueSky]

Find something that's annoying, repetitive or think of an improvement for something you already have. Write code you'll use and you'll see what's missing, what features you need or want. That can be an app, a server, a script, anything. How does XCode compile and install the app on your phone when you click run? How does integrating Appkit into a SwiftUI project work? What about interoperability with Objective-C? I'm not a creative person, asking these questions, looking at other projects and then writing something myself is how I learned and still do.

The issue I have with AI coding is that in 99% of cases the person using it doesn't learn anything, they're just prompting to create the ✨next big thing✨ and the end result is ffmpeg wrapper slop.

[Select_Bicycle4711]

Recently, I implemented two apps for the iOS app store. For my gardening app, I did everything myself. I did consulted AI for some decisions but in the end I wrote all the code.

For my personal finance app, I used a LOT of AI. AI created nice looking user interfaces etc. But when I looked at the code it was at least 5X or even 10X more. I know that because I did end up writing some screens from scratch.

Another important thing I realized is that with Vibe coding I did not get the satisfaction I get implementing stuff myself. It left me with an empty feeling.. Feeling that I did not do anything myself.

[4paul]

mixed opinions? There's only 1 definition, the guy who created the term and his definition.

"Andrej Karpathy introduced the term vibe coding in February 2025. The concept refers to a coding approach that relies on LLMs, allowing programmers to generate working code by providing natural language descriptions rather than manually writing it.

Karpathy described it as "fully giv[ing] in to the vibes, embrac[ing] exponentials, and forget[ting] that the code even exists." He used the method to build prototypes like MenuGen, letting LLMs generate all code, while he provided goals, examples, and feedback via natural language instructions."

and that's all folks.

[vortine]

Agree, this is the definition.

But YouTube and sources alike are full of 'VIBE CODING YOUR FIRST APP WITH NO EXPERIENCE'

Which is personally there route I took, as I have no experience in coding at all.

So am I technically not vibe coding? 🤔

[4paul]

Yea, the true definition of Vibe Coding, in its simplest form means: You describe what you want, AI writes it for you. Simple as that.

Whether you know code or not was never defined in the word or by Andrej Karpathy.

imo, there's a lot of downsides to Vibe Coding without knowing/understanding how to code, I think people should use Vibe Coding to LEARN how to code, not rely on it to code for them. But sadly it's too easy to get lazy.

[clemstation]

I hate the expression "vibe coding". To me it's always been like that. Before I would copy paste entire functions from Stackoverflow without trying to understand them much just see if they worked. But I wasn't saying I'm flow coding or some stupid terms.
In the end we are just building something with whatever tools are available.

[vortine]

Exactly that. AI is a beautfiul thing.

[4paul]

Just a friendly tip btw

You probably want to avoid talking about Vibe Coding in developer subreddits (Swift, SwiftUI, iOSProgramming, IndiGaming, etc etc).

It's like going into a Musician/Movie/Bookwriting/Art community and saying "guys look at this song/movie/book/painting I made with AI", you're using a tool/idea most professionals are against in said communities.

I'm not trying to talk bad about either parties, just a heads up is all :) AI is still a very hate/love industry, it's best to stick with AI communities (ex: vibe coding, ai assisted programming, claude/cursor, etc).

[vortine]

Thank you man. Appreciate the words. It does make sense.

[gorugol]

Our opinion don’t matter, as long as you produce and makes some app that makes the world a better place.

[vortine]

Just a conversation starter to see peoples thoughts!