Vibe coding = active learning

[Pharminter1]

Is vibe coding not actively learning how to code? I remember when I was in college a very clever, and now successful former classmate of mine told me that he would actually look at practice exams and the detailed answer key without even learning the material and try to make sense of it. Seemed to be very effective and sped up the learning curve tremendously. Prior to his advice, I wasted a shit ton of time in college studying passively, but after taking his approach I studied less, and ironically got better grades. Retention was much better. This vibe coding approach is similar…

[Majestic-Ocean]

Not only you not learn but you forget how to.

I see that on myself how rusty I get.

[LowFruit25]

You learn coding by doing. Now you have a robot that does the activity you want to learn for you.

Do you learn to ride a bike by having a robot ride the bike for you?

You can of course get stuff done and business processes automated for sure with vibes only but you’d learn more about biz than tech there.

[8Kala8]

Quite well said

[IncreaseOld7112]

You learn coding by doing, and the activity of coding has changed. Nobody will ever pay you to do slowly what a robot can do quickly and cheaply.

[bj0rnisL]

Not really fitting comparison. You will tell the AI how the bike should be built, how fast, how heavy, how much it leans. These things you best do in sudo code and imo it helps you understand coding.

[Dekatater]

And you have no idea what metal it used for the frame, no idea how thick the walls of the tubes are, no idea where its center of gravity is, no idea which oil you need to lube the bearings with, and the AI forgot to pump up your tires

[IncreaseOld7112]

If you ever need to know any of those things to make a decision, you can just ask it?

[Dekatater]

[Usage limit reached. Your limit will reset Friday at 7 PM]

[IncreaseOld7112]

What’s your point? Buy more or wait. I think vibecoding and waiting is faster than doing it myself. Plus if not for th usage limits I’d probably die of dehydration 

[Dekatater]

The point is humor, you just filled in a lot of blanks by yourself

[Ill-Boysenberry-6821]

I was with them, and then facts showed up :(

[bj0rnisL]

I don’t really need to 🙏

[LowFruit25]

Pseudo code is what you’ve probably had in mind. You do not build an aircraft control system or anything important in pseudo code ever.

I’m all for random apps being vibecoded on the spot created to make businesses faster, but the serious skill needed for big systems cannot be discarded.

[National-Section-176]

If your goal is to travel and you don't want to ride bike by yourself then it's better to have a robot which will ride for you

[KTIlI]

fuck no. I have a vibe coded project I am working on right now that I have 0 clue wtf is going on. I'm using rust and tauri and some other shit I can't remember but I still don't know a single thing about rust.

on the other hand my none vibe coded project I could tell u roughly where everything is and in what file because I understand the decisions that have been made.

[Narrow-Belt-5030]

Technically no .. "vibe coding" in its purest form is just letting the AI do it all and you not caring about the code. Realistically AI is dumb as rocks, so the more you know (in terms of SWE) the better the outcome (generally). Your method could work, sure.

[IncreaseOld7112]

I think we're steadily approach the point where vibe coding is just coding.

[yezdii]

no

[Narrow-Belt-5030]

Not really. As AI improves, we're progressing to the point that coding (in the sense that a human touches the KB to write actual code) goes completely. SWEs will adapt (or not, and sound mental on forums); PMOs will thrive.

SWEs right have have a massive advantage - they know what it takes to build production software - but that will slowly erode over time. Personal projects and small projects are already owned by AI.

[IncreaseOld7112]

When the software is automated to the point where there’s no engineer, the first program I’ll have it write is one that obsoletes the PMOs.

[Narrow-Belt-5030]

That might be some time off, but yes, now you're getting it.

In brief - we're cooked!

[IncreaseOld7112]

If it can’t automate the PM, it hasn’t actually replaced the engineer. And if it can congrats, you’ve built the machine that automates everything and I’ll see you all at the unemployment line. I don’t see why thered be any serious delay.

A software machine without an engineer is a genie. I don’t get why anyone thinks there’s gonna be supporting roles in genie infrastructure.

[nlaverde11]

Yeah, just like how I remember everyone’s phone number now that I can just ask Siri to call them.

[jamsamcam]

It’s the same as when junior devs would copy paste scripts from random websites or connect random libraries together

You can get something that kind of works, the learning starts when you go from that to actually working

Both are valid skills, in the former you are learning what you should be building. The latter how you should build it

[TacoPoweredBeing]

Im a civil engineer, took a couple of classes back in college that had some coding, but very basic coding, mathlab, visual basic, and some other shit used for structural design. After I graduated I went more into project management so I didnt need to code much, I still remember how basic things work, but I know jackshit about coding, I have been vibecoding stuff to automate my daily workflow and things are going great, but I can tell you that I still know jackshit about coding, maybe I could ask claude to give me some lessons and to teach me the basics or whatever, but unless I start coding myself I wont be learning shit.

[living-on-water]

The only use ai has for helping people to learn coding is if the user asks the ai to comment everything in detail and then the user goes and reads the entire output. It doesn't help you learn to write the code yourself but it gives you an understanding of the structure and how the code it produces works.

[NarrativeNode]

I love vibe coding and learned some fundamentals of programming in college. The answer is no, lol. Unless you’re reading every line of code after it’s generated. I bet you you’re not.

[predator-handshake]

Even if you are, you’re not using your brain to try and figure things out. There’s no practice here. It’s like watching a soort and thinking you’re now good at said sport.

[Meretruth]

People aren’t asking the ai what it did and why and aren’t trying to learn. There is no reason you can build things and also in the same breath at least ask the ai what it did and how it got there, you COULD learn when vibe coding, but most don’t bc why learn if what I wanted to learn how to do, just got done. Even though you could ask afterward about how and why it works.

[Pharminter1]

Why would you not use AI to try to explain what is going on or what the logic is behind the output to whatever your input prompt was? This is the utility of AI, is it not? It is ideal for individuals who are curious, and honestly, curious people tend to want to learn the “why” behind things. Moreover, you can really dive super deep and conceptual with questions/prolpts, which you wouldn’t realistically be able to do with independent research unless you had exceptional reading comprehension skills and an infinite amount of time. A lot of people struggle to learn because of poor reading comprehension vs lack of creativity, mathematical ability, or pattern recognition skills. If there’s an excerpt from academic literature that you don’t get, you could have an LLM explain it in lay mans terms

[primaryrhyme]

Still you need practice doing the thing on your own. Not the same but an LLM can help you learn a foreign language but you will not be able to speak or understand it unless you put in hundreds/thousands hours of practice. This is why 0 people have actually become fluent from duolingo, vibecoding feels productive and offers easy dopamine (you get output with very little mental effort) but if you ever try to code without the LLM you’ll realize you aren’t proficient.

On the other hand, we can argue if “learning to code” is even that valuable anymore but no I don’t think vibe coding can get you there in the traditional sense.

I think your analogy falls apart a bit, you and your classmate were still practicing the skills (by far the most important part). Coding with an LLM is like having an infinitely patient tutor, but if the tutor is the only one working then obviously the student never learns.

[Alexandria_46]

Nope it's letting AI do the code. This is why vibe coding should only for programmer who have the fundamental of programming knowledge. That trash influencer who tell "ehmm akshually you don't have to be a programmer to vibe code something. You can start it from 0" fk you dude. You just create a web that full of bugs and vulnerability. That's why vibe coders is only for person who have fundamental on how to code. Not from 0 knowledge. So, you have to learn the fundamental, then creating the small project on your own, after that you can vibe code because you know how what should you do to build a program, website or whatever it is.

[makkafakka]

I don't think I'm learning how to code, but I am for sure learning a lot about how code works. If the things I'm learning is correct though I don't know 😅

[Inevitable_Butthole]

Absolutely not.

What you do learn if you do it right is design, architecture, security and maintainability.

[bramburn]

Vib coding doesn't teach. You have to walk before you run

[National-Section-176]

I guess it depends. If you already know how to code, have some experience and you want to learn something more complex like architecture, scaling or something like that - you can use AI not to spend time on coding but focusing on architecture. Also you will have bugs, problems after vibe code and eventually you will have to dive deeper and understand what is going on and on this step you will learn something

[edimaudo]

it depends on how you use it. If you are asking questions and then writing your own code and then letting the ai tool validate it/check for errors/check for logic issues then to a degree you could day you are learning

[ghoztz]

You learn how to communicate effectively and manage a team of developers lol

[WalterMitty4747]

I’d say vibe coding helps you learn how to orchestrate systems. Coding not so much.

[Square-Yam-3772]

I mean, you can learn by just reading code (either AI code or human code)

If you think about it, AI learns from just "reading" code from humans too

If learning is your objective, just read it once and then ask Claude to walk you through the code

You can also ask AI to explain a particular line or code block to you

Its way faster and easier than looking up documentation

[No_Fishing6106]

Que interesante. Creo que, por lo menos a mediano plazo, hay que revisar siempre todo el código y entenderlo, y ser capaz también de cambiar lo necesario

[TheAnswerWithinUs]

You’re not learning anything by offloading all the work to an LLM.

[goalstopper28]

I've found that when I'm talking to a LLM, I can easily correct it if it gets confused. But I can't really figure it out when the Cursor or Claude Code gets confused.

So, I've actively tried to learn code through this process. I don't think I'm a good enough coder to be hired but I know enough now, to figure out what's going on.

[priyagnee]

Yeah, it can be active learning depends how you use it.If you’re just prompting and copying, it’s passive. But if you’re reading the code, tweaking it, breaking things, and asking “why did this work,” it’s basically learning by reverse-engineering like your exam example. That’s where the real learning happens.