[the_af]

> Why do people keep thinking they're intellectually superior when negatively evaluating something that is OBVIOUSLY working for a very large percentage of people?

I'm not talking about LLMs, which I use and consider useful, I'm specifically talking about vibe coding, which involves purposefully not understanding any of it, just copying and pasting LLM responses and error codes back at it, without inspecting them. That's the description of vibe coding.

The analogy with "monkeys with knives" is apt. A sharp knife is a useful tool, but you wouldn't hand it to an unexperienced person (a monkey) incapable of understanding the implications of how knives cut.

Likewise, LLMs are useful tools, but "vibe coding" is the dumbest thing ever to be invented in tech.

> OBVIOUSLY working

"Obviously working" how? Do you mean prototypes and toy examples? How will these people put something robust and reliable in production, ever?

If you meant for fun & experimentation, I can agree. Though I'd say vibe coding is not even good for learning because it actively encourages you not to understand any of it (or it stops being vibe coding, and turns into something else). It's that what you're advocating as "obviously working"?

[lnenad]

> The analogy with "monkeys with knives" is apt. A sharp knife is a useful tool, but you wouldn't hand it to an unexperienced person (a monkey) incapable of understanding the implications of how knives cut.

Could an experienced person/dev vibe code?

> "Obviously working" how? Do you mean prototypes and toy examples? How will these people put something robust and reliable in production, ever?

You really don't think AI could generate a working CRUD app which is the financial backbone of the web right now?

> If you meant for fun & experimentation, I can agree. Though I'd say vibe coding is not even good for learning because it actively encourages you not to understand any of it (or it stops being vibe coding, and turns into something else). It's that what you're advocating as "obviously working"?

I think you're purposefully reducing the scope of what vibe coding means to imply it's a fire and forget system.

[the_af]

> Could an experienced person/dev vibe code?

Sure, but why? They already paid the price in time/effort of becoming experienced, why throw it all away?

> You really don't think AI could generate a working CRUD app which is the financial backbone of the web right now?

A CRUD? Maybe. With bugs and corner cases and scalability problems. A robust system in other conditions? Nope.

> I think you're purposefully reducing the scope of what vibe coding means to imply it's a fire and forget system.

It's been pretty much described like that. I'm using the standard definition. I'm not arguing against LLM-assisted coding, which is a different thing. The "vibe" of vibe coding is the key criticism.

[lnenad]

> Sure, but why? They already paid the price in time/effort of becoming experienced, why throw it all away?

You spend 1/10 amount of time doing something, you have 9/10 of that time to yourself.

> A CRUD? Maybe. With bugs and corner cases and scalability problems. A robust system in other conditions? Nope.

Now you're just inventing stuff. "scalability problems" for a CRUD app. You obviously haven't used it. If you know how to prompt the AI it's very good at building basic stuff, and more advanced stuff with a few back and forth messages.

> It's been pretty much described like that. I'm using the standard definition. I'm not arguing against LLM-assisted coding, which is a different thing. The "vibe" of vibe coding is the key criticism.

By whom? Wikipedia says

> Vibe coding (or vibecoding) is an approach to producing software by depending on artificial intelligence (AI), where a person describes a problem in a few sentences as a prompt to a large language model (LLM) tuned for coding. The LLM generates software based on the description, shifting the programmer's role from manual coding to guiding, testing, and refining the AI-generated source code.[1][2][3] Vibe coding is claimed by its advocates to allow even amateur programmers to produce software without the extensive training and skills required for software engineering.[4] The term was introduced by Andrej Karpathy in February 2025[5][2][4][1] and listed in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary the following month as a "slang & trending" noun.[6]

Emphasis on "shifting the programmer's role from manual coding to guiding, testing, and refining the AI-generated source code" which means you don't blindly dump code into the world.

[the_af]

Doing something badly in 1/10 of the time isn't going to save you that much time, unless it's something you don't truly care about.

I have used AI/LLMs; in fact I use them daily and they've proven helpful. I'm talking specifically about vibe coding, which is dumb.

> By whom? [...] Emphasis on "shifting the programmer's role from manual coding to guiding, testing, and refining the AI-generated source code" which means you don't blindly dump code into the world.

By Andrej Karpathy, who popularized the term and describes it as mostly blindly dumping code into the world:

> There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It's possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I barely even touch the keyboard. I ask for the dumbest things like "decrease the padding on the sidebar by half" because I'm too lazy to find it. I "Accept All" always, I don't read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I'd have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can't fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I'm building a project or webapp, but it's not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.

He even claims "it's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects", not for actual production-ready and robust software... which was my point!

Also see Merriam-Webster's definition, mentioned in the same Wikipedia article you quoted: https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/vibe-coding

> Writing computer code in a somewhat careless fashion, with AI assistance

and

> In vibe coding the coder does not need to understand how or why the code works, and often will have to accept that a certain number of bugs and glitches will be present.

and, M-W quoting the NYT:

> You don’t have to know how to code to vibecode — just having an idea, and a little patience, is usually enough.

and, quoting from Ars Technica

> Even so, the risk-reward calculation for vibe coding becomes far more complex in professional settings. While a solo developer might accept the trade-offs of vibe coding for personal projects, enterprise environments typically require code maintainability and reliability standards that vibe-coded solutions may struggle to meet.

I must point out this is more or less the claim I made and which you mocked with your CRUD remarks.

[lnenad]

> Doing something badly in 1/10 of the time isn't going to save you that much time, unless it's something you don't truly care about.

You're adding "badly" like it's a fact when it is not. Again, in my experience, in the experience of people around me and many experiences of people online AI is more than capable of doing "simpler" stuff on its own.

> By Andrej Karpathy, who popularized the term

Nowhere in your quoted definitions does it say you don't *ever* look at the code. MW says non-programmers can vibe code, also in a "somewhat careless fashion" none of those imply you CANNOT look at code for it to be vibe coding. If Andrej didn't look at it it doesn't mean the definition is that you are not to look at it.

> which you mocked with your CRUD remarks

I mocked nothing, I just disagree with you since as a dev with over 10 years of experience I've been using AI for both my job and personal projects with great success. People that complain about AI expect it to parse "Make an ios app with stuff" successfully, and I am sure it will at some point, but now it requires finer grain instructions to ensure its success.