I so hate the phrase "vibe coding"

https://artiss.blog/2025/03/i-so-hate-the-phrase-vibe-coding/

by cumo • 1 year ago

58 65 1 year ago

boringg• 1 year ago

I think most people do. Not clicking.

What is vibe coding then? Let me share my own, personal definition…
Getting LLMs, who have learnt from people who have generously shared their code online, to write code for you, often poor quality, with no accountability and often with no understanding from the person doing it, of what could be wrong with it, and hence unsupportable as a result. At best, the requester does code but is so uninterested in the art of coding that they’d rather debug poor quality AI results rather than write it themselves.

Savage, but absolutely on point. I chuckle when I read linkedinlunatic CEOs talking about vibe coding features into their product as if that's some kind of badge of honor. Major yikes vibes on all levels.

ai-christianson2• 1 year ago

I'm the dev of a semi-popular FOSS coding agent --I agree that "vibe coding" as a term is fairly cringe.

The thing is, I see AI coding tools, especially agents, as a major force multiplier for individual devs and small teams. The output of AI is everything from total AI slop to actually good, scoped PRs, or even occasionally fixing bugs that were otherwise impossible to fix within a given time-box. I don't see how using tools like this is bad at all. A lot of it really comes down to the operator --when I use coding agents, I end up leaning even harder into my background/knowledge on higher level abstractions, architecture, design decisions, etc.

Rooster61• 1 year ago

I don't see how using tools like this is bad at all.

It's a bit like putting sawdust in a car instead of oil. She'll run smooth as silk...for a few miles.

Right now, we have a solid core of developers with enough knowledge (built mainly by actually coding themselves) to be able to call bullshit on LLM's when they write poor code. For those people, yes, it's a solid tool.

The problem is when you consider coding in 10 years. The draw to use vibe coding both in schools and among nascent hackers will be incredibly strong. Those folks will get positive reinforcement from having code that just magically works without having to spend a ton of time designing and actually coding. If a whole generation of would-be programmers comes up using that technology exclusively, that core of hackers that have the chops to recognize bad code and prevent maintenance headaches down the road will slowly dwindle over time.

At that point, LLM's will be consuming LLM code that hasn't been properly reviewed and sanitized. Garbage in, garbage out (unless there is some magical AGI breakthrough that makes this all moot).

Going from a manual saw to a buzz saw can really cut down the time needed to get the job done, but without the knowhow of how to use a saw effectively, eventually fingers will replace the time being cut.

sigwinch3• 1 year ago

Seems like a business that’s vibe coding but not actively hiring senior or principal debuggers is an odor.

ASalazarMX• 1 year ago

Just as "vibe coding" is an euphemism for "prompt building", we are now to refer to "IT smells" as "vibe fragrances".

ydnaclementine• 1 year ago

I like it because it makes people seethe

happytoexplain• 1 year ago

I believe earnestly that this is the phrase that will kill the world.

recursive• 1 year ago

Just use it prejoratively like I do.

Why is there a loading spinner but nothing loading? It was probably vibe coded.

copperx• 1 year ago

Yes. But I hate it less than the phrase "code smell." Which psychopath came up with that one?

skwee3572• 1 year ago

I wish we would stop calling it “vibe coding” and would start calling it incompetency, because I don’t see people call themselves “vibe mechanics” if they take their cars to a repair shop over an issue they have no expertise to fix.

kylebenzle2• 1 year ago

The difference is that a computer program can now program better than most programmers.

skwee3572• 1 year ago

It doesn’t matter, whether it’s true or not. If you can’t program you are not a coder. Vibe or no vibe. You have no competence in this field. And I wish we would stop calling people who can’t code “(whatever hyped word) coder”, because then language looses its meaning as words no longer define what they should define.

sojournerc• 1 year ago

You have a source for that? It can certainly write code faster... But is that better? Highly dubious.

Would you judge a chef by how many hamburgers he could make in a minute, or the dish that takes talent, experience, and human taste? Robots can make hamburgers, but I wouldn't say they're better cooks.

risyachka• 1 year ago

Yep, and stop saying “i made” when someone or something else made it entirely for you.

When you ask a chef for a meal - you didn’t “make it”. He did. You just consume it.

jeffwass• 1 year ago

So, if you “vice code” something for WordPress, how do you think it knows all the tricks of WordPress?

“Vice code” - Was that an intentional typo? Made me laugh.

dncornholio• 1 year ago

I love the term. But it can be used wider. Vibe coding is what I would call; making a program without any coding knowledge. You stay in a good vibe because you don't know how much you don't know.

dentemple• 1 year ago

One tiny thing that I think OP is missing is the fact that the phrase can also perfectly double as mockery (even if the wider industry hasn't picked up on that yet). Seriously, the fact that the vibe coder literally isn't relying on anything practical whatsoever is right there in the name.

It's like how "crypto bro" used to be a badge of honor but is now usually considered an insult. No change to the term was necessary thanks to how dumb it already sounded.

My suspicion is that "vibe coding" will eventually become an insult, too, thanks to the nature of the phrase.

And you all can help me start this trend!

kylebenzle2• 1 year ago

Crypto bro was a stupid insult that people who are jealous used from day one.

sigwinch3• 1 year ago

Well, crypto bros are second adopters. The early adopters are quiet, reserved types.

sigwinch3• 1 year ago

It’ll fit with the other double-edged adjectives of our time. Plastic, for example.

Brian_K_White• 1 year ago

It's not an insult now? To me it was an obvious pejorative ridicule the very first time I saw it.

Like vibe heart surgeon.

It never had any other meaning to me.

Sure someone doing it thinks it's fine, but they are by definition, well let's say not to be admired.

If someone hates the term because it makes them feel bad, I can only say "correct".

jacob_rezi• 1 year ago

me too

melchizedek6809• 1 year ago

I'm kind of wondering where this sentiment is coming from that LLMs are stealing open-source code. Isn't it just the same as someone learning programming by reading and working on open-source code and then writing closed software with that knowledge, where is the difference? Or is it just closed models that are problematic and would open models like Llama/DeepSeek be acceptable?

smrtinsert• 1 year ago

I don't hate it but man is it oversold. A lot of times I think it would just have been faster to write it manually.

losthobbies• 1 year ago

I don't mind "vibe coding" once there is no "vibe push-to-production".

I understand it as playing around, POC, MVP stuff. Which lots of people were doing before AI came around.

If people are "vibe coding" for mission critical applications then that is a problem.

soraminazuki2• 1 year ago

Also don't forget "vibe push-to-reviewers." Reviewers don't have time for such nonsense.

baq2• 1 year ago

Blog basically says 'I'm an artisan and mass production makes for shit code', yeah I agree, but it's cheap and it's the worst it'll ever be... XIX century called, want their industrial revolution back!

0x000xca0xfe3• 1 year ago

Except that the industrial revolution managed to mass produce goods of much higher quality and consistency than artisans.

ziddoap3• 1 year ago

much higher quality and consistency than artisans.

Consistency, sure.

Higher quality...? I'll take my artisan bread over Wonder bread, my hand-crafted table over Ikea, etc.

baq2• 1 year ago

The first steam engine was worse than a horse (needs coal! and so much water! and tracks! useless, really), I fully expect the first AIs to be worse than a single software engineer.

rchaud2• 1 year ago

If it's a choice between IKEA vs a carpentry shop, I'll go with the carpenters every time. My childhood bed from 35 years ago is still rock solid compared to the cardboard crap that's "logistically more efficient".

JohnFen2• 1 year ago

Consistency, yes. Higher quality? A few things, yes, but for the majority of things, not even close. Mass production makes things cheaper, but at the cost of quality.

spacemadness2• 1 year ago

That hot take probably needs a further qualifying statement.

vinceguidry• 1 year ago

At the cost of human dignity, freedom, and health.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo&t=31s

par• 1 year ago

No they didn't. A lot of those goods used cancerous chemicals and agents as we know today.

jawns• 1 year ago

Full disclosure: I help manage AI products for my company, which also involves helping engineers use AI tools more effectively.

I think of the act of using an LLM's assistance to produce code as two distinct actions, depending on who's doing it:

* Amateurish efforts, by someone who doesn't really understand or care about code quality. This is "vibe coding," where the LLM is doing maybe 95% of the work. Back in the day, the pejorative term "script kiddies" was used to describe would-be hackers who basically just ran scripts written by others, rather than developing their own skills. And those are the sorts of people I would describe nowadays as vibe coders.

* Judicious use by someone who knows what they're doing and just wants to move faster. Rather than letting the LLM do 95% of the work, it's more like a pair programming session, where the "senior" developer remains in the driver's seat but lets the "junior" LLM handle smaller, well-defined tasks that can be easily reviewed for quality.

JohnFen2• 1 year ago

it's more like a pair programming session

If that's how a dev is using it, then they aren't "vibe coding".

squigz• 1 year ago

I hate it too, but for a different reason: I don't care what tools you used to write your code. Why should I? Might as well start worrying about whether you used vim or emacs.

vtemian• 1 year ago

I'm still searching for successful vibe coding examples.

Each time I tried it, with custom rules, git, and all the best practices I found, it went amazingly well initially, and garbage afterward.

Using the same technique, after a while, it generates a lot more shitty code than helpful.

So, it’s shit and you’ll spend a long time fixing it.

It just takes more time overall to make it functional. Fixing, debugging and improving vibed code takes more mental resources and time than just writing it from scratch.

Also, there's the flow aspect. Each time you let it "vibe", you're losing the flow state that is important while creating and thinking about complex work.

ziddoap3• 1 year ago

I'm still searching for successful vibe coding examples.

I'm wondering what this means.

Kind of by definition, you wouldn't be able to tell "successful vibe coding" from "successful coding", right? Unless someone announces it. And a quick look at the comments here, or any other thread with about AI & coding, would immediately tell you is a bad idea to announce.

There's a few things you just don't say on HN, because you'll be piled-on immediately: don't criticize Kagi, don't hint at being pro-cryptocurrency, don't announce you "vibe coded" something even if it's extremely successful, etc.

(The immediate downvotes on this is actually hilarious, and proves the point)

bigbinary• 1 year ago

I used the phrase recently when my coworker asked me what metrics I use to guide my code decisions, and he gave me the options of sonarqube issues, test coverage (which I found to be configured to exclude huge feature directories of this legacy app), or efficiency metrics. All this after 6 major prod bugs were introduced over 6 months.

My response was that I code by vibe, and really I meant that I was improving the nightmare of working in our backend code while trying to learn the business logic, restructuring our backend code structure, hardening our unit tests, and adding swagger documentation. While doing so, I uncovered tons of bugs.

All in all, “vibe coding” to me is similar to “smelly code”, where the intuition depends on the implementor, but with the latter, “bad” coders can be silent and aren’t forced to make change smells. Good coders, however, prove their intuition skills when identifying and fixing code smells, even though today we have automated tools to tell us why our code smells feel or look bad

callmeal• 1 year ago

Isn't "vibe coding" a natural progression from https://github.com/mattdiamond/fuckitjs ?

  Through a process known as Eval-Rinse-Reload-And-Repeat, FuckItJS repeatedly compiles your code, detecting errors and slicing those lines out of the script. To survive such a violent process, FuckItJS reloads itself after each iteration, allowing the onerror handler to catch every single error in your terribly written code.

schmookeeg• 1 year ago

One of my favorite JS libs. I assume it's part of the validator sequence in LLMs that write JS code :D

dpq• 1 year ago

If we were referring to writing a recipe book or creating a novel it doesn’t have its own “hip” phrase to go with it. Many people would simply call it “stealing”.
LLMs don’t miraculously know how to create code – it’s learning from what’s available to it online already. Do you think it’s learnt from closed code such as Microsoft software, or anything from Apple? No. It’s taking advantage of the generosity and sharing spirit of the open-source community.

So if I learn from open source community, pick up good coding habits, patterns etc., and then apply what I've learned to write new code - does this also constitute stealing? While IP laws are without doubt not without fault, I'm rather more used to people claiming that they are too strict, if anything. Now, the author essentially claims that we need to introduce on top of copyright also "trainingright" (or "learningright"?), essentially extending the definition of "derivative works" to plus infinity. This doesn't sit right with me.

raincole• 1 year ago

Do people really use this term unironically?

I thought vibe coding means you end up with the vibe of an app, not an actual app.

rchaud2• 1 year ago

"Vibe Coding" sounds like a phrase that was coined in a Barstool podcast, or any of the lowbrow, hustle-culture heavy Gen Z-targeting "new media" outlets.

Very sad to see the same people who railed against bootcamp grads and Fiverr devs for lowering the bar, legitimizing this. As the article states, "vibe code" is essentially scraped OSS code that reduces the human programmer to become a janitor for sloppy code -- exactly the criticism they had for bootcamp grads.

Nevermark2• 1 year ago

Ugh, I do love clear terminology. But “vibe coding” is so bad it sounds like something a “vibe coder” would come up with!

(Joking really. It’s was a funny inventive and evocative term. The sadness is that it is getting traction as a serious phrase.)

Still get fingernails on a chalkboard cringe every time I come across a language model’s “confabulation” (conscious or subconscious filling in of unknown details or facts) being called “hallucinations” (false experiences in sensory systems as they iterate partially or completely unmoored from their normally grounding flow of external information).

There are real questions about when anthropomorphizing is appropriate directly or by analogy. But inconsistently applied anthropomorphization is grotesquely unnecessary confusion. As someone who has spent a career being careful with terms, it hurts. Bad terminology and notation create subtle but often permanent drags on clarity.

Even poor emphasis does real damage. Tell a three year old a standard circle’s radius is 1 and circumference is called tau. Cool! Tell another 3 year old a standard circumference is 2*pi, perhaps also noting that a half standard sized circle has a radius of 1/2, a diameter of 1, and a circumference of pi to “simplify” things, and see which child more readily takes a conceptual step forward. Because even an extra 2 creates real (transcendental!) conceptual drag.

ziddoap3• 1 year ago

I think I'm on (relatively) the same page as you regarding inappropriately anthropomorphizing LLMs, but aren't both "confabulation" and "hallucination" typically/historically cognitive science terms dealing with humans? So, they both would be anthropomorphizing? And if so, why is one better than the other?

"Confabulation was originally defined as "the emergence of memories of events and experiences which never took place" - From the year 1900

Nevermark2• 1 year ago

Yes to everything.

Yes both terms anthropomorphize. And I do think anthropomorphic terminology is reasonable. For models. Given the disclaimer that strong similarities do not necessarily imply serious equivalence.

But if we are going to anthropomorphize, we should at least keep the meanings of words consistent.

The definition/source of confabulate you give is great. I think its modern use includes fill-in facts, and often emphasizes the fill-in of details of events, experiences, and factual knowledge in terms of how our memories & recall work on a normal basis.

We all do it. But less is better.

martythemaniak• 1 year ago

I like it. It's expectation-free exploration and learning that can yield useful results and be fun.

I had an idea for a little app I wanted to build at work, and while the result seemed like it would be neat and useful, the amount of effort required never seemed worth it, so it sat unbuilt for years. So to test out Cursor, I wrote a ~2 page doc with detailed requirements on what the app should do and how it should do it, then made a mock in lucid chart and gave these two things to Cursor and Claude. It was almost able to single-shot the app, it was up and running in about 30 mins, then I spent a few hours fiddling with the UI and getting just right.

I did not read a single line of code, I have no clue what's in there, but the app works, does what I want it to do, and actually exists unlike before.

josefritzishere• 1 year ago

Following in the footsteps of Joe Slater, "Vibe Coding" is just marketing terminology for "Bullshit coding" https://www.psypost.org/scholars-ai-isnt-hallucinating-its-b...

bitwize• 1 year ago

Soon we'll just call it software engineering, which is the art of finding ways to create software at scale.

foobarbecue• 1 year ago

Should be called "slop coding" or maybe "code slopping"

drcongo• 1 year ago

I despise the term. This is the first time I've ever upvoted a story on HN with that term in the title.

camasaki• 1 year ago

Since vibecoding is meant to bring the results of programming to the masses and not meant to replace good programmers I don’t feel threatened by it. It’s for quick prototyping and throwaway ideas and allows Jack the carpenter to spin up an app for “free” which might work. As a basis for communicating ideas and quick prototyping it will find its place.

soraminazuki2• 1 year ago

Management will replace competent coders with vibe coders, consequences be damned. They will cut costs, wreak havoc, and use the temporary savings to enrich themselves before moving on to another company to repeat the destruction.

This is why the current zealotry is reckless and harmful.

thefz• 1 year ago

AI development is shit, but I think we all know that already.

How are you going to debug your already poor implementation if you can't read the language?

Expand it with a newer feature?

Maintain it in the future and close bugs/vulnerabilities?

-__---____-ZXyw• 1 year ago

Calling whoever - this surely shouldn't be flagged. What rule is being broke? The comments are lots of people agreeing in civil tones and sharing their stories. Seems legit

dinfinity• 1 year ago

It is engagement bait, but I don't think there is an explicit rule against that. There should be, though.

The blog itself doesn't really contain any interesting insights, imho. It's just a rant against coding with AI assistants ending with the inane unworkable idea of watermarking AI-assisted code.

I guess you could argue that applying the RIAA-level logic of "LLMs learning from existing material is stealing!" to code is somewhat novel, albeit equally stupid ("You wouldn't download an open source repo!").

I so hate the phrase "vibe coding"

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