Ask HN: Does Vibe Coding and Prompt Engineering make me an Software Engineer?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47713593

by wasimsk • 3 months ago

1 13 3 months ago

news.ycombinator.com

I’ve dialed in my prompts to the point where hallucinations are basically zero. I'm building full HTML/CSS/JS frontends, Rust backends, and GitHub Actions YMLs without typing a single line of code myself. My whole loop is just Gemini 3.1 + VS Code + GitHub. Has anyone else reached this point? Does writing syntax actually feel obsolete to you now, or am I just in a honeymoon phase?

Please clarify that to me.

medbar• 3 months ago

No.

chvid• 3 months ago

I guess. It is not a protected title, though. I personally prefer to have the title of black belt ninja kosmonaut hacker.

serf• 3 months ago

do something that is hard with a lot of engineering depth to humble yourself about what wise people were capable of before LLMs.

My honeymoon ended and reality struck when I was LLMing together cuda kernels for poker solvers a few LLM-gens ago.

it got solved, but boy was it a slog -- but on the bright side it was an LLM-based endeavor that forced me to learn a whole lot about cuda kernels, that was a pretty cool side effect.

as for titles, who cares? I vote for grand poobah.

wasimsk5• 3 months ago

Thanks. If in the end I can build stuff that works and useful for people, that's enough.

Title is just a social validation.

rvz• 3 months ago

To answer the first question:

No.

Software Engineers do way more than just “coding”.

Playing MS flight simulator does not make you a captain of a commercial plane full of passengers.

Does writing syntax actually feel obsolete to you now, or am I just in a honeymoon phase?

No.

I don’t think I would let a vibe coder anywhere near software that is used in critical infrastructure.

wasimsk5• 3 months ago

You are right. I am not good at coding, but I do understand cloud computing and DevOps well.

So I think, I better call myself a Software enthusiast until I get more experience and knowledge throughout my life.

cameolkc• 3 months ago

If the AI writes the code and you can fix what breaks, that counts as engineering. The title comes from accountability for production systems. Prompt engineering has a separate problem: your tuned prompts break or become unnecessary every time the model upgrades. The effort you put into prompts today will probably be wasted. That same churn also means entry gets easier

elzbardico2• 3 months ago

Your twitter account is at most a month old, your HN 4 days old, all your comments are exactly like this one: superficially interesting enough to generate engagement but low in real content.

You look like another openclaw instance to me.

wasimsk5• 3 months ago

Ohh Man! My X account has verification badge, I also discuss geopolitical and religious stuff out there.

I am not an automated agent. I even own a domain. I am a person, not a bot.

elzbardico2• 3 months ago

Exactly what I would expect an agent to say. :-D

ohelm• 3 months ago

"Does Vibe Coding and Prompt Engineering make me an Software Engineer?"

Absolutely not.

Ask HN: Does Vibe Coding and Prompt Engineering make me an Software Engineer?

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