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Not loving it. The problem with “vibe coding” is not the “coding”. It’s the “vibes” part.

Full Self-Programming (Supervised)

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this is just "good engineering" we didnt rename software development after searchable man pages came out, or google, or stackoverflow. they just became another tool in everybody's toolbox. learn to not just use that shiny new micrometer as a deadblow hammer and that's fine with me

AI-assisted engineering is fine too. For the record, I don't think describing something as vibes is inherently bad. In this context, it serves to undermine the serious human accountability that comes with shipping software. It's just a mismatch in expectations.

I used an LLM-to-tokens-to-SQL tool that was really awesome. I'd love to see that come to wider data manipuilation, coding, and command line usage. It could be democratising.

yeah, i think Karpathy really was trying to describe “coding done poorly”, but context was quickly lost, as usual

Aren't chances high that the name for this will end up being "software engineering"? We seem to be on a very fast ramp to a world where writing software means "writing software with AI". Not to say that it's not a useful question, just wondering if the answer will end up being ephemeral.

Surely - surely - vibegeneering?

The name that Kent Beck picked was augmented coding. I like it better than „vibe“ x.

Please, no. I’m trying to convince myself that I really should experiment with coding assistants now that I’m retired and want to convert my 30 years of OSS dev experience to a 2d career. But your post … it will take me until the new year to unsee that phrase.

Nah man, don't open the door. The amount of AI shit code I already see is insane.

Simon 😭

I understand your point, but vibe engineering sounds worse! It sounds like you are, instead of just letting an LLM write all the code for you, you're letting it design the architecture as well. "Vibe" is a linguistic burnt bridge, we need to move on from it.

How hard have you looked?

From that perspective we are on a cognitive decline since we started to write things up instead of continuously memorizing facts in our head.

When I do it it's vibe engineering. When you do it, it's vibe coding.

It feels like it’s quite broad though - some people use AI for autocompletion, others for pair-programming, and some with agents which pause at intervals for human-in-the-loop input. A vibe-o-meter if you will would be a good way to show how much input AI is having in the process.

Vibe coding is different because it's the "dictated but not read" of coding. Yes, I was around when the LLM was writing the code, and I vaguely instructed it on what to write, but I make no assurances on the quality of the output.

we’re going to wear out the word “vibe”

try 'agentic engineering' which could be abbreviated to 'ageng' which I want to see a thousand text-to-speech and podcasters try to pronounce

Part of the "stickiness" of terms is how much people like to debate whether they're good terms in the first place. People will use it more if it's controversial (probably)

I'd avoid "vibe" - as it's closely associated with vibe coding. I rather like @kentbeck.com' s use of "augmented" programming. Although the need for such a term won't last long as it becomes BAU.

"vibe" is the issue... at some point the ideal is for it to just be engineering like anything else

To be fair. Vibe coding itself is a bad and stupid term. Also, absolutely, the more you know about software design, the more effective Vibe coding is going to be for you.

This seems right on to me. Okay, then, we'll only call ourselves wizards when we're in the company of other wizards.

Personally I prefer the term "LLM Tamer"

That's a terrible name that sounds like "let the AI do the engineering too" which is the opposite of what you want to convey

For example: could faster model iterating (doing the changes) & validating until good enough perform better and faster than thinking model only doing the changes?

So the improvements will be less about better models, more about using the current models to their fullest. And maybe smaller models tactically to speed things up.

honestly, we should never have let writing software be called "engineering" in the first place

i like to think i'm a vibe architect

Any different from the cut and paste from the internet they have been using for years?

Isn't it software engineering? Feels like anything with 'vibe' in the title is immediately written off at this point. If we're doing our jobs properly it's reviewed to the same standard any code we create is.

Auggie? (augemented engineer)

Here in Alberta I brought that exact question to the engineering regulation body. They dodged the question, saying it was up to each member to educate themselves. This is a ticking time bomb where physical infrastructure could fall apart due to AI telling the user their shit idea is really good.

I'm a huge fan of Claude Artifacts (and ChatGPT's clone of that which they call "Canvas") for that - it's very hard to shoot yourself in the foot with those Problem is they don't have persistence, which limits both the damage but also the utility you can create with them!

FYI summary 🧵 ->

It wasn't invented as a marketing term, but it was seized upon by marketers within weeks of it being coined. My notes on the origin here: simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/...