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Vibe coding is irresponsibly building software through dice rolls, not caring what code is produced What about when engineers at the top of their game use AI tools responsibly to accelerate their work? I propose "vibe engineering"! simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/7/v...

We need to acknowledge that working effectively with AI programming tools is HARD - they're unintuitive, full of traps and can churn out huge volumes of bad code if you let them But they can also greatly amplify your existing programming expertise if you know how to wield them

It turns out techniques used by top software engineering teams help accelerate coding agents as well: Version control, documentation, careful planning, automated tests, linters, strong code review culture, really thorough QA Sophisticated processes for professional engineers

Is the term "vibe engineering" kind of stupid, leaning into the gatekeeping distinction between "coders" and "real software engineers" It absolutely is. That's why I think it might stick!

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.

The meaning of ‘vibe’ is as in “based on vibes” i.e. taking something’s surface appearance of working software as sufficient to use. If you were going to change the semantic character to not mean that kind of irresponsible inattentiveness, you’d change the 1st word of the pair not the 2nd

Hm, I don’t feel that that is the shift. I recall memorable use of “vibe governing” when Trump’s tariff calculations were widely reported to have been generated by LLM decrypt.co/313213/trump... The templating of “vibe __ing” specifically meant “to produce outputs without mechanistic understanding”

I've been pushing back on "vibe coding" meaning "any time you use an LLM for anything relating to code" for a while with limited success, so I figured I may as well live with this new meaning See simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/...