I've been writing code professionally for a decade but I've never written so much code in my free time because I can just vibe code it all. I wouldn't do it at work and I probably wouldn't trust a juniors vibes as much as my own but no tools have made me feel quite so powerful.
I never tried vibe code as described in this article, but I could see where it breaks. Initially, code works. Eventually, there's a bug, and the LLM isn't able to fix it. At that stage, you're on your own with a potentially large codebase which is totally new to you.
Even on small projects, sometimes I'm tired, I just try to get the LLM do some refactoring for me or write a couple of tests. First, whatever the LLM writes, it's going to code review and I'm not submitting code that I haven't read and understood just to have colleagues complaining. Second, if the code doesn't work, it gets frustrating. For LLMs to help, I like to have a pretty clear idea of what I want, how the "right" code looks like so I can give more indications.
Yeah it's totally a situation where obviously I can write it myself if I had the time so I just correct it as it goes. I also give it lots of guidelines on what I'm looking for but after some setup I can just watch TV and check on it every couple minutes.
Vibe coding works for experienced developers who give very detailed instructions including edge cases and potential issues or solutions. It is almost code already as it has already included all important code business logic (leaving the simple parts for Ai to fill in ). It is a maintenance disaster for junior developers or non-coders.
> As far as I can tell, you can build very complex prototypes.
I think GP was saying you can do more than prototypes. I agree, but it's not (yet) universal on where you can apply it. The best case for my projects has been in trivial but tedious "3rd party integrations". Say you have a mature product but client x wants integration with product z. We are now at a point where we can say "this is our internal model {json dump}, this is the 3rd party integration docs / example {code dump}, write interfaces for this". And it works most times. For things that are a bit more complicated, /architect first and then "now write it" w/ some things from the architect session in context also works.
YMMV but don't dismiss it out of habit. Things are moving very fast in this space, and I choose to focus on what works now, not on what doesn't. I'm well aware not everything works, but when it does it saves a lot of time.
Oh, my bad, and TIL. I thought vibe coding is the trendy way of saying you're using LLM based code in tools like aider/cline/cursor/windsurf...
edit:
So I did a quick google, apparently it's this:
> Vibe coding is an AI-dependent programming technique 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, 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 previously 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] (from wiki)
So ... now I'm confused again. I don't see the no testing / reviewing part in here. Is vibe coding the new AGI, where everyone has a different definition?
I wouldn't trust vibe coding to a junior. This would be a recipe for desaster. It's a skill best paired with a very senior dev who can correctly assess the output of the AI.
Sometimes you enter a codebase and it looks like there's some obscure attempt to summon a Lovecraftian entity made of spaghetti and duct tape. Those codebases are both the shitiest and most complex stuff I've ever seen. They sure don't work well and I'm not even sure do a good job at summoning the old ones. I don't find LLM code significantly differing from that kind of monstrosity. It sure is complex.
More like a labor subsidy, backed by taxes... Which would need a minimum wage law as well.
This seems like a great idea to me! Making it cheaper for businesses to hire people for these jobs would lower prices for everyone, improving accessibility of the services.
How would this help lower prices? The taxes have to be paid for by someone, and that cost should largely end up landing on the consumer.
It seems like we'd be changing who's hands the money moves through, but it still has to be paid for one way or another. If that's the case we'd risk higher prices since taxes have to subsidize prices and cover all the costs of running the program in the first place.
Tax the rich, and use the funds to pay a portion of the wages in targeted jobs, reducing the amount that the business has to pay to hit minimum wage. Then businesses continue competing on prices, but have substantially lower labor costs, bringing down prices for everyone.
In the end, you use money from the rich to pay for socially beneficial jobs. Exactly the sort of thing government is for: ensuring that social goods are provided.
That's an extremely complex economic change, I wouldn't be so certain we know exactly what would happen.
Taxing the rich can have unintended consequences. First you have to change the tax code so they actually get taxed and can't dodge it, those rules alone would be difficult to write effectively and would likely mean changing other parts of our tax code that impact everyone. If the rich do get taxed enough to cover a good chunk of wages, demand for luxury items would go down so too then would the jobs that make those products and services.
Once subsidized by a UBI, at best workers will continue to work at the same levels they do now. There will be an incentive for them to work less though, potentially driving up the labor costs you are trying to reduce. How do we accurately predict how many workers will reduce their hours or leave the workforce entirely? And how do we predict what that would do to prices?
The idea of taxing the rich to bail out everyone else is too often boiled down to a simple lever that, when pulled, magically fixes everything without any risk of unintended side effects.
But the idea of not changing the tax code because it might affect others, continuing to let the rich pay 0 taxes, is foolish.
There's an obvious wealth gap that's increasing and the people up top are getting even less oversight as we speak. As you say in your post, you don't know what the effects will be because it's not simple. But I see no compelling reason to continue with the oligarchy
Sure that would be foolish, my point wasn't that taxes should remain as-is forever though.
My point was that we can change taxes to a system that we think will work better today, but we can't claim to know what the actual results will be years from now.
The claim made earlier in the chains was that taxing the rich to subsidize wages would lower labor costs and lower prices. I don't think we can ever know well enough how a broad reaching change will land, and claiming to know prices will go down isn't reasonable.
It seems that the order of most used technologies on SO is JS, SQL, HTML, CSS, and only then Python. We skip back to TypeScript and then Bash before finally getting to Java, C#, and C++.
I daresay that self-selected people who read, and sign up for, and fill out a survey at Stack Overflow does not represent the industry as a whole.
It's interesting, I also do not like the implication that we are all using vscode and feel slightly offended that someone would assume that I do. (The original statement is worded ambiguously and can be understood in this way.)
Anyway, I find it remarkable that a piece of software that I don't even use can trigger such a reaction in me, from a perfectly benign and innocent statement about the prevalence of HTML.
That said, I'm genuinely interested in understanding why you felt that way, is using VSCode considered something to be ashamed of or something, is it because it's a Microsoft product?
PS: I have a strong positive bias towards VSCode due to personal history, so just trying to understand the developer perspective :)
I know, and it's nothing that needs an apology from you. Sometimes people (like me) feel offended over nothing, and it's more interesting for them to question why that is, instead of blamig the other party. That's not to say the reverse can't be true, just that it's tempting and too easy to project one's own offendedness if one isn't careful.
But back to the interesting question of what's up with vscode.
It's a very subjective thing for me, which probably explains the emotional reaction. I'm aware that vscode must be a very solid and practical tool for so many people to use it. But it gives me a negative gut feeling, mostly for the following reasons:
Using what is essentially a browser to edit text feels wrong and bloaty, not unlike going on a cruise ship just so you can eat at a restaurant.
It's made by Microsoft. I'm old enough to remember when they were not ashamed of being openly nasty, how they tried to lock us all into their own walled garden, and the glimpse Internet Explorer gave us into what that would look like. It's hard to trust this company, even if they have taken on a more benign appearance.
So, it just feels very wrong to use a weirdly bloaty browser-editor that a company with a track record of being a Big Bad Influence gives away for free. (I have similar misgivings about Chrome, which does not help vscode.)
Therefore, I prefer dedicated editors and IDEs made by people whose main goal is to make just such tools, and who I can pay for (as a purchase or donation). In summary: vscode works well, but using it makes me feel icky, and there are similar or better alternatives available to me that don't give me such a feeling.
So if there is a public statement that can be read to imply that I'm somehow happily using vscode feels a little like getting mud thrown at me, if that makes any sense, and there's a strong urge to clean up the record and, by extension, myself.
Yeah, I also think it's weird how that works. It's things like this that make me understand better the secret inner workings of people interacting with other people. :)
Ok got it, I think I can relate to your feelings if someone assumed that I use TypeScript or React ;)
I got the courage to ask because I felt that you sounded open for a bit of self-introspection. Thanks for taking the time to describe something that's difficult to describe!
When I joined Microsoft in 2007, Visual Studio was at a state that it didn't even have syntax highlighting for Javascript. Many years later, I got so excited when Microsoft hired Erich Gamma from IBM's Eclipse IDE project (long story) because I knew what was coming. VSCode was originally called Monaco editor, built on top of WinJS library, and was just a little web component. Over the years, it changed significantly to become what it is today.
From your perspective of VSCode being a "Microsoft product", I totally get what you're saying, but VSCode has been one of the few exceptions for me for the reasons explained, and more.
Thanks for providing your perspective and a bit of backstory. It's interesting for me to hear from someone with such a different point of view. It certainly gives more nuance to the topic.
> even if they have taken on a more benign appearance.
The 'nasty' MS hasn't gone away. However their negative actions tend to be swept under the rug as somewhat confined to big biz and govt. Look at their headlines from the last five years for details.
I think a part of what happened has to do with
>"act in a way nobody knows whether you're actually trolling or not"
Some people were joking and some weren't, or were just too dim to understand that it was a joke, and then when they all showed up in Charlottesville to march. They were mostly serious except for that one poor guy who still thought it was a meme and ran away.
"Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company." -Rene Descartes
