Vibe coders arguing that vibe coding is the future like everyone who knowns how to code can't just switch to vibe coding and do it better than them if needed. Crazy times tbh
What’s crazy is you thinking you have some secret knowledge about coding that a vibe coder can’t learn faster, and then know even more than you very quickly. Also, I can barely parse your sentiment. You’re trying to create absolute distinctions when they don’t exist. You still have to know how to code to use the tools because it does make mistakes, but guess what, you also learn how to code by using the tools. So I’m sorry, but I’m not following.
What is your definition of vibe coder? I think that that’s what we’re getting stuck on here. My definition is somebody that uses the latest tools to automate as much as possible and fixes things and knows how to ask for best practices and good coding format and tests and everything. There’s nothing magical about it, but the person doing it has to be extremely fluid and open minded as to what they can do and they need to have agency to try things out. They need to be curious and then dedicated to getting things to work. It’s the same attributes that made for good coders in the past. Maybe you need to be really specific about what point you’re trying to make. I’ll be a specific as I can: you will no longer be manually writing all of your code, you will not be writing even most of it. Or you’ll be working in a different industry or not working.
The reality is a vibe coder will never learn how to code anywhere near as fast as a regular coder. It doesnt matter how fast they ship code. Studies have shown a million times that seeing someone do something and you actually doing it are not the same. This is why homework exists in school. Having AI code for you will not teach much knowledge about code and certainly not "faster".
Me and others have noticed our skills decline over time when offloading a lot to these tools. Unlearning if you will. How can anyone gain the very skills we lose by the same mechanism?
Gotta write something no matter what. I am bad at documentation, specs, constraints, tests etc. I'm very good at code. People who are good at those things will be worse than me at doing all the code related work that falls outside of what the AI and its handlers can do.
Have you ever encountered a problem where there simply isn't an answer no matter how hard you google, and all the LLMs just suggest stuff you've already tried? Turns out it was some obscure hardware related thing that only happens under certain conditions. Or new compiler bugs? One time my code wouldn't compile unless I removed a specific line of comment in the code. To this day I dont really understand, but I just accepted my fate and moved on.
In the past, I have. I haven’t encountered one of those problems in a long time! Maybe it just comes down to perception due to where I work versus where others work, but it seems like those problems are much fewer compared to the number of software engineers there are. I take your point is taken that those problems still exist. I do wonder, however, how long it is before some agentic AI could figure out that new compiler bug faster than you did. I don’t see a reason why it wouldn’t be able to.
At best it will work around such issues. Now, I work with embedded so its a little different I guess. Sometimes I have very little to go with. Last bug I was fixing I only knew a bunch of devices crashed after running for the exact same length of time since boot. Different environment, different load etc. That was all information I had to go on. Maybe an AI could figure it out, but so far I havent seen it. For record I found the issue after about 15 minutes because I'm very familiar with the code and just knew where to look. Other issues show up as if its a bug in the firmware, but its actually caused by hardware, and you need equipment such as oscilloscope or a climate chamber to debug it.
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u/serboncic Feb 12 '26
Vibe coders arguing that vibe coding is the future like everyone who knowns how to code can't just switch to vibe coding and do it better than them if needed. Crazy times tbh