The famous “futur” we were all waiting for.
You may have hear of the future, with flying cars, cities in orbit, everyone living a comfortable life… Like the first steps to the Culture. Not at all. What we have is “the futur”. It was born in the US, as so many dubious things are, and will soon spread all over the globe.
A job for a real masochist.
We used to call vibe coding both “pseudocode” and “flowcharts”.
But those are way more useful than vibe coding.
How’s that the same? Neither is directly executable (though people have tried) and doesn’t create tech debt
Idk where you got the idea that GPT generated code is executable.
Must be an MBA
Flowcharts are where the tech debt starts tbf
So programmers are now basically the equivalent of in-shop publishing house editors, or a better analogy, a script-doctor in the hollywood production scene.
A company vibe-codes something that is cheap and shitty, then has to pay an editor to actually make it usable.
I hate this timeline…just pay the person to create the code in the first place…
That’s kinda always been how technology changes jobs, though, by slowly making the job one of supervising the technology. I’m no longer carving a piece of wood myself, but I’m running the CNC machine by making sure it’s doing things properly and has everything it needs to work properly. I’m not physically stabbing the needle through the fabric every time, myself, but I am guiding the sewing machine path on that fabric. I’m not feeding fuel into the oven to maintain a particular temperature, but I am relying on the thermocouple to turn the heating element on and off to maintain the assigned equilibrium that I’ll use to bake food.
Many jobs are best done as a team effort between human and machine. Offloading the tedious tasks to the machine so that you can focus on the bigger picture is basically what technology is for. And as technology changes, we need to always be able to recalibrate which tasks are the tedious ones that machines do better, and which are the higher level decisions best left to humans.
I will gladly take up one of these jobs as long as they allow me to trash all generated code and just rewrite it from scratch. It’ll be faster than any sort of cleanup.
to me, vibe coding seems better used to provide a draft of the work so people with actual skills can then do the final work. A draft made with crayons, dogshit and stale beer but draft none the less.
Or you could just describe what you want to someone who knows how to design code stuff and can ask clarifying questions.
I made this comment on a previous post. Vibe Coding is to Coding as Previsualization (Previs is to Visual Effects. (Previs description) A quick slap job that is used to make sure timing is correct, on set assets will all work, and to communicate to artists, directors, producers, and on-set operators what is expected. It is entirely separate from the final product and nothing ever crosses the barrier between Preproduction and Production.
9 times out of 10, this “vibe draft” sends people down a terrible path that they would have never ventured had there been an adult in the room. I swear I review so much code that sets off in the wrong direction because of this, and I am sick of it.
i dread for future of anything coding related
Working from scratch is better than a terrible frame.
I think that’s exactly what they’re implying. Use it to make a low effort disposable prototype, not scaffolding to expand from.
But if you get the framing from the terrible prototype/draft, it can lead you into a bad direction. It is like the “Don’t think of an Elephant”. Once you see the “Elephant” you will struggle not to make something that looks more like an Elephant.
True, but I see it more as a tool for a non-technical person to make a prototype of a user experience more than making a foundation for how a project will actually be built and designed from a code perspective. Like, when it comes to the actual implementation of said project, the developer(s) shouldn’t even look at the prototype code. I envision, in this example, as it solely being a tool for non-technical people to express their ideas to the technical side of the operation.
I agree with you though, that still has potential to pollute a project entirely, and we already have methods of creating requirements and documentation for projects so this isn’t exactly the most useful thing ever.
Just do your best plumber / car mechanic impression. “Gee, this codebase is really messed up, looks like I need to basically replace everything.”
(“That can’t be true, that’s what every other programmer I showed this to said. Are you all lying?” “No, we’re not lying, this really is a screwed up codebase.”)
This sounds like the GDP meme:
Two programmers are coding in a terminal when they come across a board of scrum tasks.
The first programmer says to the other “I’ll pay you $100 to vibe code that task.” The second programmer takes the $100 and vibe codes the scrum task using their favorite AI.
They continue coding until they come across a code review from the senior dev, rejecting the pull request. The second programmer turns to the first and says “I’ll pay you $100 to clean up that vibe code”. The first programmer takes the $100 and cleans up the vibe code, using actual skill and no AI.
Coding a little more, the first programmer looks at the second and says, “You know, I gave you $100 to vibe code, then you gave me back the same $100 to clean it up. I can’t help but feel like we both just used AI for nothing.”
“That’s not true”, responded the second programmer. “We fed the AI our code so it would be even smarter next time!”
Narrator: it never did and will never get smarter.
This is hilarious. I’m deeply sad that I don’t think my irl friends would appreciate this joke, because I want to share it with everyone.
(I am personally irked by vibe coding because some assholes in my life have been real smug about how much better of a programmer they are than me due to vibe coding. )
Is this some variant of two guys eat shit?
Context:
Two economists are walking in a forest when they Come across a pile of shit.
The first economist says to the other “Ill pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.
They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says “l pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The first economist takes the $100 and eats a pile of shit.
Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, “You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. can’t help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing.” “That’s not true”, responded the second economist. “We increased the GDP by $200!”
That’s exactly what I was referencing haha, tried to make the analogy work. Might need to smooth out the edges in a few places
Doesn’t work; all commerce does increase the GDP, but coders don’t believe that the AI gets smarter by using it.
How would you make it better?
It’s a good joke but I don’t think it maps too well
Fair
I don’t even want to clean up my own code, let alone the unholy fucking abortion created by an LLM and a Linked In “CEO and founder” working in tandem.
I do enjoy cleaning code a lot.
When I work on shitty code I’m always thinking about how shitty it is and thinking on how a different design would make it much easier.
When you clean the code, you’re implementing that perfect design you were thinking of all that time. And you know from that point on you’ll be thinking less about how shitty the code is.
If your only task is to clean code and you’re not gonna work on that codebase afterwards, it’s not as rewarding though.
You really should.
Cleaning up code is the most important part of development.
vibe code cleanup specialist, so, normal coder who fixes what a pretend coder fucks up? well you thought AI would take your job but now two people can be employed to do what one person was supposed to do without AI.
And each one will take much longer than the original coder too!
Not necessarily; you’re supposed to throw away the prototype
You can throw the code away, but be assured that the vibe-coder also vibe-specified the software and you will have to negotiate each functionality change with the client.
Thank you AI
Yeah sounds like job creation to me.
Brb, updating my linkedin. I’m dead serious.
Jokes on them I’m a vibe code cleanup expert that cleans up with even vibier code.
Infinite money glitch!
“Computer, fix this code and don’t make mistakes.”
Computer fix this code with just enough mistakes that I can charge them to fix it again, just don’t make it obvious.
They clean up AI shitty code?
More like, take a bunch of screenshots of vibe coded website, and treat that as design document while rewriting the whole thing from scratch with clean architecture.
Plot twist they just vibe code the v2
If those dummies accepted the vibe code in the first place and you meet your contractual obligations…
tbh, if they were smart and knew what they were doing, they should have done it that way from the beginning, but they want to cut corners. AI is great at rapid prototyping; but it’s not trustworthy enough to call that a finished product.
To be fair, that’s usually the fastest option to fix other people’s code even if it wasn’t vibe coded. Sometimes that’s the best way to fix your own code too.
Friend’s colleague needed Excel to, “return the month where the majority of days in the week fall into”. Had Copilot do it and sent it to my friend, apparently impressed by making such a robust looking formula.
The formula:
My friend’s solution a minute later:
I can see it could be slimmed even less, but I assume the table is large so LET is doing performance stuff.
If you ask copilot to return a directory tree using MATLAB script it writes a function using a for loop and about 20 lines of code. Meanwhile the documentation defines this task as
dir(“*”)
Okay, what is vibe coding? Because it sounds to me like just doing coding based on your feelings or something, which makes absolutely zero sense.
Coding using an LLM and not even reviewing output
Ah. That makes more sense.
Not much more, though
