5 ms·

Maybe try vibe coding. Seruously. It is a different beast now and so much better than even when the term was coined by Andrej. I do a lot of work editor-free.

Maybe try vibe coding. Seruously. It is a different beast now and so much better than even when the term was coined by Andrej. I do a lot of work editor-free. Just an agent and PR review on web. Occasional peak with `code .` if needed. If. Try it at home first with a low stakes project. And learn it like a game. It will suck less as time goes on. Like skiing or 10 pin bowling.

ryandrake 5mo ago
I tried and just couldn’t accept it. I need to have the code a certain way, and if the prompt doesn’t do it exactly right, I eventually need to open up the editor and fix it. Prompting things like “now move function_foo’s parameter list to the next line” and “remove #include <stdio.h>” is a very expensive (token wise) way to edit text. When I’m writing code, the simplicity, beauty, structure, format, and artistry of the code is what is important to me, not the application.
da_chicken 5mo ago
Vibe coding a low-stakes personal project is very different from vibe coding a hospital information system or a kernel patch. Learning you can get away with one doesn't mean you should translate that to the other.
- dnnddidiej 5mo ago
  It is like tbe pottery parable. Try 100 times on a low stakes project for tacit experience. Get better at it. Then use in prod. In prod - obviously you will have more guardrails and you would probably review all code.
zeumo 5mo ago
Genuine question: what's the point of vibe-coding a personal, low-stake project? I do work on such projects, but the main goal for me is to learn, not the end result. If the end result is important, then there it's overwhelmingly likely that someone already implemented it better than I ever would, and I should just use that implementation. I have implemented a qoi codec or a gemini client, not because I needed to use either of those, but because I wanted to understand how image codecs or network protocols worked, from bytes to end result. In the end, I learned a bit more about how computers work, how they draw stuff on screen and communicate with each other. I don't believe I would have learned much by letting an LLM do the work for me. Nor do I believe that the LLM could have done a better job than all the existing implementations of those things.
- alehlopeh 5mo ago
  As you stated, the point is the end result.
- 0xffff2 5mo ago
  Plenty of people have personal projects where the purpose is the end result. One small recent example of my own, I'm a long-time Garmin watch user. I struggled with learning all of the details of their custom language, runtime and SDK in the pre-LLM world. With agentic AI tools, it was dramatically easier to write a watch face that looked the way I wanted. From there, I very much did learn a lot and do a lot of re-writing and tweaking to make the code actually somewhat good, but the custom watch face was the point for me. I really couldn't care less about Garmin's esoteric tech stack. The only reason I bothered with everything after the vibe-coding step was to try to optimize power consumption where I could.
- QuercusMax 5mo ago
  I'm 43 years old, and I've been coding for as long as I can remember (I started on the C64 as soon as I could read, in order to play and make my own video games). I have applications I've worked on since I was a teenager which are still in active use in some version or another. Code has always been a means to an end. The process is fun, sure (just like solving sudoku puzzles) but the real payoff is the results. I've never gotten any joy out of writing stupid python or bash wrapper scripts, just like I've never gotten any joy out of squeezing under a sink to fix a plumbing issue; the payoff is when my sink works properly, or I click a button and the program does what I need. Getting a clever hack working? That's super fun, doesn't matter if I write it, my teammate writes it under my direction, or the AI writes the code for me. Figuring out a clever redesign that simplifies everything and is cool enough that I want to build it and share with the world? That's even better - because I'm proud of the idea and its successful execution even if I don't physically write the code myself.
  - bigstrat2003 5mo ago
    I wish I could relate to that. For me, writing the code is the fun part - I couldn't care less about the end result. Sadly, it's the part that our industry seems determined (unwisely imo) to discard. It's kind of like cooking - I don't need to bake a cake in order to have a nice cake to enjoy. The bakery makes very nice cakes I can purchase for far less effort. But there's no joy, no accomplishment, in purchasing a cake. Only in actually making it myself.

ryandrake 5mo ago

I tried and just couldn’t accept it. I need to have the code a certain way, and if the prompt doesn’t do it exactly right, I eventually need to open up the editor and fix it. Prompting things like “now move function_foo’s parameter list to the next line” and “remove #include <stdio.h>” is a very expensive (token wise) way to edit text. When I’m writing code, the simplicity, beauty, structure, format, and artistry of the code is what is important to me, not the application.

da_chicken 5mo ago

Vibe coding a low-stakes personal project is very different from vibe coding a hospital information system or a kernel patch. Learning you can get away with one doesn't mean you should translate that to the other.

dnnddidiej 5mo ago
It is like tbe pottery parable. Try 100 times on a low stakes project for tacit experience. Get better at it. Then use in prod. In prod - obviously you will have more guardrails and you would probably review all code.

zeumo 5mo ago

Genuine question: what's the point of vibe-coding a personal, low-stake project? I do work on such projects, but the main goal for me is to learn, not the end result. If the end result is important, then there it's overwhelmingly likely that someone already implemented it better than I ever would, and I should just use that implementation. I have implemented a qoi codec or a gemini client, not because I needed to use either of those, but because I wanted to understand how image codecs or network protocols worked, from bytes to end result. In the end, I learned a bit more about how computers work, how they draw stuff on screen and communicate with each other. I don't believe I would have learned much by letting an LLM do the work for me. Nor do I believe that the LLM could have done a better job than all the existing implementations of those things.

alehlopeh 5mo ago
As you stated, the point is the end result.
0xffff2 5mo ago
Plenty of people have personal projects where the purpose is the end result. One small recent example of my own, I'm a long-time Garmin watch user. I struggled with learning all of the details of their custom language, runtime and SDK in the pre-LLM world. With agentic AI tools, it was dramatically easier to write a watch face that looked the way I wanted. From there, I very much did learn a lot and do a lot of re-writing and tweaking to make the code actually somewhat good, but the custom watch face was the point for me. I really couldn't care less about Garmin's esoteric tech stack. The only reason I bothered with everything after the vibe-coding step was to try to optimize power consumption where I could.
QuercusMax 5mo ago
I'm 43 years old, and I've been coding for as long as I can remember (I started on the C64 as soon as I could read, in order to play and make my own video games). I have applications I've worked on since I was a teenager which are still in active use in some version or another. Code has always been a means to an end. The process is fun, sure (just like solving sudoku puzzles) but the real payoff is the results. I've never gotten any joy out of writing stupid python or bash wrapper scripts, just like I've never gotten any joy out of squeezing under a sink to fix a plumbing issue; the payoff is when my sink works properly, or I click a button and the program does what I need. Getting a clever hack working? That's super fun, doesn't matter if I write it, my teammate writes it under my direction, or the AI writes the code for me. Figuring out a clever redesign that simplifies everything and is cool enough that I want to build it and share with the world? That's even better - because I'm proud of the idea and its successful execution even if I don't physically write the code myself.
- bigstrat2003 5mo ago
  I wish I could relate to that. For me, writing the code is the fun part - I couldn't care less about the end result. Sadly, it's the part that our industry seems determined (unwisely imo) to discard. It's kind of like cooking - I don't need to bake a cake in order to have a nice cake to enjoy. The bakery makes very nice cakes I can purchase for far less effort. But there's no joy, no accomplishment, in purchasing a cake. Only in actually making it myself.