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Vibe Coding is the new Internet Dating?
- 129835 29d agoAll coding will be AI, AI is just a tool. Under a catchy headline. How about: "Vibe coding is like genital lice"?
- cindyllm 29d ago[dead]
- skribanto 29d agoThats like the same point the article is making
- epihelix 29d agoI think OP's point was that most people are using agenetic coding, but they're ashamed to admit it. They play down and minimise how much they're doing it, roll their eyes at it when talking with friends, and agree just how much nicer it is to write code the "normal" way (like, at a bar! at the dog park! I was sitting at a cafe, reading Knuth, and this gorgeous code just came up and started chatting to me...) This is certainly the case in the field of bioinformatics right now, so I do feel it's a little apt. (HN is a bit of a bubble - it's about the only place on the internet where you can be cautiously positive about agenting coding and not be abused.)
- dimbletimbers 29d agoPeople use online dating because they feel like they have to, but most people hate it. So maybe the analogy is even better than stated.
- impendia 29d agoWhen online dating goes well, it quickly turns into ordinary dating. And I think that's one important difference: with vibe coding you can't cast aside the AI after you've taken the initial step.
- ATMLOTTOBEER 29d agoBut you can: you can just: use the thing you’ve built and derive utility from it, casting aside the origin
- drusepth 29d ago> with vibe coding you can't cast aside the AI after you've taken the initial step Sure you can, why wouldn't you? Good models these days spit out architecture and code fairly indistinguishable from your average developer. It's always hard to jump into an existing project and understand it all, but it's doable and in 2026 it's no harder to jump into a vibed project than it is to jump into any other project (with exceptions in both directions, of course). You still have the code and can switch back to "fully human" (or any other point on the spectrum of human-ai) any time you want by just opening the same editor you would use if you cloned any other project.
- jdkoeck 27d ago> Good models these days spit out architecture and code fairly indistinguishable from your average developer. Emphatically, no. It’s way too complex, every time. Ceinture et bretelles, as we say in French.
- jldl805 27d agoEverything I've vibe coded is utlitarian, sparse, barebones, and the code itself is fewer bytes than the documentation.
- enos_feedler 29d agoPeople dont like any dating, they want to be past it into a long term healthy relationship mostly. If they could blink and get there they would choose it. So yes. The analogy is even better than even better than stated. Nearly everyone cares about the outcome while very few care and enjoy the process
- returningfory2 27d ago> People dont like any dating, they want to be past it into a long term healthy relationship mostly. This is absolutely not true.
- jhbadger 27d agoI think it is true in general at least for people older than their twenties. People who have gotten divorced dread getting back into the dating scene.
- monospacegames 29d agoThe lack of respect software developers have for their craft confounds me every day, to the point that I wonder if anyone in software actually writes code because they enjoy it, instead of making money. >In that future world (which for some of us is already here), what meaning does the term “vibecoding” have anymore? If all coding is AI-assisted won’t it just be referred to as… “coding”? Apply the same question to music, or drawing, and perhaps the answer to this will be easier to see. If AI continues to improve I think it's much more likely that all human-written code in the future will be 100% human written. Vibecoding or any human-in-the-loop approach seems like a very intermediate paradigm. Then again this post seems to be a few months old, so perhaps it's understandable that they weren't "feeling the AGI" as severely as we have been the past few weeks.
- mathisfun123 29d ago> The lack of respect [widget makers] have for their craft confounds me every day, to the point that I wonder if anyone in [factories] actually [makes widgets] because they enjoy it, instead of making money. before someone cries false analogy they should realise that widget is literally a technical term in SWE for a GUI component. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_widget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_widget
- daymanstep 29d agoIf someone is doing something as a job... then surely they are, by definition, doing it for money? Otherwise, if they were doing it for fun, as a hobby, then we would call them hobbyists?
- gonzalohm 29d agoBut of all the possible available jobs and careers, you choose the one that you enjoy, right?
- contravariant 29d agoI won't cry false analogy but I just have no clue what point you're trying to make. Are you saying widget makers are sloppy in their craft and only in it for their money?
- caycep 29d agoI half wonder if we wouldn't have this giant compute supply crunch/environmental damage/energy crisis and tech oligopoly situation if someone would've just written better English to Code translation for LLVM instead...
- ungovernableCat 29d agoBit of a strange analogy to use since dating companies are in decline right now with difficulties attracting and retaining a gen-z audience.
- fizzbarnull 29d agoAnd generally online dating is seen a subpar form of dating that fails to deliver meaningful relationships. A very strange analogy indeed....
- contravariant 29d agoOr a very informative one, depends on your outlook on AI use really.
- scotty79 29d agoI think people see dating as a subpar form of activity that fails to deliver meaningful relationships. The fact that the contact is initiated on the apps is somewhat secondary.
- Grombobulous 29d agoThis isn’t really the way they were using the analogy in the article. It’s more talking about how internet dating used to have a taboo that is gradually lost over time.
- k__ 29d agoI didn't have the impression anyone felt ashamed of dating online back in the days and I don't have the impression vibe coders feel any shame today.
- johntash 29d agoI don't know if I would call myself a vibe coder, but I definitely feel shame about putting any llm-generated code online unless I've reviewed it to the point of it being what I would've have written on my own anyway. So lots of personal one-off tools/dashbooards that I never would have made before will probably live forever on my personal git server instead of github or somewhere.
- bibimsz 29d agothere was a mild stigma around "i met her on facebook". a negative spin would be like: it's like you're stalking random women, and you must not have much luck or courage to approach women. but facebook wasn't exactly a dating app, so.
- drusepth 29d agoI don't know about online dating, but I think the vibe coders I've interacted with the past few years break down into two distinct groups: 1. People who let agents drive designs/plans and just let them rip (what I would /actually/ call vibe coding) -- who place value in the final product, and aren't shameful about the tools used to get there as long as the product is "good" (and generally reroll entire apps from a single prompt until they get something that's actually good) 2. People who provide (or collaborate with AI on) designs/plans and use AI to write the code (which I wouldn't call vibe coding, but often gets conflated) -- who place value in the planning, and aren't shameful about the tools used to implement them as long as the architecture is "good" Either way: I'd say most people who "vibe code" (in either category) are a little annoyed at the term inherently belittling what they make, but generally dismiss the term rather than feel any shame about it. I'd be surprised to learn anyone in my programming network doesn't use any AI anywhere. It's a very powerful tool that's integrated pretty much everywhere into the 2026 Developer's toolkit, and the question is generally /where/ you use it (or not), not whether you use it at all.
- gyomu 29d agoWell, vibecoding, as the name says, is about the vibes. “Make me a todo app that feels minimalist, with cool animations”. Boom, ship it (and probably forget about it). Using AI as a tool in a broader, already existing engineering process (here’s a detailed spec of the todo app; reference layouts for the UI are encoded in this folder; the data format requirements are in this file; the test suite must verify properties XXX) doesn’t have a catchy name, because it’s just software engineering, where coding is just but one part of the whole.
- bibimsz 29d agoin 2 years nobody is going to read their code, much less write it. programming will gradually become a lost skill, like cobol or writing assembly. some people will still do it in specialized environments for a while longer, most wont. first it will feel like skill atrophy to the coder, then it will feel obsolete - programming by hand will become a worse way to program. ill advised, like rolling your own encryption or security today.
- whywhywhywhy 29d ago> as a term, is supposed to denote a human-in-the-loop..... But how much longer will that be true? Why do you think Claude claims its work on git is co-authored, and now has started putting links to the transcript showing your working. It's about sending a message to the one paying your salary that all your real input in the creation was a few messages and you're replaceable in that equation.
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- digitalsushi 29d agoi dont know how this works, but i am super interested that if there's this wall where so much software is ai written, that ai becomes the only thing making its future training data, could the 'engine' 'stall'? or same thing, if the kids stop making art, will the only art be ai art and will that do the same thing? again - i dont have any credentials to have a worry about this, i'm pretty much just the dude in front of you at the supermarket line
- brazukadev 29d ago> could the 'engine' 'stall'? I don't think so. We probably gonna have 2 situations: the current one that humans influence AI output and the opposite where art, software, etc evolves based on AI variations and we incorporate them to our taste, expectations, etc.
- the_interloper 29d agothis feels like it was written by someone who has been out of the dating scene for a while now dating apps suck, your UI/UX can groundbreaking but that doesn't make them any less awful to use This "AI is inevitable" mood that people are in always seem to come from people who don't have to use the things AI is supposedly going to replace, and never consider what the actual consequences of that might be I live in a city and I still feel like my best bet to meet someone is on the apps because they have taken out a lot of the old ways that people used to meet. How do you even approach a potential date? IDK and it sucks.
- mahboi 27d agoOriginal Tinder was the best dating app UI. I was single at the time, looking for a real relationship instead of hookups, but still. All the copies made it complicated for no reason, and even Tinder suffered feature creep. Then bots infiltrated all of them.
- dzonga 29d agoAI assisted coding all the way. for someone like me who doesn't like to write tests - I could easily have an agent write a test for me. I could lay the bricks then also have the agent do ornamental design that I'm not good at.
- scotty79 29d ago> answered hundreds of questions about their hobbies, interests, and favorite foods I so miss the days when people were given tools and made the effort to get others to know them.
- harrisonsmith32 28d ago[flagged]
- RomanKornev 27d ago> But I do believe that all coding will be AI-assisted. > If all coding is AI-assisted won’t it just be referred to as… “coding”? It already is, and it's called engineering. The value is how much steering you can provide. Whether it's in the form of domain knowledge or "hardcore" engineering is beside the point. Taste is all we have left.