this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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I never understood vibe coding (or ✨Agentic Coding✨) tbh.
May be I am too stupid, but I think as I code and code as I think. I do not usually formulate a plan before I start coding. I am categorizing architecture as code btw because, for me, architecture involves pseudo-code to some degree .
Even in college, I could never just understand lectures. I needed to write down the formulas and work out the derivations myself to grasp them. I know there are people who understand things right away, but I am not one of them.
So, now, when I see senior developers (which I am not) vibe code green field projects, I am just astounded as to how they manage the architecture + understanding + optimization + maintenance context.
Clue: you can vibe-code pseudo-code. Hell, I vibe-coded a season of screen-plays for a TV series. Once you're comfortable with the architecture and requirements, then have your agent do a "readiness review" to ensure it thinks you've specified everything well enough to code it, then have it plan implementation and execute the plan, and review the output to ensure it's all consistent with all that documentation, and iterate on the reviews until you're happy that the only "problems" it's finding are inconsequential.
Then hand it over to an independent human test team. Like you always should have been doing without LLMs anyway.
I know of some companies where they write up a full spec in markup, and have the ai code from that. They claim it works well, but that seems like extra work.
Personally, most of my coding is maintenance and AI sucks at that. I can get the ai to give me good recommendation, but not usable code. I have had it do a good job writing utility scripts such as data extraction, and tests - it can even save me time
So if you have a greenfield project, and are able to give it sufficient context, people claim it can work …… I’m highly doubtful it’s maintainable though, and maintenance cost is far higher than the cost of initial creation. I really think these companies are digging a hole for themselves
Of course I’m taking advantage of this
I've done it because work is ✨desparate✨ and required I try it to learn it for some reason. I'm at a senior level. Generally I instructed it on the exact architecture and patterns I wanted, along with the broad classes and algorithms required. That meant it was left to do the individual procedure implementation that I might have instructed a junior developer to do while I managed more macro level concerns. It did surprisingly well, but this was on a greenfield project, so It would probably become excessively slow and error prone on a sufficiently large project.
They don't. They fuck it the shit up. While AI huffers will not hesitate to tell me that actually a hypothetical blabla bla blabla, I have yet to see an agentic coder make something that holds up to reality, safety, reliability, or maintenance.
Because agentic coders are dogshit, that’s why. It’s like having a Roomba with a staple gun go fix up your carpentry. It’s dogshit.
Maybe if someone built a Roomba gaurdrail. Ensured the Roomba always marked its work with pencil first, then got human approval to proceed. Ensured the Roomba can’t drive away from its rails. Ensured the Roomba can automatically detect errors and undo+retry. Ensured the Roomba can (and more importantly: cant) do all kinds of shit… then maybe you can have a Roomba which adequately augments the work of a professional. You still don’t have a Roomba that can replace anybody, except maybe the professional’s new apprentice. Why the fuck would you want to replace an apprentice, though? Apprentices turn into an professionals, unlike Roombas.
My experience is, they're not. Like the article says they are just focused on MOAR and not on the quality of the output. It may take years for the unmaintainable code to cause problems, and they may have already been laid off by the time that happens, anyway .
I don't write much code anymore, but when I did, there was a fair amount of embedded code, where fixing a bug is more costly than just pushing out a build to a production server. I actively sought out automation back then, but the purpose of the automation was to help cover edge cases and better test the embedded code for flaws that traced through multiple layers of code.
Whenever I start a new software project, it usually starts with a short period of experimentation when I try out several things. Then, I coalesce on an architecture in my head (and eventually document it), and once I do that I can add more structure to the code.
Given the state of the AI tools today, I can see myself using them to accelerate all the little fiddly parts of this (especially if I can give it a coding standard and have it stick to it). But I wouldn't trust it more than that. I would always keep the archictecture separate, because I don't trust the AI tools to change it on me for no good reason.
So did I, it was called C compilers so I didn't have to do hand coded assembly. They turned out O.K. after the first few buggy generations.
Then they're doing it wrong.
Hoooooh boy, that if is doing a lot of heavy lifting, in my experience. I'm constantly telling the stupid little stochastic fuck to follow basic coding standards I've given it.
I don't use a lot of AI tooling outside of debugging and a little bit into command discovery, but fuck if the little shit isn't constantly rewriting my code into a shit style that I hate and constantly correct.
One of my bosses has been a little Ai-pilled recently and he also contributes code.
I can tell which parts are his AI slop not from any git blame or anything but because of how it looks. You can see the stylistic differences in a block of code from one file to the next, and also it seems like AI likes to add comments to everything, and he just copy and pastes it all into the file. Those comments are often very different looking, too. So just stylistically everything is all over the place.
So, just like any team project.
Everyone has their own style, but Bob over here doesn't change his style every day. Before, my boss had their own style, and if I ended up working on their code I'd try to match that just to keep things consistent. But now it's all over the place.
AI slop just flops out whatever it feels like at any given time since it's just cribbing everything from the internet.
Those are all great habits.
But the time spent doing that is time not shipping code. Most companies don't give a flying fuck about quality, they just want to ship as much as possible to make as much money as possible.
When the cost to ship trash code trends toward zero, then there will not be value in shipping trash code. Companies will need to focus on software that is actually competitive (in a qualitative way) because otherwise their customers will just self-vend the slop code.
I think you have something backwards. When the cost to ship trash code trends to zero, the profit trends to infinity.
The cheaper it is to produce slop code, the less the demand there will be to buy it. Companies will self-vend instead of buying the slop being sold. Your profit margins are someone else's inefficiency.
It's hard to determine whether something is slop before you buy it.
Not beating the association between AI and scams with this one.
For very specific projects I get it. If I want a tool that does X and X is easily verifiable, and I don’t want to learn anything from coding it, then AI might do it very well.
Oh noooo
Ha ha, may be that came out a bit wrong. What I meant is I don't have a complete understanding of the architecture and the structure before I start coding. It is only when I write the first test and the first function that I start noticing the structure and the limitations. I can't think of all the branches where the code might fail unless I start writing and realizing the
elses.To an extent, you can do this with "the vibe" as well, you just have to stay engaged, do lots of reviews (by which I mean, have the LLM review for you and explain what it finds) and when you decide the architecture needs to be revised, do it - in writing. Your requirements and architecture should be "living documents" developed at least a little bit ahead of the code implementation, and if the current implementation is too far removed from your current vision of how things should fit, throw it out and re-implement from the requirements and revised architecture documents. That's one huge benefit of a tool that writes code so quickly, it's much less costly to throw it all out and start over.
This is the mark of a good engineer, don't let anyone neg you for engaging with problems with your whole brain.
It’s all vibes mannnn.
He was vibin’ before it was cool
My wife tells me vibin’ was always cool.
Be careful about throwing stones from inside glass houses