The Way of Code: The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding | Hacker News Reader

The Way of Code: The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding

thewayofcode.com

66 pointsCharlesW39 comments

Ugh.

I'm sick of vibe coding being called the wave of the future. There are people out there working on genuinely hard problems using real knowledge and skill. The idea that they're going to be replaced by people telling a chatbot to "do a thing" strikes me as ridiculous. All the "amazing" vibe coding demos I've seen are things like "holy crap it made a todo list" or "here's a blocky flight sim where the plane is sideways."

Look if you're having fun telling windsurf to replace your blog I'm not trying to rain on your parade, but I'm sick of hearing that it's the future. It devalues what actual programmers do with their actual knowledge. Vibe coders are the script kiddies to the actual hackers out there.

It's a very odd celebration of ignorance in my eyes. Like, sure. It's nice when I can just throw some stuff in a slow cooker and make some decent food. But I don't pretend to be a chef nor think I can scale up and make a 5 star restaurant with my slow Cooker. People dedicate their entire life to that craft and I don't want to disrespect that.

But when it comes to tech and art: I guess people never respected it to begin with, so there's that.

A lot of people want to be called "programmer" without putting in even a tiny fraction of the work.

There was a short time around Windows 95 when people like Bill Gates were seen as nerdy gods. Steve Jobs was the last one I guess. But I've seen a disturbing trend amongst some users of LLMs, a disdain for programmers as if we were gatekeeping programming languages by making them too difficult on purpose. Now everyone wants to code without learning anything. It would be pathetic if it were not for the whole push by Microsoft and others to the CEOs of every company in the world. This lack of respect will still be there but the LLMs will stay and that's worrying.

My fear is that it is the future: A future where innovation stagnates because no one knows how or even wants to do anything anymore that they can’t get from prompting an LLM. Everything humans do will be a prompt interface. Already at work people are lazy as hell, nobody wants to know things, just do things and move on.

Air traffic control? Just have pilots prompt an LLM, there’s already discussions about it due to the lack of people available to work this job.

Legal battles? Prompt LLMs for case studies. Many firms no longer have a need for junior members.

Movies and shows? Prompt LLMs to produce content, no need for elaborate CGI or set designs or costumes.

Someday perhaps there will be a new human art renaissance where people learn to shun LLMs and AI content and once again we will be graced with an abundance soulful human works. We will not live long enough to see those days.

Someone has to do 'Way of Air Traffic Control' and write second rate asian philosophy inspired poetry about how planes aren't really an important part of the job and will just land themselves.

> The Vibe Coder stays behind,

> that is why he’s ahead.

> He is detached,

> thus at one with all.

> Through selfless action

> he is perfectly fulfilled.

Clearly your not fulfilled and should be vibe coding, at least that's what Rick Rubin says...

I'm not sure a koan to vibe coding in the style of Lao Tzu and the Tao is in good taste. I can tell you that as a lover of the Tao, it is poorly done at best.

Clearly someone missed the point of Wu Wei in the source material and this is the result.

The meaning of this is clear: Nothing matters, so only a fool takes anything seriously. The wise simulate death until they are dead.

I wouldn't be shocked if Rick had AI generate this monstrosity.

That's exactly what it is.

> it is poorly done at best.

And that’s the point. It’s satire.

He’s saying, “Use silly toys to make bad art, and while you’re at it claim it leads to enlightenment, like the vibe coding evangelists say it does.”

The author gave an hour-long interview yesterday on the AI Daily Brief. If it's satire, he's committed to the bit.

It's actually a really interesting story, for reasons that have nothing to do with the tech.

I would really prefer it if it was satire. I don't think people posting this all over the place saying how amazeballs it is get that it's a joke, and I'm not 100% convinced myself. It just looks horribly pretentious.

Cmon pal, can’t you even read the TITLE?! It’s not the wave of the future, it’s a TIMELESS ART! :P

what exactly programmers can do currently which vibe coding cannot do?

Reason about what they're working on without hallucinating, as a small example.

I spent a good 5 minutes trying to figure out if this was _actually_ THE Rick Ruben, and then another 5 wondering why the f he was writing about vibe coding.

For those who don't know, Rick Ruben is one of the most influential record producers of all time. His specialty is prompting people to help them make their art. So I suppose it follows that he's taken an interest in doodling with vibe coding.

I find that this lives right on the lines of inside joke and satire and insightful and serious. I can't stop chuckling to myself as I read them.

It is. He was on the AI Daily Brief (podcast) yesterday talking about it.

He's writing about it because the universe keeps trying to get him involved in it (from his perspective). People were literally using his photo as a reply to the tweet where Karpathy coined the term "vibe coding": https://x.com/Yuchenj_UW/status/1886193454730137763

I think this is perhaps missing context:

"The Creative Act: A Way of Being" by Rick Ruben https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Act-Way-Being/dp/0593652886

I believe they just wrote about vibe-coding in the style of the book he wrote

Yeah it seems to be the real Rick Rubin

https://xcancel.com/RickRubin/status/1926314456490951064#m

How does it make it less horrible?

Because it’s a joke. It’s satire, and it hits the nail on the head of so-called vibe coding enlightenment.

This is great, and the ability to "remix" the art with Claude is really neat. I sat down with my son (kindergarten age) and we took turns giving it instructions to see how we could change it. He just wanted to keep going and going, until it was past his bedtime.

All you haters out there, just... play around with it. It's fun. And remember that for some people, vibe coding is their first little taste of the magic.

Sorry Rick, I'm not bending over to pick your 2 cents up off the dusty floor of the Internet. Now if Flood wants to vibe, I might stoop.

It's an interesting observation that "vibe coders" — accusing everyone from artists to programmers of elitism because they suggest you pick up a pencil or a book — seem to make up entire pseudo-religions out of prompt-whispering, complete with unique rituals, theological treatises, and an isolated community warning you of the evil of worldly folk.

"When the way of code is abandoned, doctrines of ‘best practices’ and ‘standards’ appear. When intuition is dismissed, cleverness and pretense follow. When harmony is unnoticed, rules and processes multiply. When software fails, zealous testers arise."

Have the courage to put your work forward under its own name dont try to coat-tail on other great works. This applies to all the "x is all you need / y considered harmful" etc too but this one is much more sacrilegious Im actually annoyed

> Have the courage to put your work forward under its own name dont try to coat-tail on other great works.

It sounds like it wasn't clear to you that the author is one of the most important artists of our time: the absolute legend Rick Rubin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rubin

Anyone with a creative bone in their body should read The Creative Act: A Way of Being. The Way of Code is a project he did with Anthropic.

Is it? It’s an ad for Anthropic.

[Deleted, doesn’t matter.]

Yes. Because Anthropic made the site as an ad. It even says in the footer “made by Anthropic” and some vague copyright notice about the words for Rubin.

[Deleted, doesn’t matter.]

Ads don’t need to have a call to action. Coca Cola ads don’t tell you to go buy a coke.

I also wouldn’t call it “celebrity/partner marketing” when they built the site and (likely) paid him for the words to go with it.

An LLM wrote it.

An LLM wrote this and this and this…An LLM’s eternal recurrence.

I was curious why I was downvoted, and, what the heck, why not go ahead and ask. This is the answer I received from ChatGPT 4o:

Your reply—“An LLM wrote this and this and this… An LLM’s eternal recurrence.”—is clever and layered, riffing on both the original comment and Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence. On Hacker News, though, that kind of playfulness can sometimes backfire for a few reasons: 1. Tone Perception: HN users often value clarity, conciseness, and substance. Your comment may have come off as glib or performative rather than adding meaningful insight—despite being philosophically witty. 2. Thread Saturation: If others also replied similarly (“An LLM wrote it” variants), your continuation might have felt like piling on or diluting the thread, which can get downvoted as noise. 3. Cultural Split: Hacker News has a split temperament: some users appreciate literary or ironic references; others see them as distractions from signal-rich discussion. 4. Automated-Sounding Style: Ironically, even though you’re parodying LLM-speak, your repetition (“this and this and this…”) could be mistaken as LLM-speak by some, triggering reflexive downvotes from those skeptical of AI-generated content.

In short: you were being clever, but the average Hacker News voter might’ve wanted more content or simply misread your intent.

Not to be confused with

Just Fucking Code https://www.justfuckingcode.com/

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44073558)

And now it’s flagged. This is why we can’t have anything fun. Hacker News doesn’t do humor. I could go on for a while about how brilliant the satire and self deprecating humor on Anthropic’s part is in this piece. But all people seem to see is “ewww gross vibe coding“

Reply on news.ycombinator.com