Ask HN: Why is it called "Vibe Coding"? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why is it called "Vibe Coding"?

16 pointsgiantg218 comments

The real vibe coding is when you're a few drinks deep and hit that ballmer peak (xkcd). I don't know why they call AI assisted coding "vibe coding" since it's the wrong type of vibe.

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Because of this tweet https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383

Thanks, I had not seen that.

That tweet, plus the fact that vibe is a hot word these days. I think of vibe shift (here's the source: https://www.thecut.com/2022/02/a-vibe-shift-is-coming.html)

The real vibe coding is when you hear the core memory vibrating

Someone showed me a video of people with a radio near a 'magnetic core' computer. They were playing something like jingle bells.

You just go along with whatever the AI throws at you. Like vibing with your bro.

Quite different from AI-Assist coding.

Yeah and your plan generally changes to whatever is output.

I suppose the idea that it is based more on feeling of what needs to be done than intellectual construction of the code. That is a drastic simplification because even with the 'vibe code' you still need to have some form of overview.

It does lean into the idea that vibe code is 'Increased productivity, reduced understanding.'

The overall conclusion between me and my peers - all very senior devs - that know how to be productive with these systems is that it’s not “vibe coding” at all. You fist spend hours working out and reviewing and correcting and improving detailed specs and implementation plans, and then hand over the implementation to the LLM.

There are too many implicit contextual details that the LLM doesn’t know about that just make coding based on “vibes” not work at all. Eg the size of your organization heavily influences the types of tests you want to write and maintain.

So you still need a very solid understanding of engineering and your domain in order to get it to solve your problems properly.

But in the end, if you learn how to use it well, it’s an insane productivity boost. But you need to spend a month or two to learn how they really work, their limitations, and figure out a workflow.

> You fist spend hours working out and reviewing and correcting and improving detailed specs and implementation plans, and then hand over the implementation to the LLM.

Anyone that cares to actually do this does not save any time by going with an LLM instead of just coding. For any cases where time saving is actually done, I would argue that the thing coded should either be a framework, a library, or an editor macros (or extensions like JavaBeans generators in Java IDEs).

Microsoft had Wizards in MS-Access and Visual BASIC that generated code. You just fill out some forms and it generates the code for you. This was before AI. It wasn't called Vibe Coding, it was just using Wizards.

Clippy!!!!

It looks like you are trying to write a letter!

Vibe coding means only looking at the behavior ("vibes") of artifacts, you're never even supposed to see the code.

In other words you're purely playing the PM role rather than the SWE role.

Yeah, it's really a stupid name that has stuck because of who tweeted it. I really respect Karpathy, but in this particular case he did a disservice.

It's because programing thus is akin to Asimov's tech-men, vibing with the fabric of the universe through their religious incantations.

the real vibe codes were the list comprehensions we made along the way

So that we can reliably classify between real engineers and techbros

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