Comment by unshavedyak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unshavedyak | Hacker News Reader

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> There probably needs to be some settled discussion on what constitutes "vibe coding." I interpret this term as "I input text into $AI_MODEL, I look at the app to see my change was implemented. I iterate via text prompts alone, rarely or never looking at the code generated."

Agreed. I've seen some folks say that it requires absolute ignorance of the code being generated to be considered "vibe coded". Though i don't agree with that.

For me it's more nuanced. I consider a lack of review to be "vibed" related to how little you looked at it. Considering LLMs can do some crazy things, even a few ignored LOC might end up with a pretty "vibe coded" feelings, despite being mostly reviewed outside of those ignored lines.

Maybe read the original definition: https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383

Or here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibe_coding

Not looking at the code at all by default is essential to the term.

I agree, i'm saying any code it produces. Eg if you ignore 95% of the LLM's PR, are you vibe coding? Some would say no, because you read 5% of the PR. I would say yes, you are vibe coding.

Ie you could say you vibe'd 95% of the PR, and i'd agree with that - but are you vibe coding then? You looked at 5% of the code, so you're not ignoring all of the code.

Yet in the spirit of the phrase, it seems silly to say someone is not vibe coding despite ignoring almost all of the code generated.

The question is, to what purpose are you looking at those 5%? I reckon it’s because you don’t really trust the vibes. In that sense, you’re not vibe-coding.

If that's the case i feel like we need some other term. As you're saying that someone who ignores 95% of the written code is not vibe coding. That to me says we need a term that describes "i ignored almost all code" type of "coding" that LLMs provide.

I don't care about the 5% difference. I care about the bulk, the amount of bugs and poor logic that can slip in, etc. I have no attachment to the term "vibe coded", but it's useless to me if it doesn't describe this scenario.

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