Hacker News Reader

Comment by mathgeek | Hacker News Reader

> Vibe engineered

While I'm all for vibe coding as appropriate, there's a lot of humor to be found it calling it engineering. :D

this is not something I came up with, Simon wrote it and I liked the differentiation between "vibe coding" where there is less effort

for this case project I think I would actually go back and say it's vibe coded, but I didn't want to just call it vibe coding because I did spend time going back and forth and directing the agent

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/7/vibe-engineering/

Interesting distinction. I've previously heard vibe coding described as "vibe prompting, but you actually do some work." That aside though, I just call what you're describing as coding with AI.

coding with AI is coding just as much as coding with VSCode is coding. you decide which parts you get help from a given tool and which you don’t. end of the day, it is all coding and “coding with AI” sounds as silly as “coding with keyboard / microphone”

The first part is exactly my point, but the latter is nonsense in my book. You cannot ask VSCode (pre-AI) to write a program for you. It's akin to doing math with AI vs. an Nspire CAS. There's no reason to think you need to respond to those who shame vibe coding with claims that we shouldn't differentiate our tools, but we also shouldn't just say it's all the same. We wouldn't claim that about farming with a laser-powered weed killer compared to farming with a horse-drawn plow.

I suspected it needed to be directed with a specification to call it vibe engineered

Fair. Though it seems that half of engineering is just giving a respectable name to whatever actually works.

For software, but that's a well trodden path at this point. I've seen a few projects that are actually "vibe engineering" outside of software on the 3d modeling side so the terms are confusing.

I've been a fan of Design-Assisted Developer or DAD

What is funny about it?

I just hope actual engineers don't start vibe engineering bridges and buildings.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com