Vibe Coding

I’ve been experimenting with AI-first coding over the last months. Instead of the usual loop of:

  • Understand the problem
  • Make a change
  • Test it
  • Repeat until ready
  • Create a PR

The workflow becomes something more like:

  • Explain part of the change to the AI
  • Test if it works
  • Review the result
  • Feed back corrections
  • Repeat until ready
  • Create a PR

So far, I’ve found it great for making quick changes quickly. But when it comes to harder tasks, it gets difficult. Progress tends to come either by giving the AI very specific instructions, one tiny step at a time—or by iterating endlessly, like a sculptor chipping away at a boulder and ending up with a smaller boulder.

Still, it feels more productive than traditional coding in many cases, and it feels like the future. But there are real trade-offs, especially when the code is complex or the required change is significant.

I don’t have answers yet. For now, here’s a photo of a waterfall.

EDIT:

My colleague Nico also wrote an article about Vibe Coding, check his blog out!

6 thoughts on “Vibe Coding

    1. Good or bad, it is there, and it codes. The employers will push for all of us to use it because they can either get the same work done with fewer people, or do more with the same people. Companies who don’t do that will simply be made obsolete by the competition.

      And, for good or bad, vibe coding is just the beginning. It’s a very inefficient process because it makes the human part of it wait for many hours per day, and it needs humans to read lots of explanations, code and so on. I’m sure it will be optimized to need less human attention. There are already tools that submit PRs based on well described issues.

      Liked by 2 people

  1. As a web developer, I find that AI-assisted coding is quite useful for handling small mundane coding tasks (boilerplate, helper functions, etc). It’s good within the code editor, but definitely not as a replacement for understanding code.

    Liked by 1 person

Leave a reply to Jim Cancel reply