How Do We Stop Vibe Coding and Reclaim Software Engineering?
How Do We Stop Vibe Coding?
I believe we have entered a new era where coding agents abstract away the code itself, shifting focus from implementation to intent. However, this 'vibe coding' trend erodes our understanding of architecture and creates a dangerous black-box effect. Current solutions like markdown specs and skills fail to provide the necessary trust and auditability, leaving us in a chaotic state where convenience outweighs reliability.
I don't think I've typed like a line of code probably since December, basically, which is an extremely large change.
- throwaway6977
Disagree with so many assertions put forth here. You don't _have_ to turn you brain off when coding with an LLM. It's not some intelligence dementor. If your brain turned off while you were vibe coding thats honestly just a you problem and I wish everyone would stop boogeymanning an obvious improvement in the ability to better yourself just because a lot of people don't choose the betterment route.
I've never been more informed or understood more about my code, pipelines, and stack than now- and its 100% due to AI reasoning about my projects, and me making an effort to learn.
- trjordan
Man, it's wild how I have no original thoughts. I've been pulling on this thought this morning, complete with checking in on how CodeSpeak and Tessl are doing.
I'll add this link to the pile: https://martinfowler.com/articles/exploring-gen-ai/sdd-3-too...
> spec-kit created a LOT of markdown files for me to review. They were repetitive, both with each other, and with the code that already existed. Some contained code already. Overall they were just very verbose and tedious to review. [...] To be honest, I’d rather review code than all these markdown files.
The hardest part of any of this extraction is that modern code is already an extremely dense representation of how the computer should work. You mostly can't change the code without changing behavior.
I bet Scryer works for his use case, and it's a joy to dogfood. I also bet it fully breaks down the moment a 2nd developer, who cares about different things, joins the team.
- Towaway69
Howabout: just turn off AI.
I scanned the article, never made it to the bottom, didn’t find the point the author was trying to make.
Howabout just learning to code better as a human without using AI. Just like learning a craft. Just refuse to use AI. Not possible because of peer pressure? Well then stop worrying and continue to vibe.
Either stop or stop complaining but don’t make excuses or write long articles that ramble and rant … sorry but I don’t understand what’s so hard about stopping.
- Havoc
>Writing code by hand will always be around for bespoke and novel, complex work.
That sentence is probably the key.
There is zero chance of this stopping overall.
Much like with artists 90% of the commercial stuff - copy/ads with generic guy in suit picture - will be AI that is "good enough".
Less concerned about the code quality and more the labour market dynamics. If this goes anything like translation & creative space did then there is going to be a brutal shakeup where competition for remaining "real" seats gets intense
- nadis
This piece is more thoughtful than the title initially led me to believe. However, I feel like it's sort of like advocating for us all being able to read/write binary (using a bit of an extreme to prove a point). While there might certainly be benefits to understanding less abstract layers, I don't think it's necessary or even necessarily helpful. That said, I don't think the answer is "turn your brain off completely" but I think that there should be tools that facilitate thoughtful ways of vibe coding with natural language, which is basically another abstraction layer from writing the code and tests yourself.