Topic: Vibe Coding?

[hans]

You all hear about this yet? "Vibe Coding" where you pretty much just prompt to build applications the entire time? It's been popping up in my feeds lately and I don't really get it. I do like copilot as an advanced auto-complete but so far I'd say it's a junior level coder at best, and I tend to use it more for inspiration than actual implementation, or as a stackoverflow kind of replacement.

And recently I've been doing interviews for candidates and we thinking about how someone might interview a vibe coder or what interviewing is going to look like if that really becomes a viable developer path.

Just curious what you all think about it, if you've encountered it etc.

[ober]

I heard the term a few times but didn't really dive into it.  Sounds like a fad.  I don't think AI is going to replace anyone and I don't think it's at a point where you can just continually prompt it and get a fully working solution.  At best, it increases productivity.  Maybe you hire 4 devs instead of 5.  I could be wrong.  Who knows.  I think it's too early to really know.

[charlie]

I’ve never heard the term “vibe coding”.

But sure I see that as a reasonable future. It won’t be long before coding AI can get pretty complex. Maybe soon you can just ask for modules by giving their interface and expected behavior and then once you have those you can prompt the AI to put them together, so all you’re doing as a programmer is designing rather than coding

I feel like it will get at least to the point where you hire 1-2 devs instead of 5, but also there would be less need for software to be written in this new world. Will it get to the point where no devs are needed at all? Eventually I’d guess yes but that feels like more than a decade away.