Hello programmers! I’ve been making a living for a couple of decades figuring out stuff for people and coding whatever will make them happy. It’s fun. I’ve grown to prefer the people to the coding but I still get a kick out of the whole thing.
The problem is: at the job we’re being asked to pivot to vibe coding. At this point the order is to use it for all code, read the slop carefully, argue with the machine for way too long and only then open that PR. Massive productivity gains are expected. I’m appalled from an ethical, philosophical and professional standpoint. We’re a non-profit ngo ffs. My colleagues are fine with it. If I get even slightly critical the group goes awkwardly silent and I get comments on how all the programmers they know from other places don’t code anymore.
If this is how it goes from now on, I’m out. Is it really though? Are all businesses switching to vibe coding? Have some of you started switching career? I think I want to go to meatspace. Hand-made coding could make a cute hobby.
No, vibe coding is what happens when a new technology spawns, and everyone is in a gold rush to find out what they can use it for.
LLM assisted software development is probably here to stay though. I’m also learning the ropes of this agentic stuff, where it works and where it falls flat as I always try to fully understand and take ownership of the code I put in my commits. At the end of the day, it needs to look like I coded it.
On an aside, I’m hopeful we can figure out an ethical way to do model training that respects licensing, such as only training on MIT licensed code. Such a rabbit hole the ethics are.