Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

I've come to view LLMs as a consulting firm where, for each request, I have a 50% chance of getting either an expert or an intern writing my code, and there's no way to tell which.

Sometimes I accept this, and I vibe-code, when I don't care about the result. When I do care about the result, I have to read every line myself. Since reading code is harder than writing it, this takes longer, but LLMs have made me too lazy to write code now, so that's probably the only alternative that works.

I have to say, though, the best thing I've tried is Cursor's autocomplete, which writes 3-4 lines for you. That way, I can easily verify that the code does what I want, while still reaping the benefit of not having to look up all the APIs and function signatures.

> Since reading code is harder than writing it,

Reading bad code is harder than writing bad code. Reading good code is easier than writing good code.

I beg to differ.

This is the sign of seniority IMO. First you learn to write code. Then you learn to write code that can be read. Then you learn to modify code. Then you learn to read other people’s code. Then you learn to modify other people’s code. Then you learn to own code regardless of who reads or writes it.

At this point in my career 35 years in I find reading and writing code whether I wrote it or other did irrelevant. Bad or good code, it’s all the same. By far the most effective work I do involves reading a lot of complex code written by many people over many years and seeing the exact one line to change or improve.

I find LLM assisted coding very similar frankly. I’ve finished maybe 20 projects or more on the last seven months on my own time that I never would have been able to do in my lifetime for want of free time to learn minutia in stuff I am not familiar with. The parts it get hung up on I’m able with quick inspection to recognize and unwedge it, just like any junior engineer. The junior engineers also are often much better versed in XYZ library than I am.

This is the thing.

LLM assisted coding ("vibe coding") is just project management.

You ask it to do things, then you check the work to a sufficient degree.

The better the specifications and documentation you give it, the better the result will be. Keeping tasks short and verifiable also helps a lot.

I've written SO many small tools for myself during the last year it's not even funny. Upgraded some shitty late night Python scripts to proper Go applications with unit tests and all, while catching up on my TV shows.

Converted my whole rat's nest of Docker compose files to a single Opentofu declarative setup.

None of this would've gotten done without an LLM assistant.