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Vibe coding has turned senior devs into ‘AI babysitters,’ but they say it’s worth it | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

submitted 16 hours ago by kinther@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 1 points 33 minutes ago (1 children)

Carla Rover once spent 30 minutes sobbing after having to restart a project she vibe coded. Rover has been in the industry for 15 years, mainly working as a web developer. She’s now building a startup, alongside her son, that creates custom machine learning models for marketplaces.

Using AI to sell AI, infinite money glitch! /s

“Using a coding co-pilot is kind of like giving a coffee pot to a smart six-year-old and saying, ‘Please take this into the dining room and pour coffee for the family,’” Rover said. Can they do it? Possibly. Could they fail? Definitely. And most likely, if they do fail, they aren’t going to tell you.

No, a kid will learn if s/he fucks up and, if pressed, will spill the beans. AI is, despite being called "intelligent", not learning anything from its mistakes and often forgetting things because of limitations - consistency is still one of the key problems for all LLM and image generators

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 24 minutes ago

If you bring a 6yo into office and tell them to do your work for you, you should be locked up. For multiple reasons.

Not sure why they thought that was a positive comparison.

[–] vane@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Looks like every senior developer is building vibe coded startup and their children are selling machine learning models on marketplaces. Anyone know of such marketplace or it's fake as much as the article ?

[–] vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

This headline made me a little nauseous.

[–] criss_cross@lemmy.world 13 points 3 hours ago

This feels like one of those paid fluff pieces companies put out so that smaller ones feel like they’re “missing out”

[–] wulrus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

Currently, I write all production code at work without any AI assistance. But to keep up with things, I do my own projects.

Main observation: When I use it (Claude Code + IDE-assistant) like a fancy code completion, it can save a lot of time. But: It must be in my own area of expertise, so I could do it myself just as well, only slower. It makes a mistake about 10 - 20 % of the time, most of them not obvious like compile errors, so it would turn the project into disaster over time. Still, seems like a senior developer could be about 50% - 100% more productive in the heat of the implementation phase. Most important job is to say "STOP" when it's about to do nonsense. The resulting code is pretty much exactly how I would have done it, and it saved time.

I also tried "vibe coding" by using languages and technologies that I have no experience with. It resulted in seemingly working programs, e. g. to extract and sort photos from an outdated data file format, or to parse a nice statistics out of 1000 lines of annual private bank statements. Especially the latter resulted in 500 lines of unmaintainable Python-spaghetticode. Still nice for my private application, but nobody in the world can guarantee that there aren't pennies missing, or income and outcome switched in the calculation. So unusable for the accounting of a company or anything like that.

I think it will remain code completion for the next 5 years. The bubble of trying more than next-gen code completion for seniors will burst. What happens then is hard to say, but it takes significant breakthroughs to replace a senior and work independently.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world -1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

This topic is always twisted and based on some random bait surveys. Yes I'd commit AI code but mostly because that code does a test or implements some one off function that I read through anyway.

Do I enjoy baby sitting AI? Eh its a mix bag. Its great for writing tests and boilerplate and bootstrap you into real solutions but I dread any code base that claims their mostly written by cloude code. The AI is still incredibly stupid.

I think rubber duck is really the best feature of AI. I've been working remotely for over 20 years now and it's such a game changer just to bounce ideas and architecture designs with a chat bot. This feature should be revolutionary enough without the need for independent agents.

[–] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 7 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

I have never tried to use AI to develop software, just looked at the output that sometimes shows up in google searches. Noises are starting to come from on-high about an AI 'push', so I may need to show some basic awareness. Any suggestions on how to get started or should I just ask the AI?

[–] cevn@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I will say Claude Code may be at the fore front of AI coding assistants. It runs in your terminal. Try loading it on one of your side projects and see what you can accomplish.

[–] Ghostie21@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Is there a difference between claud in the vscode extension and Claude code? I mostly use chat mode but will sometimes try agent and neither really make me happy. Id say if a task could be given to a high school programmer the AI agents can do it about 30÷ of the time.

[–] cevn@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I feel like the experience is different and it feels more integrated with the project than simply running a claude model with Cursor which is a vscode fork. Right now I had it working on a long running cli app task in Rust and its been implementing feature after feature consistently.

[–] thirteene@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

I've been using copilot. Potential is there but getting a result is more art than science. I've found it helpful to document desired workflows in readmes and ask for unit tests then run unit tests until it works out.

use a premium model like sonnet and put it in agent mode
Ask it to review the project
ask it to review the ticket/requirements
ask it to research existing solutions and write a design document that meets the requirements with high certainty
Let it write the document and make sure it stays on task
review the output and send build errors back, roll forward or undo the code and re-submit
identify what works and reduce scope

[–] percent@infosec.pub 2 points 6 hours ago

I'd suggest Cursor. I was somewhat anti-AI-coding until my job encouraged it, and Cursor (using Claude 4 Sonnet) gave me that "ohh, now I get it" moment.

It's still plenty capable of generating bad code, so it can take a bit of practice to get a feel for how to use it productively.

[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 44 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (5 children)

If you are wondering how it could possibly be “worth it” the end of the article has this.

The Fastly survey found that senior developers were twice as likely to put AI-generated code into production compared to junior developers, saying that the technology helped them work faster.

So vibes. Vibe coding is “worth it” because people got good vibes.

The research shows that - while engineers think AI makes them more about 20% more productive - it actually causes an approximate 20% slow-down.

AI cannot use logic or reason. Everything it outputs is a hallucination, even if it’s sometimes accurate. You cannot trust anything it outputs.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 8 points 5 hours ago

If I try to get it to do more than predict the next two lines of code it's gonna fuck something up. A nervously laughable thing I saw at work was someone using a long spec file to generate a series of other files and getting high praise for it. It was the equivalent of mustache templates but slower and with a 30% chance of spitting out garbage. There was also no way to verify if you were in that 30% zone without looking through the dozens of files it made.

[–] rozodru@piefed.social 7 points 6 hours ago

As someone right there in the trenches getting hired specifically to clean the slop up, I don't buy this survey at all and I'd be very suspicious of any "senior dev" that participated in it cause...where are they? I'm not seeing them when I go in to my clients offices because they all got axed. I do see a lot of junior prompt monkeys though.

[–] Technus@lemmy.zip 12 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I'm a senior dev and I want nothing to do with AI. By the time I understand what I want well enough to describe it in a complete sentence or paragraph, I can just write the fucking code myself. I figure it out as I go.

The whole point of having devs under you that is to be able to trust them to get the job done and do it right. You want to be able to delegate tasks to them and not have to peek over their shoulder every five fucking minutes to be certain they're not making a mess of things.

I seriously doubt AI will ever be able to replace that. Not until they figure out how to make it afraid of fucking up.

[–] slevinkelevra@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

As a senior dev I have found AI useful for auto completion (where you see beforehand what it wants to write directly in Visual Studio) and code analysis (as it does find some bugs and can give good hints for code structure). I would never trust it with anything even remotely complex though.

It kinda scares me that people trust it enough for "agent mode", as giving it direct access to change stuff directly has simply put never worked.

[–] kiku@feddit.org 1 points 2 hours ago

Yes. It's extremely helpful when I'm doing a refactor and can just go TAB TAB TAB TAB Oops not that TAB TAB done. Saves me a lot of time with the boilerplate, but is very bad at the logic portions.

[–] hisao@ani.social 11 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

senior developers were twice as likely to put AI-generated code into production compared to junior developers, saying that the technology helped them work faster

Perhaps senior devs are more likely to use more granular, step-by-step, controlled prompting. Asking it do write specific functions in specific ways and following specific approaches and conventions instead of just "do me an app, robot bro".

[–] Bababasti@feddit.org 7 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

That’s actually how I am using AI for my work (web dev, pls don’t hate me). If I am stuck or have some tiny function missing for a task I ask AI, check their output - if it’s garbage I continue on my own again or if it’s usable I review the output and continue from there. Also, I think AI can be neat for „rubberducking“ when I am debugging some stupid shit and point me in directions I haven’t looked before.

[–] fuzzzerd@programming.dev 2 points 3 hours ago

Similar to how I have found success with it. Is it revolutionary? No, not at all. But it's a variable sized (big for some use and nonexistent for other use) incremental tool that requires a new skill set to use effectively.

Mix in all of the hype and its easy to see why people are confused and why some get different results.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 6 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

But surely you test the code and review it, right? That's how you reinstate trust in what it outputs?

Disclaimer: I've never used AI to code, not even copilot.

[–] CXORA@aussie.zone 5 points 6 hours ago

Based on my coworkers... no.

They get the Ai to write the code, and the tests.

Then hand it over to me to review and test.

Its all overly verbose, does things that are not required or desirable, and insists on re-writing existing code to match its own style.

I hate it passionately.

[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

You mean rewrite it all from scratch? If you have any kind of standards that is what you end up doing. If you know what you’re doing you do it right the first time and move on. Using AI for coding it like trying to babysit the most inept, inexperienced intern to ever walk the earth. It wastes time and the end result is far worse.

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 4 points 10 hours ago

It'll sometimes do dumb and/or redundant or too complicated shit. Pile up a couple of those and your codebase can get unmaintainable fast.

I find if you give it small chunks and keep an eye on it, it's great.

I think one of my recent prompts was "Create a procedure that creates an example configuration file with placeholder values. If a config file doesn't exist on start, give a warning and create the example config."

It also works great as a replacement for an ORM.

[–] shaiatan@midwest.social 80 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I'm well aware the plural of "anecdote" isn't "data", but literally no dev I know (senior or otherwise) thinks this. Give me a junior work with - most of them at least actually learn.

[–] criss_cross@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Yeah it’s the same skillset I use with Junior devs except I don’t have the hope AI will grow out of its bad habits

[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 41 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

Amen. I've tried the vibe coding thing but it's frustrating because a) too often the AI output has some profound problems and it gets annoying 'babysitting' it; and b) I usually prefer the challenge of figuring out syntax and implementation issues myself.

If something is taking too long I'll ask the LLM. But I feel like if I do this too much my skill set will atrophy and I'll lose my sharpness. So it's a balancing act.

But this brings up another wider question: where is the line between "occasionally getting AI help" and "vibe coding"? Surely it's subjective.

[–] Buffalobuffalo@reddthat.com 18 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

The definition may have changed but I feel like originally it was only vibe coding when the “dev” did not know what they are doing. When some one with little to no programming background is able to build and app on “vibes” alone.

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 7 points 10 hours ago

Also applies when the dev could know what they're doing, but just doesn't care to.

[–] dis_honestfamiliar@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 11 hours ago

Well then, I've been doing this all wrong.

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 1 points 11 hours ago

My first interpretation of vibe coding was to code for fun and personal enjoyment without worrying about industry standards or deployability. More often see with self-taught youth.

I felt like i have been doing this for years before ai became a thing.

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 8 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I don't think the two cross, really. A vibe coder asks for a bunch of features and then starts refining the output, fixing bugs and adding features. A developer knows the specific architecture and from years of writing tasks knows how to break work into manageable chunks and uses AI to implement something they have already defined and know where it fits in. The skill to write a good story isn't far off from writing a good prompt.

I use AI all the time, and every time I hear someone describing vibe coding it makes my skin crawl.

[–] pheonixdown@sh.itjust.works 8 points 15 hours ago

I'd say the use cases of: mundane but time consuming, pointed inquiries or interactive rubber ducking, are all getting AI help. Offloading a design where you don't have a clear understanding of how it should be done is vibing.

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 47 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Senior devs love vibe coding because they have the knowledge and skills to recognize and fix errors. They hate it because it makes morons think they don't need the knowledge and skills to recognize and fix errors.

[–] 5C5C5C@programming.dev 42 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

As a senior dev I hate vibe coding. I can write code an order of magnitude faster than I can review it, because reviewing code forces you to piece together a mental model for something made by someone else, whereas when I write the code myself I get to start with the mental model already in my head.

Writing code is never the bottleneck for me. If I understand the problem well enough to write a prompt for an LLM, then I understand the problem well enough to write the code for it.

[–] KryptonNerd@slrpnk.net 6 points 6 hours ago

I'm a junior and even I feel the same way, reading and understanding someone else's code not only takes me longer but is far less rewarding than just writing it myself. There's also the issue as a junior that if I read AI code with issues that maybe I don't notice or recognise, but it compiles fine, it could teach or reinforce poor practices that I may then put into my own work.

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 7 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I understand how to turn the results of a select statement into an update statement, but the AI does it a hell of a lot faster.

I find if you give it small enough chunks, it's easy enough to review. And even if you do have to correct, it's generally easier to correct than it would be to write it all by hand.

[–] 5C5C5C@programming.dev 1 points 2 hours ago

Outside of my own specialty I can people in the software industry bogged down by managing excessive boilerplate. I think this happens most often in web dev and data science.

In my opinion this is an indication that the software tools for those ecosystems need improvement, but rather than putting in the design effort to improve the tools in the ecosystem, these Big Data companies see an opportunity to just throw LLMs at it and call it a commercial product.

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[–] Sxan@piefed.zip 17 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Uh huh. And independent studies show vibe coders believe þey're more efficient, but þey're actually less efficient.

This sound like hell to me. Bug fixing and digging þrough someone else's shitty code is þe worst part of software development, and vibe coding maximizes it?

I don't care how many propaganda pieces AI companies pay to have written about vibe coding, it's still shit which makes projects worse, and developer's jobs worse

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 10 hours ago

trying to cope, for being a money sink, rather than profitable.

[–] 123@programming.dev 3 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Not related to the topic at hand but interestingly (?) I've gotten used to your weird "th" as 1 character. I could read the entire thing without noticing it. I wonder if others have started to do the same since the upvote ratio seems better than what I remember it being before when people always questioned the usage.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip -2 points 4 hours ago

Not related to your point, but interestingly I have vote ratios turned off - mainly because every client I've tried has þem off by default. I assumed it was just Reddit refugees who paid attention to þose, because votes have value on Reddit and it's conditioned behavior. Now I wonder what percentage of FediVerse users do pay attention to votes.

It is interesting þat you've gotten used to it. We must overlap in a lot of communities.

[–] TheRedSpade@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I originally saw it as somebody using 2 different symbols for the 2 different sounds that "th" can make. That at least makes sense. Simply replacing the letters with one character (one not on a standard keyboard, btw) regardless of which sound they make is just extra effort for the sake of it.

[–] lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Nerds doing something unnecessarily complicatedly for the fun of it? I'm not particularly surprised.

[–] 123@programming.dev 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I think there was some mention of poisoning the AI crawlers or at least confusing them/requiring special handling as a possible side effect, so I stopped caring, but yes it can be somewhat of an annoyance until you remember that its basically just a contraction.

[–] lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

If true, that's an intent I can get behind. But even if it isn't, given my own inclination towards contrived shenanigans to scratch some weird itch in my brain, I've come to accept such things as harmless quirks and treat them with the same patience I'd want others to treat my own with.

And every now and ðen, I try someþhing myself and realise what fun it can be ;-)

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip -1 points 4 hours ago

what fun it can be

Pegged it in one. I'd hope þat's þe main reason most of us are here, after all.

[–] hisao@ani.social -1 points 9 hours ago

how many propaganda pieces AI companies pay to have written about vibe coding,

Imo there's orders of magnitude more anti-AI propaganda and stigma than pro-AI. If you're ok with AI it's very dangerous to admit that in professional setting IRL, you have to use careful language and a lot of conditionals.

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