Vibe Coding, has a stigma about it as you’re not supposed to care about the code, only getting results.
This was an instant turn-off for me – I care deeply about the code and the follow on security implications of not caring.
However, I’ve started to wonder if I’ve begun to vibe code, even just a little. Over the last year my development flow has changed a lot – having gone from pressing Tab key to generate next line from AI repeatedly, to now letting AI produce features step by step and writing just about all tests too. The difference is huge over the last 12 months; AI has gone from writing 10% of my code, to around 60%. 😱
A great example was last week, where on a pair programming session (getting a colleague up to speed on a repo while building a feature) they noted I was hardly coding at all.
I was instead (as I often do now) taking the time to prompt the AI chat really well and then heavily reviewing what it produced – pretty much how a senior might instruct and assist a junior dev (a very smart and extremely quick junior in this case). The colleague was still where I was a few months ago; pressing Tab, wanting to write their own code and didn’t really trust the AI chat yet.
Thing is – I get their take (I was there not so long ago) and it’s hard to let go. It’s difficult to trust something you’re so used to doing. While they were still naturally sceptical, they did agree this feature would probably take a full day to build by hand and was done perfectly well by prompting AI only, in just 3 hours.
I wasn’t here to sell them the new way of working, but you could rightly question why you should continue to work so hard, and well, slower than you could with such great abilities available. I guess it’s a lot like working with powertool than just a hand tool… I’ve learned my craft (for a couple of decades), with helpful tools and appreciate the speed of the new powertools, plus they’re safe to use for me.
While the AI was working hard, we also took the time to chat about the codebase, plan next moves and more. I realised in that moment the way were working was so much more chilled than it would have been writing every line myself. I also recognised I’m far more relaxed these past few months working this way and producing twice as much work as a result. Those are both big wins!
But I took the time since to question – am I now vibe coding? The answer is still a firn no, as I do look at the code (I will always heavily scrutinise what is produced) but there are slight similarities.
Usually I have a fixed idea in mind of exactly how the code should be but sometimes I think there could be multiple ways and let AI take the lead on deciding approach. It depends on the task – again, making the most of AI to sometimes help “plan” as well as “do”; I was giving it pretty specific “vibes” and then checking all it did.
It was good to recognise how I now work has changed over the last year and feel I’m getting all the best benefits from AI plus even vibing with few downsides – all while knowing code review and security is still paramount in all I do.
If you’re not quite onboard yet, it AI is here to stay and can give a real speed boost and quality boost in your dev work. If you’re using AI, how are you using it and if you’re not using AI much, why?
