Nobody cares how the code looks, this is not an art project. But we certainly care if the code looks totally unmaintainable, which vibe-coded slop absolutely does.
I'm using an LLM to write the code for my current project, but I iterate improvements in the code until it looks like code I wrote myself. I sign off on each git commit. I need to maintain and extend this code, it is to scratch my own itch.
LLMs are capable of producing junk, and they are capable of writing decent code. It is up to the operator to use them properly.
“Take this CSV of survey data and create a web visualization and create a chloropleth map with panning, zooming, and tooltips” I bypass permissions and it’s done in 10 minutes while I go do some laundry. If I did it myself I would not even be done researching a usable library and I would have zero lines of code. Those studies are total nonsense.
LLMs excel at tasks that are fresh. LLMs are wonderful at getting the first 80% of the way there. -- LLMs are phenomenally good for a first draft or so.
I've had worse experiences for getting LLMs / agents to refactor code. I would believe in many cases it could be quicker to just manually go through and make refinements compared to merely getting the LLM to keep trying.
That seems very intuitive to me. If you want extremely specific changes made at extremely specific locations in an extremely specific way then you probably need to do that yourself because a language model can’t read your mind. I think there are very large set of problems where implementation details do not actually matter and cheap, disposable code is not a problem. I don’t think vibecoding is a good idea for missile guidance. Probably OK for a dashboard a manager isn’t really going to use anyway.
While true, the only anyone has to care that vibe coding* produces technical debt is that the LLM doesn't always properly clean up that technical debt without being prompted to do so, and that when you have too much technical debt your progress slows down regardless of if there's a human or an LLM doing the coding.
To put it another way, ask what code an LLM can maintain, not just what code a human (of whatever experience level) can maintain.
* in the original sense, no human feedback at any point
Proper vibe coding should involves tons of vibe refactoring.
I'd say spending at least a quarter of my vibe coding time on refactoring + documentation refresh to ensure the codebase looking impeccable is the only way my projects can work at all long term. We don't want to confuse the coding agent.
