> But a year of daily use changes things. The way most engineers I know actually work with these tools now—myself included—has evolved into something different.
> What we’re actually doing # So if “vibe coding” doesn’t describe it, what does? I’ve been calling it agentic coding. The distinction matters: it’s using AI agents while maintaining the expertise and judgment that keeps the output good, rather than letting it rip with zero validation.
See also their passages around how using vibe coding for side projects is different from agentic coding for professional projects
Does this definition apply to (say) Fortran compilers from the 50s?
Is this satire of AI hype? Genuinely can't tell if he's being serious.
No, absolutely not. Please don't start to think that by not doing stuff on your own, you miss out on keeping yourself sharp and trained and on improving in this stuff.
If developers who have adopted LLMs for writing code start to think this, that might scare away some from using LLMs at all, and this weakens my evil plan to make a lot of money fixing their code with my intact coding abilities, especially when these LLM tools are going to get crazy expensive because at some point they will need to be sustainably funded, when I'll still be somewhat affordable in comparison. I'd rather get rich quick by doing the same thing I've been doing for years, don't take this from me please.
May be the design will be outsourced to consultancies and then implementation using AI is left to in house talent. May be new recommendation and lists like OWASP top 10 and 12 factors will emerge for AI too.
It would shock me if humans are still writing code in 5 years, unless it's for fun.
I guess only people writing code manually will be "frontier".
I agree 100%. Ever since Sonnet 3.5 came out, my assumption has been that most devs will either need to become largely product people, or find a new career. I mean, most devs have been implementing known patterns most of the time, right? That seems on track to be completely replaced by agentic dev tools, right?
The best terms for this new role I can think of are "Product Developer," or "Software Product Developer."
What I am really curious about is if devs at the frontier will be more, or less likely, to publish their work as open source in the future.
mr_mitm•2h ago
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/vibe-coding/
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/7/vibe-engineering/
verdverm•2h ago
> “Vibe engineering”, really? ... Is this a stupid name? Yeah, probably. ... I’m ready to reclaim vibes for something more constructive.
Simon should have stopped after the first answer imho, we can find a better name for what we do as our profession increasingly adopts agent assisted development