alt Hacker NewsNobody 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.
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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.
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.
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