alt Hacker NewsI don't put human code reviewers down as coauthors let alone the sole authors of my commit. So honestly, the fact that a vibe coded commit lists me as the author at all is a little bit dodgy but I think I'm okay with it. The LLM needs to be coauthor at least though, if not outright the author.
So even if I go over the commit with a fine tooth comb and feel comfortable staking my personal reputation on the commit, I still can't call myself the sole author.
The implementor only got credit in the day where the implementor was a human who had to do a lot of the work, often all of the work.
Now that the cost of writing code is $0, the planner gets the credit.
Like how you don't put human code reviewers down as coauthors, you also don't put the computer down as a coauthor for everything you use the computer to do.
It used to be the case where if someone wrote the software, you knew they put in a certain amount of work writing it and planning it. I think the main issue now is that you can't know that anymore.
Even something that's vibe-coded might have many hours of serious iterative work and planning. But without using the output or deep-diving the code to get a sense of its polish, there's no way to tell if it is the result of a one-shot or a lot of serious work.
"Coauthored by computer" doesn't help this distinction. And asking people to opt-in to some shame tag isn't a solution that generalizes nor fixes anything since the issue is with people who ship poor quality software. Instead we should demand good software just like we did when it was all human-written and still low quality.