Vibe Coder vs. Software Engineer

> A vibe coder is someone who wants to test an idea by generating software as a prototype. A software engineer is someone who thinks about the entire software development lifecycle.

I don't think it's such a simple dichotomy; And dismissing the possibilites of agentic coding as inherently non-SWE is rather short-sighted: You CAN use agents as a software engineering tool.

It's just that it's often misaligned with the processes we're used to. But that does not mean that LLM-agents a bad tool.

but there is not going to be an inherited and largely non-discardable codebase at every company, right?

and maybe not a team that looks anything like the teams that built and maintain the large codebases that are out there.

the distinction in this article makes all the sense in the world to me, and definitely helps as i try to figure out what term i use to describe my current status as a thing-producer, but part of why i just call myself nothing is it is entirely unclear to me what the new configurations of infra + product vision > actual v0.1.0 launch > new feature development "teamlines" are going to end up looking like.

if i had to guess, one such config might be "the 0.1% of vibe coders who took the HN crickets in response to their projects to figure out how to learn how to do what a product engineering team needs to do end to end to make a self-sustainable product."

(self being that one person, not the product itself)

The vibe coder doesn't know what they don't know, so they rely on the LLM to make decisions.

The Software Engineer will know what decision to make even without looking at the code.

The analogy I was thinking of as I read this was: an architect that designs a beautiful building as opposed to the workers that take that design and then follow building codes to frame the house, or install the electrical.

The Vibe Coder is the one building prototypes to flesh out ideas, and once they flushed out the idea, they hand if off to the workers to follow standards to implement.

Although at the end of the article he does say that people should fall into both vibe/eng. and that is probably a good place to be to stay relevant in the future.

Just call it vibe coding. You can still be an engineer.

There are priorities here which are not mutually exclusive. If you are building the next big thing in your garage, polishing it before establishing it's in fact the next big thing is a waste of time. If it really is, early adopters / investors will seize on it like they did on AI. Once that is established, yes there is space for adults in the room to adopt proper procedures for large scale production. I do believe AI can help with establishing the next big thing, and if other's don't, it's a irreconcilable difference of opinion.

Claude is smart enough now to transition a vibe coder into a software engineer if you provide access to SDLC pipeline.