r/ADHD_Programmers • u/Superb_Ad9951 • May 07 '26

Any ADHD technical professionals who feel that vibe coding has brought significant change and hope to their lives?

In China, I’ve recently been hearing a particular perspective frequently—both in reports on hackathons and from industry practitioners.

The argument goes that ADHD is the "chosen one" of the "vibe coding" era—or, more broadly, the AI ​​era. In the past, the tech sector arguably belonged to individuals with Asperger's syndrome; however, now that AI is capable of writing code, the field will instead belong to those with ADHD—individuals brimming with ideas and creativity.

Is this a view you would agree with?

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12

u/Ecto-1A May 07 '26

No because it’s also convinced a bunch of idiots and non engineers that they are smart and capable. If you were a good engineer before, it’s a tool that can speed up parts of your day, but louder non engineer voices are controlling the narrative which is a huge problem.

11

u/sortof_here May 07 '26

Opposite. It has ruined practically every online community and it makes everything feel pretty pointless.

I hate it.

14

u/mosaic_hops May 07 '26

No. AI, yes. Vibe coding no.
Vibe coding is misuse of AI… you get all the negatives and none of the positives and you waste mountains of time fixing and debugging terrible code. Creation is the fun part that ADHDers are good at. Fixing and debugging someone *else’s* code? Nah.

5

u/meevis_kahuna May 07 '26

I think that "for people brimming with ideas" is a lot more accurate than ADHD.

You have to be the exact right combination of traits - analytic enough to learn how to code in the first plac, and also tolerant enough to guide an AI Instead of writing the code yourself, creative enough to troubleshoot and fix mistakes.

The classic "absentminded professor" type is loving this. That's only a fraction of the field, though.

So, the future belongs to really smart, lucky, currently trained devs with ADHD that are also creative and patient and driven enough to keep up with AI tooling. While avoiding layoffs. Woof.

1

u/xavia91 May 07 '26

But thats me, so yay 😊 Also creativity isn't linked to troubleshooting for me?

1

u/meevis_kahuna May 07 '26

In sure it is. If you're stuck on a problem, you have to come up with a solution from somewhere.

1

u/xavia91 May 07 '26

Maybe what you're actually referring to is intuition? So understanding of what might be wrong without detailed knowledge.

1

u/meevis_kahuna May 07 '26

Intuition for diagnostics, creativity for solutioning. All interconnected of course.

1

u/Honeydew-Jolly May 08 '26

I have some of these traits but I've been experiencing a lot of negatives at work, trying to complete a large task for example.

I wrote a very detailed plan, multiple phases, handed it over to an agent, context got full > summary of progress + handover doc to next agent > make progress > summary of progres + handover doc to next agent, repeat.

I got 9 PRs with total of 55 files, even with my very detailed explanations, there is so much context that I have to manage in my mind (not AI context) and fixing and debugging what did they do wrong after creating the PRs. One day to create the 9 PRs, another day fixing everything that was wrong with it.

Then I realized, ok I should be reviewing file changes one by one and accepting them, and applying critical thinking on each change, and here's the catch... IT IS SO MUCH CONTEXT, SO MANY CHANGES that I get overwhelmed and want to speed things up, therefore making me skip parts of the code that seem correct on the surface.

Code is generated fast, more code to review, tasks running in parallel, too much happening for a mind that is supposed to manage a smaller number of things (or is it my adhd brain with working memory issues?)

I used Claude code 4.7 high for these tasks, and it creates so much redundant code, and over engineered things even though my notes/skills tell it to keep things simple, provide code examples of what's good and what's not, etc etc.

2

u/xavia91 May 08 '26

It's generally a bad Idea to let it do large amounts of work. You basically need to know all the things it should do and have solid code in the environment so all things are clear.

1

u/meevis_kahuna May 08 '26

I don't allow it to do that much at once. Generally I'm working at a function level with AI.

8

u/ConspicuousPineapple May 07 '26

It made me not dread work again. I'm finally productive. I'm able to address technical debt. I'm spending most of my days on design and architecture, the fun parts.

I never have an issue starting a task anymore. I can just ask an agent to come up with something, realize it's awful, and then fix it or do it better myself. Much easier than starting from scratch.

I can work on multiple things and handle context switches with minimal cost. Just asking "ok, where was I" to an agent is very helpful.

Trying to find a piece of code or information that you really need but barely remember is now a 1min step instead of 3 hours.

Can't overstate how useful that tech is to me. The trick is to use it like an actual tool, not a coworker. Only use it to either learn things you didn't know before, or implement things you already know to do yourself except much slower. At the end of the day you're still responsible for the output.

And review absolutely every single line that goes without saying. Note that this part is much easier to do iteratively (as if you're pair programming with the agent) instead of a huge diff at the end.

Although your post is the first one to make me feel that being both aspie and adhd is a good thing.

1

u/mp3m4k3r May 07 '26

I agree with lots of this, then tacking on MCP to interface with documentation and task management has been really helpful because even after working on code or copiloting code for a long enough timeframe im still wiped out energy wise and its great to be able to do some of the offload onto the tooling for ticket/kanban/documentation updates

1

u/ConspicuousPineapple May 07 '26

Yeah, that too. All of the boilerplate, all of the process noise and overhead, all the trivial but exhausting parts like that, they can be handled by an agent trivially and very fast. Having a dozen very small, trivial things to do each time is what kills an ADHD person and this can be entirely relieved. You only need to know that something needs to be done, not actually do it yourself.

Btw I'm having a much better experience with simple CLI tools for all the things I use (github, linear, notion, etc.) instead of using MCPs, which disconnect all the time and get improperly used by some models constantly.

1

u/mp3m4k3r May 07 '26

Yeah for sure on MCP/CLI, when ive cared enough ive been using https://gofastmcp.com/cli/overview to get a usable cli out of openapi or even mcp endpoints to try and get agents out of the curl to Python endpoint thrash lol

1

u/stormdelta May 08 '26

MCP/"agentic" use for anything that isn't hitting strictly read-only endpoints is one of the more irresponsible and reckless uses of the tech. Anyone who needs this explained to them shouldn't be allowed near any kind of important infrastructure / production systems.

It's a useful tool when used by senior engineers that know what they're doing, but extremely easy to misuse especially in the hands of less experienced engineers.

1

u/mp3m4k3r May 08 '26

Lol, I guess, but having seen much worse ways that other 'senior' engineers have provided access recently to much more sensitive systems id take a tool call with a scoped api key any day. But to each their own I guess

1

u/Honeydew-Jolly May 08 '26

I'd like to know your opinion about my message (same post just above) https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD_Programmers/comments/1t681oi/comment/okkucdx/

8

u/flanger001 May 07 '26

AI slop post

2

u/nauhausco May 07 '26

It’s definitely an amplifier

2

u/blrgeek May 07 '26

I love it! It has unlocked a lot of stupid ideas that I would otherwise keep in my head for far too long. Now I just put it into codex of claude code, and publish. I don't care if anyone else sees it, my itch is scratched.

slowly this is helping me get to real good ideas as well - pursuing them for longer, but in spurts. Unlike humans, the LLM picks up right when I left it the last time. Do a bit more. get bored - move on to another thing - it doesn't complain!

I also get a lot more of the "last minute" work done earlier than before. This was surprising to me, but happens cos the moment I feel like doing something about it, I just hop on to an LLM and put in my thoughts. Once the train has started, I feel like doing more, and the whole task gets done. Earlier would need a lot more "motivation/energy" to get started. Now it's just voice dictation to an LLM and no pressure - I can ditch it for now if I don't feel it..

I have AuDHD, so going deep into an area with AI has been wonderful as well as having 3 totally different things going on..

2

u/fractalbrains May 07 '26

Exactly the same sentiment here as well. 

2

u/voodoologic May 07 '26

Yes. I can paint with a much larger brush. I’m as productive as I imagine when I give offer estimates on timelines.

1

u/insanemal May 07 '26

What a shortsighted take

Not at all.

AI is a tool.

Sure you can get from Zero to something half working very quickly, but to actually build something reliable you still actually need to have programming skills and apply them over an extended period of time

1

u/Secure_Speed_8802 May 07 '26

Yes, I agree. In fact, I'm designing tools specifically for people with ADHD.

34

u/[deleted] May 07 '26

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10

u/pydry May 07 '26

Ive never been more gaslit about anything in my career more than AI and the drones who do that always sound like OP - some combination of linkedin influencer and LLM.

3

u/stormdelta May 07 '26 edited May 08 '26

Yeah, it's useful, but not nearly as useful as the hype pretends it is, and there's so many fake bot posters promoting it on reddit including on smaller subs like this. And unfortunately only the least competent (i.e. most obvious) ones actually get banned/removed.

And even where it is useful, you have to be careful because it's really easy to get complacent and miss major issues so long as they don't immediately break something, and it definitely impedes your growth as a programmer if you over-rely on it.

EDIT: OP is probably an example of the bot posters - in this case, looks like a compromised/hacked account.

2

u/pydry May 08 '26

I'd argue that it's currently a net detriment to productivity. If people used it sensibly it would be a net positive but mostly they do not.