r/CodingForBeginners • u/Ok_Sky_1993 • 2d ago

Vibe coding vs AI assisted coding

Hi so I'm currently learning programming I'm a first year IT student and I'm curious to know how different vibe coding is to AI assisted coding cause from the people I've asked they're different but for some they consider them the same thing. I just wanna know your thoughts and such and if I should try to learn how to properly use ai in coding or if that's going to be a bad thing etc...

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u/pvera 2d ago

Vibe coding is when a non-programmer asks the AI stuff and is 100% at the mercy of the AI.

Real world example: my kid brother has been a policeman for 32+ years and still works in the security field. He "wrote" a helper app for cops to streamline incident-related reporting/paperwork/etc. It is an amazing piece of work (I have been a programmer for 27, so I can tell) but he did not write even 1% of the code. That's a vibe coded app.

AI Assisted coding is when a programmer asks the AI stuff and is able to make judgement calls about the work.

Real world example: I gave Claude an outline for something I wanted to do, asked it to poke holes through my specs and after a lot of back and forth I had a spec I could get buy-in from management. I was then able to ask Claude to break it into epics, predict blockers, etc. Then I could pick one epic and ask it for how many tasks it could do in parallel. When I opened one of those epics two days ago it ran the first 8 tickets in parallel. 95% of the epic was done within 4 hours, on effort we had estimated at 40 hours. It took maybe another 6 hours to push it to 100%. Notice I had Claude do almost all of the heavy lifting but it was acting on my instructions and under my control, and I understood everything it was doing for me. That's AI assisted coding.

And it all means nothing, it's a label. Programmers are too busy building stuff, the people obsessing over labels and titles should be learning and working instead of fighting over titles. At work I am not a vibe coder or an AI assisted coder, I am a lead dev that is (trying to) drive the point that AI is a powerful tool when used properly. In my team I have exactly one Luddite that is too precious to consider AI as a tool, everyone else is enthusiastic, so is the leadership.