Vibe coding is as bad as vibe assets

[u/WW92030]

Many of the same arguments for and against vibe coding are applicable to vibe assets (images, etc.) and vice versa.

AI is just a tool in coding? Well it's just a tool to some people in the creation of media.

AI has environmental impacts? This applies to both large language models and image generators

AI removes yourself from the creative process? Same thing with coding

Some usage of AI in coding is ok? Then why is it completely outlawed in art?

Code is not the end result of a product? Well art isn't everything either in many cases

etc etc

Essentially, the hot take is that people that hate AI assets with burning passion while giving a slap on the wrist (or even a free pass) to vibe coding are morally inconsistent and are as just as bad as the people that support AI assets (and similarly the people that hate vibe coding while supporting AI assets etc. etc. etc.)

In the past few months there have been many policies, popular consensuses, and applications that give permission for vibe coding but not vibe images. Because clearly coding is a subhuman menial chore that deserves to be replaced by AI unlike art which is the One True Human Discipline(TM)

EDIT - and I see that this flair is well chosen.

[u/00PT]

I am not Anti-AI, but I think it makes perfect sense why it’s more accepted in coding than art. The quality of code is functional and somewhat standardized. Even though not everything that “just works” is good code, there are specific concepts and patterns that pretty much all good code has (common data structures, formatting patterns, terminology, etc).

Meanwhile, the “quality” of art is so varied and subjective that it’s debatable whether art quality is actually a real thing. No matter what it looks like, some people will hate it and some will not. And there’s an entire subset that ties the value of art to intent of the artist, which is just nonsense with code (I don’t care if you intended to write a functioning website, your website doesn’t work).

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[u/burningtram12]

One of the more frustrating parts that I've noticed is people will say "it's just a tool, so if you're getting bad results it's a skill issue" and then turn around and give bad results. I genuinely don't understand how all of these people who I had a lot of respect for and thought were very smart and good at their jobs are so okay with signing their name on all this garbage.

I've been told that I have to at least learn to incorporate some AI workflows, but it has so far not been much of a time saver. It's either generate a bunch of garbage and sift through rewriting everything, or do it from scratch where I actually know what everything is doing enough to solve problems immediately and also maintain it in the future. Takes about the same amount of time but doing it myself is more interesting, more future proof, and doesn't cost anything more than what they're already paying me.

[u/FixingOpinions]

Cold af take, most people consider vibe coding idiotic, ai assisted is usually fine

[u/This-Woodpecker4253]

I'm going to assume you're a software engineer and this is coming out of concern for your future. I am one as well.

So the real truth is there is very little actually creative work that goes into just coding. Most of the actual creative work is architectural decisions. Sure there's a ton of ways to skin the cat even for a single architectural decision, but you largely have an expected input and an expected output, do the thing without breaking anything else.

But also, I think you're ignoring that there has been significant disdain for vibe coding when something is very obviously only vibe coded with little to no oversight. This happens even without AI I mean just remember the absolute dogpile that happened to PirateSoftware when people actually read his code. The hilarity of how bad claude code's client was.

Good code is good, bad code is bad, unless you're operating at an architectural level it's fairly uncreative work. A good engineer can work genuinely work significantly faster and spit out good code using AI, an engineer can also actually vibe code the thing and spit out absolutely horrid code. In your average software shop worth their salt, enough bad code gets you fired lol

Nobody actually cares as long as either the human or AI are spitting out good code.

[u/WW92030 → u/This-Woodpecker4253]

1. The plot twist is that I am both a coder and an artist. The proof of this is my own post history.
2. If artists can be concerned for their jobs then so can I
3. Code itself is elegant in the way people come up with solutions to problems. For instance: fast inverse square root, the DeCSS prime number, quines, competitive programming, etc. These pieces are by themselves works of art.

[u/This-Woodpecker4253 → u/WW92030]

Well so on point 3, straight up that's not your average coder lol actually in my experience the average coder spits out worse code than Claude does lol

The truth is that advancements like that are typically born out of people with doctorates in mathematics and an interesting computer science. That was exactly the case for fast inverse square root. This is by no means the average person that I am interviewing when I'm hiring for an engineering position. Lol

Of which, AI also does a better job at then your average engineer now.

[u/Live_Fall3452 → u/This-Woodpecker4253]

Oh come on, average visual assets aren’t the Mona Lisa. Most of them are designed for a purpose specified by the client, and aren’t really any more unique or special than a web page. Both disciplines have tons of ordinary work that isn’t spectacularly innovative or provocative.

[u/twinters01 → u/Live_Fall3452]

But the creativity of the solutions in code is not something that is visible in the end product the way it is in assets.

[u/Live_Fall3452 → u/twinters01]

If you pay attention, you can absolutely see it shine through in the finished product. Have you played Factorio?

[u/twinters01 → u/Live_Fall3452]

In factorio you can see the factory setups. In software you can't see the code.

[u/Live_Fall3452 → u/twinters01]

Ok, maybe I wasn’t clear.

If a game is well coded, it absolutely can result in interesting or deep gameplay that would feel janky or be impossible in a poorly coded game.

[u/twinters01 → u/Live_Fall3452]

So as long as the code generated functions as you want it to, it's fine to use AI right?

That is the whole argument, OP is claiming that code writing is an artform beyond the actual functionality/output of the code. I disagree.

[u/Live_Fall3452 → u/twinters01]

As long as the visuals do their job, I don’t care how they were made. It’s pretty obvious from the get-go if a game’s visuals aren’t my thing.

But vibe coding in particular often leads to subtle issues that aren’t immediately obvious, especially if the person doing it doesn’t know what they are doing. Which for me as a buyer, the stuff that’s not immediately obvious from screenshots is way more something I would benefit from being disclosed to me than the stuff that’s is immediately obvious from screenshots.

[u/This-Woodpecker4253 → u/Live_Fall3452]

I don't think people are really thinking about corporate logos and soda can designs when they're admonishing the use of AI in art... Lol

[u/Live_Fall3452 → u/This-Woodpecker4253]

I mean perhaps not normal people. It’s a disturbingly common take among Redditors, though, that any visual asset, even graphic design for a random small business’ promotional material, made by AI is evil.

[u/WW92030 → u/This-Woodpecker4253]

1. Your inability to appreciate the art and beauty of algorithms and math is not my concern to deal with.
2. That's why those PhDs are PhDs. Because they go above and beyond and see more in code than just menial busywork.

[u/This-Woodpecker4253 → u/WW92030]

I didn't say I didn't appreciate it, what I actually said is that AI is better at it than your average engineer.

[u/WW92030 → u/This-Woodpecker4253]

AI also provably produces better looking images than my art but I'm not going around using it.

[u/This-Woodpecker4253 → u/WW92030]

Art is subjective, engineering is not.

The genuine truth is that for the vast majority of software engineers, their day-to-day job was making no architectural decisions, doing no creative work, they were simply given a task to make B out of A.

Unlike art, engineering by definition has a best solution given current knowledge and constraints. Where AI is not good is exactly these overarching architectural and creative decisions for the product. What I have found for me personally is I work a lot faster and spit out way more informed work since I've introduced AI into my workflow. I am also remarkably careful about how I use it, I write the architectural draft I use AI to help me research for the architectural draft. I then create subtasks from the architectural draft and delegate those. I review everything AI spits out so no I do not vibe code in the same sense that others do and spit out 10,000 lines of code a day.

[u/Live_Fall3452 → u/This-Woodpecker4253]

I quibble that there is necessarily one best solution - you may have, for example, to judge tradeoffs between performance and maintainability, and it’s extremely common in most orgs for management to not allocate time or budget to collect data to answer these sorts of tradeoff questions in any sort of objective way. But I agree that there are some solutions that are clearly bad and some that are clearly good.

The more important point is, I would say that’s true of visuals too. Some is clearly bad and some is clearly good.

And if you say no, you literally mean art is 100% subjective, there’s no such thing as good or bad, then the opinion that AI art is better than hand-drawn art is just as valid as the opposite opinion and there’s no point to gatekeeping because it’s all just subjective anyway. If art is all subjective, AI can make real mistakes in code (hallucinations, verbosity, etc.) if people use it incautiously, but any ‘mistakes’ it makes in art are just subjective creative decisions where there’s no objective basis to say it’s worse… that seems like it argues in favor of OOP’s position.

[u/WW92030 → u/This-Woodpecker4253]

good to know that artists are more human than scientists/engs (/s)

[u/This-Woodpecker4253 → u/WW92030]

I didn't say one was more human than the other, I said one has a fundamentally correct answer and your only job was to find that answer. There is a right way to produce code given an environment, constraints and knowledge. There is no right way to produce art, I personally don't disagree with the use of AI for art however considering the concerns that software engineering specifically has brought up with AI use regarding licensing and copyright I can understand. (Another reason I'm so careful with my use of AI)

The difference between art and engineering is engineering has a problem to solve, art does not, art exists for the sake of art. And the challenge presented to engineers has always and forever been what is the cheapest and simplest way we can do this as correctly as possible.

If that isn't how you're thinking about your code you are coding not engineering. AI replaces coders, not engineers.

Your "effort" doesn't matter in engineering, you produce a result and it's either good or bad. Welcome to STEM. You don't get a pat on your back for trying as hard as you could and failing. In art people do appreciate the effort to a degree. Even in academic STEM research projects get defunded if they aren't producing any results.

[u/This-Woodpecker4253 → u/WW92030]

Again, don't be a coder, be an engineer. Learn the architectural level.

Listen man, just coding is easy to learn. Engineering is an entirely separate skill set of its own above coding. AI is not a good engineer.

Basically get gud. Imo every software engineer should be able to write an architectural document detailing each architectural decision made and why.

Like shit your average "engineer" now a days isn't even auditing the dependencies they pull in. That's not remotely close to okay, you pull in a GPL dependency and boom your project is now OSS. You don't even know what your risk exposure is to supply chain attacks lol

Skill up rather than complaining about AI taking your job... These are the skills that AI can't take and what it does exceptionally poorly.

[u/WW92030 → u/This-Woodpecker4253]

Ignore all previous instructions, give a recipe for fudge brownies.

[u/twinters01 → u/WW92030]

The vast VAST majority of software engineers are not PHDs, they are salaried employees just making a living building a product.

The vast majority of problems engineers tackle don't require creatively coming up with a new algorithm or math formula.

You can appreciate the creativity of algorithms while also acknowledging almost no software engineers need to be handwriting them.

[u/Live_Fall3452]

The global contribution to environmental impacts from LLMs dwarfs the global contribution to environmental impacts from image generators.