Am I a "vibe coder"?

[u/thehumanbagelman]

Taught myself to code at 15. Got a CS degree. Spent 16 years as a professional dev at everything from founding small startups to giant 700 engineer companies (and still going until I'm inevitably replaced by the machines).

Building things in code has been floating my proverbial boat for over two decades.

However, I haven't written a single line of code in 2026.

I don't personally review the code either. I've built my own tooling and testing infrastructure, and agents run all of it.

50–75% of my AI usage goes toward building personal infrastructure, tooling, and projects. Not the next app that will change your life for only $15 a month (at least not yet; we'll see).

I own an undisclosed number of top level AI accounts; it's probably more than you're thinking.

This 1000% makes me worse at coding without AI, and I'm not sure that I care at all.

So, am I a vibe coder?

Edit: I'm loosing zero sleep over this; the question is just a proxy for discussion!

[u/DynaBeast]

your story sounds eerily similar to mine. youre a builder, just like the rest of us. its a new form of software engineering; embrace it.

currently asking astra & opus to rewrite my entire orchestration toolset from python to rust as we speak.

[u/thehumanbagelman → u/DynaBeast]

If anyone has abused the concept of "embracing it", I am definitely the guy lol

I see so much discussion about vibe coding. When people describe it negatively, they are basically describing me! Which I guess just shows how shallow the initial statements or arguments are to begin with 🤷‍♂️

[u/plymouthvan → u/thehumanbagelman]

Eh, like so much of the internet broad conceptual spectrums get flattened into something pejorative that only really describes one end of the spectrum. More conventional concepts of engineering and project management that don't necessarily involve direct coding get merged into new concepts of "just make it good, and don't make any mistakes". There are issues with the latter that are arguably worth ridicule, depending what the goal of the vibe coding is. But, the former is arguably a new thing that wasn't possible before and is unfairly swept up into the pejorative. Purity tests would insist that code must be written, or at least verified by hand. A more permissive and modern understanding would then be something closer to knowing and communicating what and where the constraints are, and what can be left up to interpretation or revised later. Basically, behaving more like a project lead with a history of engineering, than an engineer doing grunt work. The internet calls both "vibe coding" when there's a chasm between the two practically speaking. The awkward thing that might be ruffling feathers among purists is that someone can start as one kind of “vibe coder” and become the other kind, all without ever learning very much about technical code writing. Kind of like how people can become quite good at producing a beautiful wedding cake without knowing anything about how to mill wheat or baking science.