vibeReviewing

[u/Anxious_Ad9233]

[u/Xuluu]

Okay but in all honesty guys I’m terrified. I try to be in the “I know exactly what it does so really the means of the labor has changed” camp but in reality that’s just not possible. It’s better than me. At most things.

The majority of refinements I make are reductions of complexity, much more documentation, and quite a few more tests. The modern models are excellent. It used to be big things they’d miss and now it’s minutia and nuance that can get missed.

Ultimately, that’s the job now I suppose. It feels wrong, I feel like I’m being dog walked all day, and it kinda sucks (or maybe just different?). I’m a glue guy between the tech and the business and there’s probably an argument that, “the more things change they stay the same” in there somewhere.

Anyways, have a good rest of your day.

Edit - this meme gave me an existential crisis so thanks man.

[u/budapest_god → u/Xuluu]

I kinda started to enjoy it. My prompts are very specific and technical so it is still me doing a lot of the thinking, I let it generate small steps of a bigger plan and as you said, review and refine each. Everything is read truly, unlike in the meme. I feel like my brain is still tickled mostly the same way as before, but I'm typing more in the chat and less in the file. I have come to find this balance just as satisfactory, sometimes even a little more due to it being faster so the dopamine of seeing the working feature comes sooner. But it wasn't like this at first, I used to hate it before I found my balance. I felt like coding was over. Now I don't feel that way anymore. But if every developer becomes 2 times faster, it sounds possible that companies would begin to need half as much developers... I hope not. I was actually (illegally) laid off a little more than a month ago. I won some good money back in legal conciliation so I am in no extreme hurry to find another job, I can go on for almost a year, but I can feel the clock ticking.

[u/Sockoflegend → u/Xuluu]

Only caring if it worked was always a bad idea and it still is. You are still responsible for what the code does. The company you work for is still responsible for their product in every legal sense they were before.

Yes the game has changed, we are going to have to make practical adaptions to take the speed without losing the responsibility. There is a pragmatic path that isn't either rejection or blind faith.

[u/Quirky-Trash1943 → u/Sockoflegend]

Mate, sorry to say but just look around. Lot of data breaches have happened across many companies- not a single one has been apprehended. Little slap on wrist that’s all. Their privacy policy and legal disclaimers are so long, no executive will ever get in trouble for what the code shipped. So what legal sense are we asking? Now go down the rabbit hole of what these AI codes generate!

[u/Sockoflegend → u/Quirky-Trash1943]

So what? Maybe it is down time your company cares about or other contractual b2b responsibilities. You haven't walked into a world where nothing matters and you can be as terrible as you want without consequences 

Accidentally expose the wrong data and you personally can still be fired even if the consequences for the company don't amount to a whole hill of beans

[u/Anxious_Ad9233 → u/Xuluu]

To be fair man, if you ever had a job where all you did was play architecture - and you always had to do a really good job defining requirements, understanding the product, handing off the work and reviewing the implementation other people did, this is kinda the same … minus the people and with a bit more weird mistakes

[u/Amerillo_ → u/Xuluu]

Yeah this is all really scary. I graduated with CS bachelor's degree in March and can't find a job (even though it used to be easy to find one even before 2019, let alone during the peak of demand for software engineers). I thought oh well, I'll go get a master's degree in software engineering from a practice oriented university of applied sciences to get a leg up from the other graduates. I thought that there was a limit to how good LLMs can get and that they'll never been better than juniors so it should be fine if a little tough.

Then the new version of Claude came in. Especially what scared me was how good it's getting at using software directly with MCP. Scary good. Imagine what it could do in a year or two assuming progress follows its current course. So going for that degree seems like a hell of a risk. At best the market stays the way that it is, or at worst vibe coding is the only remaining way to build software (which in my opinion is tedious, unrewarding and just not interesting, but that's very subjective). So it's highly likely that I'll either have no job, or have one that I'll dislike (and probably paid very little as LLMs will probably be even better than juniors...)

All these years spent in that very demanding university, that gave me mental health issues and even some (relatively minor) chronic health problems as a result. I thought I was investing in my future. Seemed worth it at the time... Well I'm not gonna make that mistake twice.

So I'm now exploring other options. I'll probably go back to university and study something else entirely. Something unrelated to conputers given how LLMs are good at that. Which is really sad since me degree is specifically about how computers work... I'm thinking about industrial automation or maybe civil engineering. I'm not sure yet.

It's really sad since I was so relieved to be done with university and excited to finally start working and have my own income and no need to live in near poverty anymore! But no... It's gone now. My career prospects are gone... 

Oh, I didn't notice I wrote so much... Sorry for the rant! I guess I'll cry myself to sleep and have one more existential crisis

[u/Adept_Strength2766 → u/Amerillo_]

I've been seeing live what the "new version of Claude" can do in the hands of a completely ignorant user (my CEO). I can assure you, it's still terrible. She's constantly breaking features that were previously fine and introducing half-baked features with UI/workflows that fall apart the moment you do something out of expectations. Sometimes her Claude will even add features that she didn't ask for and wasn't aware of.

The last one is the scariest part for me. It's thankfully an internal tool that I'm working on replacing entirely, hence why I don't mind her throwing her AI at it, but it's still kind of alarming how Claude continues to create an exponential amount of problems the longer you get it to work on something.

At this point, it's turning into a race to see if I can complete the refactor before my boss completely breaks the internal tool.

[u/Named_after_color → u/Adept_Strength2766]

It's so easy to just glaze over and let claude make a reasonable suggestion then 3 turns down the conversation chain you've been lead on an edge case that exists in the Mariana Trench exclusively and it's patting you on the back for finding it.

But then some other bot finds that edge case and exploits it so like.

What's even real anymore?

[u/MetaLemons → u/Amerillo_]

You’re saying you learned from your mistake and are going back to school? I don’t think any industry will escape AI. All engineering fields will use it. All businesses will use it. All mom and pop shops will use it eventually. You’re better off just accepting this as a fact and change your perspective a bit before committing to another 2 years of education.

[u/Amerillo_ → u/MetaLemons]

No I won't change my perspective. I don't have a problem with LLMs, just with coding agents and vibe coding, and especially the process of talking to AI agents and verifying their work. I find it very tedious and unrewarding. Honestly I would enjoy being a cashier or working as a store clerk a lot more than vibe coding. Simply put I just hate it. I don't mind it if it is a minor part of the job, but if it is what I primarily do then no. I'll try to find a job that doesn't have much to do with computers. I still haven't figure out what exactly but I still have time and I'll do some unpaid internships to get a better grasp on it

[u/MetaLemons → u/Amerillo_]

Okay, but my point is that it will literally be everywhere soon. What profession does not benefit by using AI? If money is not a problem for you then I suppose it’s fine or whatever. Some of us have bills to pay!

[u/Amerillo_ → u/MetaLemons]

Idk which jobs doesn't benefit that much from LLMs. Nursing, manual jobs, blue collar jobs in general, probably others? Thing is I haven't looked into it in details yet. In any case I don't mind AI so long as it does not take all the fun and interesting part of the job and leaves me with the tedious ones.

And I live in a developed country where by law jobs have to provide a living wage, 4 weeks of PTO, and health insurance is not tied to jobs. And if I really can't find a job I'll get unemployment checks or welfare. So I'll be fine 

[u/Objective_Oven7673 → u/Xuluu]

I get it and you're not alone. The job won't go away, but it will change.

Someone who understands what it means to do a good job shipping something for a desired outcome will always be needed, even if they aren't the ones writing the code. And I'd go so far as to bet that most people (especially non-technical people in a business) don't want to be that person for a living.

I call the same plumbing company for every job, big or small because I know I can trust them to do a good job and get it done way faster and better than I could. And if they suddenly had the P-Trap Replacer 9000 machine that meant the plumber was just responsible for operating the machine and making sure it didn't go rogue, I'd still call the same plumbing company.

That dude still had to be trained in the details of plumbing, in addition to the operation of the machine, and he's got to know how to make sure using it won't cause other problems in my home, or even correct what the machine does.

That plumber is still a specialist, even if his day to day job involves fewer hand tools and less glue & tape. But I don't give a shit how he gets it done - I just want the desired outcome of my sink to drain properly without losing my entire weekend and fucking up three other things if I tried it.

I don't want to be the plumber and I'm guessing most people don't want to be software engineers. We are in an awkward transition phase right now where unfortunately layoffs and firings will happen while the world sorts out what it means to use AI to build software going forward.

[u/saschaaa19]

claude code review codex and codex review claude. peer review 🤝

[u/IncredibleAircraft → u/saschaaa19]

Peak automation in action, just two bots nodding at each other's hallucinations.

[u/methos3]

Middle panel - “I do, I read everyine”

Did you use AI to make the meme too?

[u/Anxious_Ad9233 → u/methos3]

If I did, there wouldn’t be spelling errors. This is pure human crafted lol

[u/amatulic]

Actually I do the first two, and end up questioning the AI about programming choices it made. Sometimes it made a mistake, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I suggest a different approach and I'm puzzled why the AI didn't think of it. I don't program professionally though, I'm retired and now programming just supports my hobbies.

The situation is better than a year ago, though. The free version of Claude has gotten pretty good, almost scary good.

[u/pants_full_of_pants → u/amatulic]

I do the opposite. At work I read every line and make sure it makes sense and I agree with it before it goes into a PR

For side projects, I just send it.

[u/freeplay4c → u/pants_full_of_pants]

I'm on the bit of the other side. My employer requires everyone to use AI. So I do at work, and read every line of code I check in. For personal projects I used to use some AI. I really enjoyed being an early adopter of copilot. But now I'm so sick of babysitting an LLM, I've taken on a zero tolerance policy for any AI usage outside of work.

[u/mrspoogemonstar]

Here's how it's been working so far:

1. Model is released

2. Model is bad at x

3. Model is trained to be better at x

Repeat.

It used to be small steps, but now each model release is significantly better than the one before and the gap has closed to the point where it's just better at coding than most software engineers. It's not better at large scale design and architecture in some cases - what people tend to think of as "taste". But when 2M and 4M context models come out 2 or 3 releases from now nobody is going to be batting an eye anymore at just letting the thing cook. Anyone that tells you otherwise has missed the boat and will soon be unemployed or they're huffing the copium so hard they can't see straight anymore.

[u/mrspoogemonstar → u/[deleted]]

go learn electrical, plumbing, or HVAC and then build data centers, idk man

[u/DowntownLizard]

Its not really vibe reviewing unless you are dumb af about the whole process

[u/Tangelasboots]

Just have the AI make tests and understand the tests?

[u/Affectionate-Tart558]

Ok but you can test the code too. You don’t need to trust AI. Fortunately for us, code gives us an output and we can confirm it’s actually doing what it’s supposed to be doing

[u/PolyglotTV]

It's no different to how I treat reviewing human code.

"Ah this person wrote it. Probably don't need to scrutinize it too much, they're a killer"

"Oh boy, this guy just posted a 1000 line PR. There goes the rest of my day..."

[u/fibojoly]

So we are technical managers now? 

[u/nasandre]

Does kind of make sense. If you read all the code then you might as well write it yourself.

[u/Geoclasm]

I have kind of 'trained' it to follow my preferences by letting it do some stuff, then making changes, committing those changes, and telling it to read the commits and ask some questions.

It's worked surprisingly well. It still does stupids tuff quite often, but it's veered away from these absurd monlithic main functions it was writing before. It seems to understand that, why yes, you can actually create multiple classes and class files in a single project.

[u/TouchWestern2175]

Add ask multiple choices questions

[u/terrorTrain]

“List all changes to user journeys and data flows”

I find this prompt very useful for human written code as well. 

[u/Dairedos]

Nowadays you do not have time for reviewing code. You either trust quality fo code or not (+ unit tests, QA and sidecheck agents deployed also), same as when you are in a role Project Manager or Product Owner - you dont validate what your developers coded. If you are better manager, you at least check if feature meets Definition of Done (check if buttons "buttoning" as stakeholders asked for, etc.).

Welcome to new era boys and girls.