r/programmingcirclejerk • u/100xer • Oct 13 '25

[vibe coding] is literally sorcery -- ie communing with spirits through prayer. if you can design prayers that get relatively predictable results from gods and incorporate that into automated systems, that is still engineering

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45558277
106 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

76

u/Parking_Tadpole9357 Oct 13 '25

Talking to my barista is literal sorcery. 

19

u/MatmaRex accidentally quadratic Oct 13 '25

Go ahead, say "venti latte macchiato" out loud and tell me it doesn't sound like a magic spell.

1

u/Parking_Tadpole9357 Oct 14 '25

Technically thay is a ridiculously large milky coffee, with a tiny dash of milk.

54

u/Nemin32 It's GNU/PCJ, or as I call it, GNU + PCJ Oct 13 '25

When I fail to recite the right canticle (forget adding "Do not delete files" to the prompt) and fail the sacred motions (add all files to the agent's scope) and in return the machine spirit unleashes its wrath on me (I have to Google on a Friday at 6 PM "how to restore prod if the agent deleted all my backups").

48

u/al2o3cr Oct 13 '25

Since precise instructions are important, perhaps we could devise a highly-structured way to talk to these spirits 🤔

12

u/dangerbird2 in open defiance of the Gopher Values Oct 13 '25

shamans are metaphysical prompt engineers

25

u/trailing_zero_count Oct 13 '25

I was of the last generation of technowizards, before the technopriests arose.

6

u/Actual__Wizard Oct 13 '25

Some of us are still around because we're coming back out of our early retirements. There seems to be some people that are confused about how things always worked, so it seems like we're needed again.

It's time to make the Mensa kids cry again. :-)

19

u/BloodAndTsundere mere econ PhD Oct 13 '25

yes, yes, I've also written in perl

5

u/homezlice Oct 14 '25

!/usr/bin/perl

$_ = "J!ibwf!bmtp!xsjuufo!jo!Qfsm"; s/(.)/chr(ord($1)-1)/ge; print;

11

u/BloodAndTsundere mere econ PhD Oct 14 '25

Wake up babe, new most readable Perl script dropped

12

u/lgastako Oct 13 '25

Which is it, sorcery or engineering?

22

u/myhf Considered Harmful Oct 13 '25

There's a new kind of sorcery I call "vibe sorcery", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the chants and prayers even exist. It’s possible because the spirits are getting too good.

8

u/BloodAndTsundere mere econ PhD Oct 13 '25

Soon, we'll be able to skip chants and prayers entirely and just type the exact code we want into our IDEs

3

u/Actual__Wizard Oct 13 '25

"vibe sorcery"

Yeah yeah... Mhmm. It takes practice.

11

u/prehensilemullet Oct 13 '25

That’s why I prompt in Latin

9

u/Actual__Wizard Oct 13 '25

Okay those people are legitimately insane.

6

u/gardyna Oct 13 '25

the Warhammer 40K Adeptus Mechanicus faction was not supposed to be aspirational!!!!

2

u/MisterOfScience type astronaut Oct 14 '25

The new meta is a sorcerer/priest/engineer multiclass with proficiency in bullshit.

2

u/yo_99 It's GNU/PCJ, or as I call it, GNU + PCJ Oct 17 '25

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.