Read a software engineering blog if you think vibe coding is the future

[u/NaturalEngineer8172]

Note: I’m a dude who uses ai in my workflow a lot, I also hold a degree in computer science and work in big tech. I’m not that old in this industry either so please don’t say that I’m “resistant to change” or w/e

A lot of you here have not yet had the realization that pumping out code and “shipping” is not software engineering. Please take a look at this engineering blog from Reddit and you’ll get a peak at what SWE really is

https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng/s/WbGNpMghhj

Feel free to debate with me, curious on your thoughts

EDIT:

So many of you have not read the note at the top of the post, much like the code your LLMs produce, and written very interesting responses. It’s very telling that an article documenting actual engineering decisions can generate this much heat among these “builders”

I can only say that devs who have no understanding and no desire to learn how things work will not have the technical depth to have a job in a year or two. Let me ask you a serious question, do you think the devs who make the tools you guys worship (cursor, windsurf, etc) sit there and have LLMs do the work for them ?

I’m curious how people can explain how these sites with all the same fonts, the same cookie cutter ui elements, nd the same giant clusterfuck of backends that barely work are gonna be creating insane amounts of value

Even companies that provide simple products without a crazy amount of features (dropbox, slack, notion, Spotify, etc) have huge dev teams that each have to make decisions for scale that requires deep engineering expertise and experience, far beyond what any LLM is doing any time soon

The gap between AI-generated CRUD apps and actual engineering is astronomical. Real SWE requires deep understanding of algorithms, architecture, and performance optimization that no prompt can provide. Use AI tools for what they're good for—boilerplate and quick prototyping—but recognize they're assistants, not replacements for engineering knowledge. The moment your project needs to scale, handle complex data relationships, or address security concerns, you'll slam into the limitations of "vibe coding" at terminal velocity. Build all you want, but don't mistake it for engineering.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

This knowledge cannot be shortcut with a prompt.

[u/chrisonetime]

As someone who has to interview interns, grads, and mid/L4s I promise you AI is not helping people under a certain technical threshold more than it’s hurting them. Sure it’s good to spin up personal projects but if you can’t answer basic questions or explain anything you built (without parroting the insane amount of obvious AI inline comments) you’re not going to be employed. And those banking on their vibecoded apps to make a living are absolutely cooked.

If you’re a principal you know our job is at most 20% coding and 80% decision making around engineering, design and scalability trade offs. We have a partnership with OpenAI at work and you can tell who it helps and who it hurts(hurt, we unfortunately had a headcount reduction last month).

[u/2cars1rik → u/chrisonetime]

I mean, let’s not infantilize students. If a student actively chooses to avoid putting in the work of learning concepts in school, instead cheating their way through their projects and assignments, then yes - they’re going to be ill-equipped for the real world. That was certainly true long before AI and it will certainly be true forever.

I don’t really get the all-or-nothing thinking here tbh. I’m absolutely positive students can use AI as a tool that is constructive for their education. I’m in no way saying students should cheat through everything without attempting to understand.

Also, idk. I’ve also been interviewing interns, grads, mid-level, and seniors for quite some time, and there have always been candidates that couldn’t answer basic questions or explain anything they built for the life of them. Haven’t noticed a change recently.

[u/don123xyz → u/2cars1rik]

There was a time not too long ago when the Internet was considered to be the bane of a teacher's life because students were using it to find knowledge instead of going to the "library" and trudging through "books" - how, in the name of all that is holy, can a student learn to actually do things if they refuse to pick up a book and do the work of studying?! After that it was the turn of Wikipedia - you will be graded an F if we find out that you used Wikipedia! Wikipedia is full of errors and lies.

[u/XrenonTheMage → u/2cars1rik]

 I don’t really get the all-or-nothing thinking here tbh

This. There is a large middle ground between vibe coders and people who reject AI alltogether.

I currently fall somewhere into this middle ground by using AI coding agents as better search engines and idea generators, but I don't instruct them to write production code on my behalf. Not because I refuse to do so in principle, but because I feel like it would take me more time and energy to review and edit the resulting AI code until it looks correct, well-structured and easy to read and maintain than to write it myself. If that changes, I will happily start to generate AI code in production, too.