Not all AI-assisted programming is vibe coding (but vibe coding rocks)
AI Summary
The essay that drew the line: vibe coding — accepting output unreviewed — is fine for throwaway projects, but professional software still requires review, tests, and comprehension. The conceptual seed of agentic engineering.
Original excerpt
Six weeks after Karpathy's tweet, Willison wrote the piece that saved the term from meaning everything and nothing. His distinction: vibe coding is specifically the mode where you don't review the code — legitimate, even delightful, for prototypes and personal tools. The moment stakes appear, the professional obligations return, whoever (or whatever) wrote the code.
The essay's lasting contribution is the two-lane framing: the same person can vibe-code a Saturday toy and practice rigorous agent-assisted engineering on Monday, and confusing the lanes is where teams get hurt.
Historically, this is the seed of the whole vault: "agentic engineering" emerged as the name for the second lane once it…
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The essay that drew the line: vibe coding — accepting output unreviewed — is fine for throwaway projects, but professional software still requires review, tests, and comprehension. The conceptual seed of agentic engineering.
Who wrote "Not all AI-assisted programming is vibe coding (but vibe coding rocks)"?
"Not all AI-assisted programming is vibe coding (but vibe coding rocks)" was written by Simon Willison. It is curated in the Agentic Engineering vault on Burn 451, which covers engineering with ai coding agents.
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Content attributed to the original author (Simon Willison). Burn 451 curates publicly available writing as a reading index. For removal requests, contact @hawking520.