'Vibe Coding' is Not "AI", It's a Sewer, It is Junk
Linus Torvalds was wrong. 'Vibe coding' isn't good for anything. "Code is a liability," as Cory Doctorow put it just 3 days ago.
Companies like Microsoft have long faced a crisis, so in order to fake their alleged "worth" they resorted to accounting fraud (not just circular financing or buying from oneself) and now they reclassify everything - even Office and GitHub - as "AI". This helps fake "growth" where none exists; previously they did the same thing with "cloud".
One day Office is "online" or "Office 360" or "Microsoft 360" or "cloud"... then it all becomes "AI" or "CoPilot" or whatever.
Are shareholders really gullible enough to fall for this?
They do the same with GitHub now [1, 2]. They pretend it has a bright economic future as a slop factory for lousy coders (Plagiarism-as-a-Service). Nothing could be further from the truth - for it is a massive liability - and Microsoft repotedly loses money on each paying "CoPilot" user.
Anyway, earlier today we cited this article about Torvalds:
The Register has reported on Torvalds's various comments on LLM-bot-assisted coding several times in recent years. In 2024, he said that 90 percent of AI marketing is hype. (To be honest, the Reg FOSS desk thinks that's generous: we'd be happy to learn it was as low as 90 per cent.) A year later, he commented that he was OK with vibe coding as long as it's not used for anything that matters, which was a little unexpected. The Reg's own Rupert Goodwins begged to differ, writing "Vibe coding: What is it good for? Absolutely nothing (Sorry, Linus)".
That last article is one that we linked to at the time (2 months ago), but let's parrot some bits from Rupert Goodwins. Remember he's very senior roles-wise (he ran ZDNet UK), he understands coding and GNU/Linux, and he seems to have read our site quite a few times (based on what he said).
This is what he said about Torvalds' apologetics at the time:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a singular project possessed of prospects is in want of a team. That team has to be built from good developers with experience, judgement, analytic and logic skills, and strong interpersonal communication. Where AI coding fits in remains strongly contentious. Opinion on vibe coding in corporate IT is more clearly stated: you're either selling the stuff or steering well clear.The reasons are simple. Code generation is sold on promises of fast results from natural language prompts, not requiring specialist knowledge of how code actually works. This much is somewhat true, and impressive two-minute demos, if well chosen, are certainly possible. In this respect, vibe coding is much like the low-code/no-code movement that's been around for 30 years.
[...]
Let's not get started on how you maintain a code base that no human has ever understood when your tools are constantly mutating. If there aren't many production apps under the low/no-code banner after 30 years, the prospects for vibe coding are dim indeed. Even if vibe coding fulfills its most basic function, of quickly producing a prototype model to explore ideas, it will hit the principle that prototypes can't be killed, instead mutating into monsters. Once something looks functional, the pressure from outside to build on it immediately is usually immense. That's bad enough in any environment, but the vibe really won't dig it, man.
[...]
If you don't know much about the realities of coding, vibe coding sounds great. That's one of generative AI's biggest risk factors, the ability to inspire confidence independent of reality. Likewise, if you remember the days when you didn't know much about coding, vibe coding sounds like a good way to help others take the same steps you did.
According to him, they're more or less recycling something that was already tried (it failed). This time they use another buzzword, of course with the exciting, daring term ("vibe") in it. The man who came up with it rejects it. It's a very dangerous approach and it's sold by "bros" who lie about what they have to offer. It's already a passing fad.
Some coders explore LLMs for code because of FOMO; some media sites get paid to participate in hype and convince clueless middle managers or even CEOs to replace programmers with slop. How wrong are they. █
Image source: September