> The Stanford professor and former Google Brain scientist said the term misleads people into imagining engineers just "go with the vibes" when using AI tools to write code.
This is exactly what is happening.
I think HE doesn't understand what vibe coding means.
Vibe coding is NOT "AI-assisted coding", it is letting the AI do everything with 0 checks beyond manually validating surface-level functionality and passing back the obvious issues to the AI.
That was the original intent, but now vibe coding is exactly synonymous with AI-assisted coding with the public at large. That's probably irreversible, and it's what Ng is highlighting.
How depressing. I sure hope it's not irreversible, but I feel it will be, because the number of novice "vibe coders" out there severely outweighs the number of experienced programmers.
I think Rick Rubin has it right that this is a kind of "punk" coding and I think vibe coding is actually a good term in that regard.
This rings especially true for me as a non-software engineer that took decades to appreciate punk music. I grew up on "virtuoso" shred guitar music and jazz. "A real musician spends hours a day in the woodshed learning their craft. Not just anyone can pick up a guitar and start making music."
I think the analogy also works because the virtuoso had a huge leg up on the untrained musician if they also decided to make simpler music.
On a longer time frame with the analogy, the next fed chairman obviously will not have a degree in clarinet from Juilliard like 99 year old Alan Greenspan.
This is exactly what is happening.
I think HE doesn't understand what vibe coding means.
Vibe coding is NOT "AI-assisted coding", it is letting the AI do everything with 0 checks beyond manually validating surface-level functionality and passing back the obvious issues to the AI.