Vibe coding is a term coined by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy. With it, one focuses on the idea rather than the code and builds something out of it. While vibe coding is popular among coders and non-coders, the phrase ‘Vibe debugging’ is catching up.
Debugging is Becoming More Important With Vibe Coding
A coder on Reddit shared with AIM that after starting to code with Claude Sonnet 3.5 without having an idea about coding, the person realised that half of the implementations used were not functional for their project and hence fixing those issues became a prime concern.
“In the end, debugging is still necessary, as LLMs will get into, or you’ll hit a wall where they cannot fix a bug,” the Redditor added. “Having a human who knows what they’re doing and can find the source of the issue is still paramount, as LLMs can spin in circles infinitely without any idea that they’re attempting to fix the wrong part of the codebase.”
Meanwhile, Nitin Rai, an AI engineer, told AIM that if one is not a developer, they should be aware of the potential pitfalls, as vibe debugging is 10x more frustrating than regular debugging. “Being dependent on LLM’s Output, we don’t form a mental model of how data flows, how it’s transformed, and where and when something breaks. It’s too late,” Rai said.
‘Vibe Coding Isn’t Perfect’
Vibe coding has made code accessible to a larger audience, including the ones without any technical knowledge, and empowered them to build various applications and games.
However, Reddit has been exploding with threads citing concerns associated with it. To start with, a Reddit user posted, “Forget Vibe coding. Vibe debugging is the future. Create 20,000 lines in 20 minutes, spend 2 years debugging.”
Among the reactions to the Reddit threads, users have improvised the term with funny takes like “spookghetti code”, and “vibeghetti code”.
In a Reddit thread, a user stated, “Vibe coding is the future unless you need to do vibe maintenance.”
Another user encourages using AI models like Claude as your co-pilot and not your autopilot. One needs to read and understand the code. Otherwise, the vibe check might be a reason for the server meltdown.
In the same thread, the original poster highlighted that vibe coding is risky in a production environment. At the same time, the user mentioned that it is a personal decision, but proper logging and tests may be necessary to keep things in control.
With many people jumping into code with the help of AI, the focus on debugging is crucial as more code goes into production. Also, per a report, the debugging and error detection function segment is also set to grow at 24.2% CAGR by 2030.
Mohmoud Zareef, GenAI software engineer at TestOne Teknoloji Çözümleri, told AIM that he hates the phrase “vibe coding” or “vibe debugging.” He believes it implies that developers who can code and utilise AI are not true developers, adding unnecessary stigma and making programming appear inferior.
On the same note, Zareef added that some AI-generated coding bugs are simple, while some are pretty complicated. “I find learning how to use AI well makes it much easier to decrease the number of bugs; for example, always ask AI not to oner engineer,” he said. “Reading the documentation or searching online can save hours of wrestling with the AI to fix a bug.”
