"So why do you think a 10 kLoC vibecoded codebase will be any good engineering-wise?"

I've been coding a side-project for a year with full LLM assistance (the project is quite a bit older than that).

Basically I spent over a decade developing CAD software at Trimble and now have pivoted to a different role and different company. So like an addict, I of course wanted to continue developing CAD technology.

I pretty much know how CAD software is supposed to work. But it's _a lot of work_ to put together. With LLMs I can basically speedrun through my requirements that require tons of boilerplate.

The velocity is incredible compared to if I would be doing this by hand.

Sometimes the LLM outputs total garbage. Then you don't accept the output, and start again.

The hardest parts are never coding but design. The engineer does the design. Sometimes I pain weeks or months over a difficult detail (it's a sideproject, I have a family etc). Once the design is crystal clear, it's fairly obvious if the LLM output is aligned with the design or not. Once I have good design, I can just start the feature / boilerplate speedrun.

If you have a Windows box you can try my current public alpha. The bugs are on me, not on the LLM:

https://github.com/AdaShape/adashape-open-testing/releases/t...

Because a novel is about creative output, and engineering is about understanding a lot of rules and requirements and then writing logic to satisfy that. The latter has a much more explicitly defined output.

  Have you ever read a 200 page vibewritten novel and found it satisfying?

(The model was asked to generate a chapter at a time. At each step, it was given the full outline of the novel, the characters, and a summary of each chapter so far.)

I like this way of framing the problem, and it might even be a good way to self-evaluate your use of AI: Try vibe-writing a novel and see how coherent it is.

I suspect part of the reason we see such a wide range of testimonies about vibe-coding is some people are actually better at it, and it would be useful to have some way of measuring that effectiveness.

I wrote this a day ago but I find it even more relevant to your observation:

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I would never use, let alone pay for, a fully vibe-coded app whose implementation no human understands.

Whether you’re reading a book or using an app, you’re communicating with the author by way of your shared humanity in how they anticipate what you’re thinking as you explore the work. The author incorporates and plans for those predicted reactions and thoughts where it makes sense. Ultimately the author is conveying an implicit mental model (or even evoking emotional states or sensations) to the reader.

The first problem is that many of these pathways and edge cases aren’t apparent until the actual implementation, and sometimes in the process the author realizes that the overall product would work better if it were re-specified from the start. This opportunity is lost without a hands on approach.

The second problem is that, the less human touch is there, the less consistent the mental model conveyed to the user is going to be, because a specification and collection of prompts does not constitute a mental model. This can create subconscious confusion and cognitive friction when interacting with the work.

I don’t get the analogy because novel is supposed to be interesting. Code isn’t supposed to be interesting, it’s supposed to work.

If you’re writing novel algorithms all day, then I get your point. But are you? Or have you ever delegated work? If you find the AI losing its train of thought all it takes is to try again with better high level instructions.