A Philosophy of Software Design

[Guillaume Piolat]

On Sunday, 24 May 2026 at 01:39:48 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
> I've not vibe coded enough to see it for myself, but I've been 
> told that AI generated code simply generates code until it 
> works. It doesn't do very well at managing complexity. 
> Something to watch out for.


My own understanding of it at the moment is that there are many 
shades of "vibey" AI usage:

- Code reviews: useful and often find small things, it kinda 
replaces linters and static analysis. Arguably LLMs are better at 
reading than writing. Bug finding can feel fresh if you already 
know it's an uninteresting bug.

- Constrained design: "do X using Y method". You tend to keep 
ownership and control of the design. Though the LLM may have to 
work more because of the constraints (such as : "use this 
language").

- Full vibecoding is the most strange, you tend to get a usable 
output though with objectionnable architecture and "debt". In 
this mode you don't even look at the code. At times, the LLM will 
suggest astoundingly bad ideas but mostly it will be quite good. 
Better when the LLM can assess results itself, lest it's 
bottleneck by doing QA and visual inspection. Essentially feels 
like product design and quality assurance. The bad side is that 
you get 0 ownership feel and no confidence it works beyond the 
tested cases.

The tools are made more dangerous because they encourage to not 
look at the code, and in organizations you can read a lot of 
horror stories.