Everyone is understandably using the black-box analogy to describe the problem with vibe-coding: you don't directly write the code yourself, so how can you understand and debug it? I find this persuasive, but am trying to see all sides. Is the vibers' counter-argument that:
- you simply keep iterating until the code does precisely what you want (tests presumably becoming critical)
- it's similar to most high-level language programmers anyway: their black box is compiled machine code
Fair?
@tomchadwin This gets to the difference between #Coding and #SoftwareEngineering
Software Engineering has writing code as only about 20% of the life-cycle. The rest is taken up with requirements analysis, specification, test specification, testing, and in-life maintenance.
If you put "black box code" into production, you deserve to be condemned to maintain it for decades!
Good code is simple to understand, so the next person can change it.
The next person is usually YOU.
@jamesderrick With respect, I'm not sure that counters my posited vibers' argument. To make future changes, prompt against the existing codebase.
Again, let me stress, I'm playing devil's advocate here. I'm very much of your view, but as I say, I'm trying to understand others'.
Tom Chadwin
James Derrick