Vibe coding vs agentic engineering

`0:49:09`

It does, because vibe coding to me smells exactly like script kiddies did in the early 2000s. People applying PHP scripts they just downloaded offline they don't understand anything of. And while, I mean, that's true in the sense that much of the vibe coding, including my own vibe coded projects, and as I just mentioned, I have several. I've written things in C++. I've written things in Rust. Rust. I hate Rust with a passion. Rust to me is like pouring acid in my eyes when I have to look at the code.

`0:49:43`

It is, in my opinion, the ugliest programming language-... that has been invented-... in probably the last 40 years.

`0:49:53`

... I've written applications in Rust because the output of Rust is actually amazing. The memory safety, the fact that it's a system language, the fact that it's highly efficient and so forth is incredible. So Rust, to me, can both be the most repugnant programming language ever devised for human consumption and a wonderful platform for agentic engineering. These two truths can coexist easily in my head.

`0:50:36`

I don't think we should reuse the term because for me, programming implies an understanding of certain primitives, loops, conditions, variables. All the constructs of programming languages are what constitutes programming itself, not the creation of programs. Because you could say in the pre- agentic era, well, your CEO is programming. He's hiring a bunch of programmers, he's telling them what to do, and out comes software that he can sell. Eh, I don't think most people would call that CEO a programmer, and I don't think we should call the vibe coder a programmer either. And vibe coding, if we define it here, is you tell an agent to build software for you. You do not look at the implementation. That, to me, is what separates vibe coding from programming or, let's say, agent- accelerated development.

`0:52:02`

I'm just gonna extend the pro case here a little bit just for the sake of the argument.

`0:52:07`

I actually think for a while it was to my deficit to know as much as I know about programming because I was instructing the agents to do things as I prescribed them to do, and they were very good at that. And in the first agentic moment, let's not call it an era, it was something that lasted three months. Moment. In the first agentic moment, that felt very productive. I could get more productivity out of telling the agents what to do in the way I would've done it, and I used all of my experience as a programmer to do just that. Then I was a little late on the next moment, and the next moment allowed me, allowed anyone, to describe outcomes-... to describe problems to the agents and get better solutions than if you had a programmer prescribe the path.

`0:53:16`

100%. And the reason I say that, let's define it here. The reason I say that is there's a lot of programmers who are not very good product managers. Software is product management. What should it do? Who should it do it for? How should it do it? How should it look? What are our priorities? What do we start with first? What does version one include? All of those skills are not easily or equally distributed across all programmers. And in the agentic era where you are letting an agent, an AI, do the implementation, these are the skills you need. And I happen to sit in both camps, and this is why I love this moment. I still get to live a little bit in the old world where I look at the full implementation because there are domains and areas where I feel that still brings value, and then I also live in the future. And as I said, when I created Omawrite, I've not looked at a single line of that C++. I actually made it a point to myself that I was gonna treat it as an experiment. This is 100% a black box. I will treat it as though I was any other user who had opinions about how their digital typewriter should work, and therefore felt like it was a fair experiment as if a writer of any other sort who had opinions about how software should be done and how it should work. As you mentioned, video editors who know exactly where they don't like what Adobe Premiere's doing and how it could be better, but don't have the capacities to improve it-... how that could be.