Domesticating AI: Why vibe coding feels like cheating

I’m ecstatic to report that Yaffle is now real and answers to "Hey Yaffle." The problem was that Yaffle first needed to learn its own name. I'd tried this before, and failed, and the result was simple: I stopped using it.

Teaching an AI assistant a custom wake word sounds like the sort of project you'd expect to find in the hands of a machine learning engineer. TensorFlow, speech datasets, model training – not exactly the sort of thing you'd tackle over a quiet weekend.

What Happened

Nor, I suspect, will one be turning up at my door to offer me a job. I started with Microsoft qualifications in the 1990s and have spent most of my career coaxing technology into doing useful things.

• Or perhaps, like every great leap in abstraction before it, it's simply another moment where technology changes who gets to create.

• AI didn't make me think like a programmer.

• Perhaps that's why it feels like cheating.

Key Details

I was happy enough with Notepad and HTML back in the day, but writing modern software? I'd been hearing the term "vibe coding," the latest catch-all phrase for building software by describing what you want an AI to do rather than writing.

• It's that, for the first time, millions of people can create software without first spending years learning the language of the machine.

• That's the remarkable thing about vibe coding.

• Every project simply led to the next one because the next problem suddenly looked solvable.

Why It Matters

The phrase has become almost as divisive as the technology behind it. Spend half an hour in Reddit's programming communities and you'll understand why.

• Before that I wanted a smarter lighting automation.

• I never woke up one morning thinking, "I'd like to become a software developer." I just wanted a better wake word than "OK Nabu." Before that I wanted a better Home Assistant dashboard.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by New Atlas as more details emerge