this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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The problem isn't the tool; it's the lack of engineering foundations. Generalizing all AI-assisted development as 'vibe coding' is a massive oversimplification. There is a vast difference between a beginner blindly copy-pasting LLM output into a codebase they don’t understand, and a senior architect using LLMs as a high-powered assistant to speed up boilerplate, local schema generation, or parsing scripts. When you already know exactly how the underlying system operates, how memory is managed, and how to design clean software architectures, the LLM is just a productivity multiplier. You still design the data flow, audit the tool-use sandboxes, and review every single line of code. It doesn't replace thinking; it replaces tedious typing.
As a senior developer I have serious doubts about the whole thing. Yes, I don't do tedious typing anymore, now I do extremely tedious code review all day, my least favorite part of the job. And I have to be very vigilant because the AI is an idiot more often than not. Then when I finally publish my own code it's time to go review my colleagues' ai code and figure out what they missed in their review.
I don't feel much of a productivity multiplier. I'm not saying we won't get there, but this current iteration ain't it.
you are a senior developer, start to transform your view in a senior architect. With AI there's no more need of developers. An architect ius needed, and if it haas a solid dev backround as yours projects will change view. Technology is always changing and it's hard to stay at pace. But if you look from an higher perspective your project your experience will only help the AI to do the Job for you
lol no. this is what a mediocre dev thinks.
In your mental model, you can only become an architect if your artificial subordinate does its job properly. Unfortunately, it looks like the subordinate is an idiot, so your analogy just doesn't work.
I think in your mental model lies the very popular misconception that humans are any good at coding, and that architects were able to do their jobs because they were sitting on top of competent operators.
I'd argue that this is wholly untrue. In fact, for 30 years the software development field has produced mountains of sociology and processes designed to coerce good software out of idiots writing arbitrary code. Idiot subordinates is the baseline here, not an anomaly introduced by AI.
I'd even go further and say that current gen AI is marginally better than the average developer so as an architect you're still herding cats but the cats are marginally less crazy than they were, say, 10 years ago. The methods are roughly the same : deep roadmaps, shallow sprints, frequent iterations and constant supervision. It's not ideal but it has produced all the software known to man, including critical life-or-death stuff.
At least, human agents can take responsibility for their actions, and they learn. When they fail to do so, they get fired.
You're right, it's not only that the subordinate is an idiot. It's also a pathological liar that never learns and can't take the blame for their fuckups.
If a subordinate persistently sneaks in bad code despite being told not to, this is grounds for dismissal as far as I'm concerned.
It looks like you're attributing human intentions to a machine, that can't be healthy. You're also dismissing how humans routinely lie, deflect blame (especially when their job is at stake), or fail to learn for a myriad of valid reasons.
Agents don't "sneak in" bad code, or "lie". They get shit wrong sometimes, or they get lazy at the tail end of a long task, which are not categorically new things in software development. Even excellent engineers do it. If your only response to that is to say "yeah but i can fire them" then you are a bad lead. Just some corpo mid-manager eager to push blame and consequences at your underlings instead of creating a system that allows them to perform within their individual limitations.
You're right that they don't learn in that the model doesn't re-weight itself based on your feedback but that one is so trivially solved that it's not even a subject. Haven't you ever worked with brilliant stoner/creative types ? They forget shit all the time so you learn to write everything down and devise stratagems so the relevant information they keep forgetting is pushed to the front of their mind regularly. Well, i'd do that, but you'd just fire them on the spot i guess.
My point is : on the one hand you're overestimating the failure modes of AI, and on the other hand you're dismissing the failure modes of humans. With the added simplistic authoritarian thinking "i'd fire them anyways if they don't behave".
Being a good lead means knowing when someone's not going to cut it, and when to let them go to protect the rest of the team. My boss recently failed to do so, and 3 people got laid off as a result because the money spent on the rotten apple was used compensating for their lackluster output and could not be used to pay the good employees' salaries.
Additionally, it also means seeing through your colleagues' bullshit (blame deflection, deception) and reacting accordingly. And even when you see through the bullshit, you sometimes need to compromise and learn to tolerate it because the tradeoff is worthwile. Sometimes.
Thanks for judging my performance as a lead based on fuck all. Now, moving on the point at hand.
You're spot on when saying that LLMs are not human beings and don't have intentions. The truth is, I don't actually care. The tech is advertized as a replacement for human programmers, and I judge on its actions in that context.
Moving back to your point - you're right that it doesn't lie. It's an analogy. However, it gaslights like a pathological liar and does the things it's been specifically told to not do, and does so repeatedly. If a human acted similarly, it'd be gone without delay, even when omitting the quality issues it has which humans also have.
Agree. Using AI as a tool is very productive. On the other hand, letting AI drive everything is insanely time consuming and tiring work due to back & forth prompts.
The most important thing developers forget is planning. I am senior and used to delegate dev to Junior Devs. If you have not enough experience in software architecture you are missing the most important thig: You cannot start developing. You must start planning, first of all require your agent to plan the steps for the target mission. Than examine the plan produced, ask to divide int single in testable units. Most AI Vibe programmers start with develop directions. That is wrong. The longest part of the job is to prepare the Agent to perform correctly
I’ve found AI powered autocomplete suggestions is actually quite nice. The time save when it gets it right is sometimes significant, but the time lost when it gets it wrong is usually negligible.
good grief, AI powered autocomplete is so bad it slows down my development by an order of magnitude.
It's really set up for failure. It can only fall short of a deterministic, type-aware, contextual autocompletion, something IDEs have been supporting for like a decade.
Yeah, as soon as it was added I immediately saw a massive decrease in effectiveness. It starts by showing exactly what I want, then I hit tab and it autocompletes some bullshit that I do not want. I then have to undo and retype everything rather than using tab. It’s a insane failure of dev tooling.