Andrej Karpathy’s post:

There’s a new kind of coding I call “vibe coding”, where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It’s possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I barely even touch the keyboard. I ask for the dumbest things like “decrease the padding on the sidebar by half” because I’m too lazy to find it. I “Accept All” always, I don’t read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I’d have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can’t fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. It’s not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I’m building a project or webapp, but it’s not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.

Up until a few months ago, I would have just laughed at this. Now this gives me pause. I have begun seeing enough examples at work where people, if not completely “vibe coding”, have been getting 80% of their work done by LLMs. This is not yet true for changes made to our core services because of inherent complexity and scope. How long is the “not yet” going to remain valid for? There is so much work in the software industry, where vibe coding can competently accomplish things today.

This brings up parallels to how the textile industry automation obliterated the traditional craftsmen’s livelihood in the UK in 19th century. The scary thing about LLMs is that they can be trained and applied in most industries eventually. It’s all happening in the knowledge industry now, but the next step is most certainly advanced robotics (humanoid or otherwise) and automation of manual labour in all forms. With the continuous and fast-paced improvements in LLMs, the computers could simply iterate and program the robots. We might soon be living in Asimov’s world.