Is "normal coding" ever coming back?
by•
I work at an early stage startup and I'd estimate 70-80% of our codebase is vibe coded (510k lines). To be clear, it's not 1 shot "build this feature." More like, "implement get_slim_documents for Jira in the exact same way we did it for the Confluence connector."
Comfort with AI coding tools is actually something we gauge during interviews/work trials. Looking at our peer companies, it's exactly the same.
My hypothesis/assertion is that companies founded ~2022+ are fundamentally intertwined with "vibe coding." In 5 years, programming will connote vibe coding more than it will connote non-AI assisted work.
Am I crazy? Pigeon-holed in the SF startup world? Naive? Would love to hear more thoughts/diverse perspectives on this.
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I don't think it's coming back. I think we'll continue to build tools to enable "vibe coding" (and high-quality code generation).
It's one of the main reasons we're building Airbolt - https://www.producthunt.com/products/airbolt-3
Onyx
@mark_watson_28 Kind of a funny/meta situation now where companies like yours are "democratizing the final frontier" of making the actual app!
@wenxi it's a strange time!
AI’s coding abilities have already gone beyond what humans can do in many situations. So yes, I don’t think we’ll be going back.
Of course, AI still sometimes writes incorrect code or overlooks unexpected security risks, but I believe it’s only a matter of time before those issues are addressed.
Cal ID
Writing every line by hand, from scratch, is fading, but it’s not disappearing.
Instead, coding is shifting toward a hybrid model – AI speeds up boilerplate, repeats patterns, and handles tedious work, but humans still guide and review. As you noticed, this is already the daily reality at companies founded after 2022.
But coding never really meant just writing code, it meant solving problems with tech. The best engineers now are the ones who ask the right questions, explain complex logic, and untangle the twisted edge cases, not just type fast.
Vibe coding might dominate headlines, but deep down, building real products still requires a balance.
So yes, AI is the new normal for coding, but coding itself is evolving, not ending.
The day a vibe coding tool can produce from start to finish a full stack app production-commercial ready app by someone with no coding ,technical background whatsoever but has become an expert with vibe coding tools might just be the new next generation of developers. Its an unstoppable force that i think will revolutionize the industry and seasoned developers will have to adapt and embrace the change to keep up. Just a thought...
To this day i don't use any vibe coding tools but i have thought about it to speed up development like proto types from concept to at least working and take care of the rest on my own.
Interesting - So about 400K lines of code were AI (Vibe Coded)?
Can I ask - how much of human interaction has gone into architecture, data, ops, and testing, too, please? Also, if you dont mind, what industry does the startup cater for?
This might be a classic comment but I think that older companies still need the human touch as AI still cannot control fully over these ginormous code bases. However, as you mentioned, the newer companies might go 70-80% percent AI as these tools save so much time it is unreal. Besides, I believe the generated code still needs a check because we all know they can hallucinate so bad 😅