In addition to Linus Torvalds’ recent comments around AI tooling documentation, it turns out in fact that Linus Torvalds has been using vibe coding himself. Over the holidays Linus Torvalds has been working on a new open-source project called AudioNoise that was started with the help of AI vibe coding.
Over the winter holidays, Linus Torvalds routinely works on new hobbies and the like. Last year he started creating his own guitar pedals as a hobby. Or as he put it back in the Linux 6.13-rc7 announcement, “LEGO for grown-ups with a soldering iron.”
If there’s anyone I trust to think critically about the output of an LLM it’s Linus. The main problem with vibe coding is when people never review the output and just let the AI go wild without understanding what just happened.
This is why I’d just call it programming with AI tools and not “vibe coding”
The distinction is important. Using AI tools implies you check and verify the output. Vibecoding is not doing that or having no idea what is happening.
@exu @tangonov To be fair, vibecoding is doing that, it is just that many people are too lazy to even vibecode properly.
Its doing the job of a code review alongside putting the program together. The parts the AI cannot get right need to be written yourself. AI really speeds up tedium for me but every line of code has to be read carefully. If the “vibe” is having to do the work anyway, then it’s vibe coding. I do like the speed boost I get for my 7 cents per query. It’s like I’m in my 30s without a kid again
AI assisted programming is good