Reverse Vibe Coding

“Vibe coding” is apparently the word of the year. It describes a programming practice where you tell an AI system what you want a program to do and then it writes the code for you. Then you test the code, it works perfectly, you embed it in a mission critical system and everyone lives happily ever after. Or not.

I’ve tried this a few times and what I end up doing is what I call “Reverse Vibe Coding”. I describe what I want, the AI makes something which mostly works. I describe what changes I think should be made to make it work properly, the AI then makes something new which may, or may not, be better. And then we repeat. There seem to be inflection points in the process where the AI can jump in massively the wrong direction and you have to kick it back on track. Rather than AI helping me solve my problem I end up helping AI solve its problems. This is kind of fun, but not usually very efficient. Although the AI probably learns a lot.