I don't think people are talking about the least code possible, just not incredibly verbose and inefficient like what you get by default from llms.

For example I have a game I've been working on for a few years, I do stuff like "implement this simple psuedo physics system to make the bot follow the character like so...etc"

After some planning and back and forth.

It returns mostly working code a little odd on some edge case.

But as I've hand coded this thing for years. I could easily look at it. Laugh my ass off, it had multiple classes and around 1k lines of code, all kinds of crazy non performant crap.

The exact thing I needed, I reprogrammed in around 5 lines of very simple code that did exactly what I needed with no edge case weirdness.

Now the vibe coders actually ship that shit. I like to read vibe code games now and again, and there is no possible way those guys are ever shipping a real game, as every single decision is verbose along with the worst performance decisions over and over everywhere.

Sure it can get you some cute little toy projects, but it will absolutely fall apart if you are trying to make real games.

Don't know about saas apps or whatever. Maybe that stuff doesn't matter at all.

With SaaS apps, I've found you either have to hand write a framework for it to use, or put an even greater amount of effort into double-checking and correcting it. Then you can point it at bugs and features, get it to write tests for you, and so on. If the code's too wordy, who cares? Keep the blast radius to self-contained modules and the AI can't mess up too badly. Whenever you abstract something or the work is critical, you need to go back to hand writing everything.

Abstractions are like the structural elements of a house, security is like plumbing or electrical, but individual features are like carpet and paint. When it's working on the superficial stuff, who cares what it gets wrong? Just go rip up the carpet and do it again if you have to.