I think people are moving the goal post here. My post suggested starting a vibe coded side project, one where failure is low stakes and has no consequences. You are talking about shipping a production system to customers.

If you cannot tolerate failure then don't experiment. Don't mix the two.

I think that depends on where you work. If your company demands that all code is reviewed then anyone who doesn't do that should be spoken to.

However, I suspect there are teams that are making different choices. In the most obvious example, I can do whatever I want on my personal projects (I hope you agree). And if I started a business and hire in programmers, I have some expectation on defining the culture, making hiring decisions based on my preferences, etc.

Whether or not such teams succeed will be a matter of fact, which I do not believe has been decided at this time.

I hate to say this, but you're now living in a world where the value of artisanal code is rapidly approaching zero. If you still cling to beautifully written code as your core qualification, you're having a rough future ahead of you.

And I say this with the bitterness of someone having lost a big part of what made me enjoy this line of work.

Because one may learn that those fears are overblown. Or they may learn that they cannot build any kind of software without reviewing every line of code.

The person is saying "I am still unable to stop" and that is most likely because they feel a sense of responsibility. If they choose a project where there is no responsibility, where it literally doesn't matter if the project fails, they may feel able to stop. And if they manage to make that project work, if they can succeed, then they will build up confidence.

It seems better to be able to work both on projects where they review all code as well as projects where they do not review any code. In fact, keeping their job in the long term may (or may not) require having both skills.

I guess they’re just saying “you’re holding it wrong”

Last time I chose to vibe code, I did it in a language I didn’t know so that I wasn’t tempted to try and comprehend the choices the robot made. I ended up with the application I wanted.

Caveat: it was code I would never have to touch again, I ran a script to generate the 140,000 static html pages that the rails app provided and then just uploaded them all to R2 buckets (million reads per month on free tier)

I think it's a good assumption. Their comment implies they aren't harnessing the coding agent very strongly given the failure modes they mention.

Do you think it's better to experiment with high stakes projects? Do you think it'll be easier to avoid defaulting to line by line auditing of a project that is high stakes?