Vibe Coding
I tried out this AI thing called “vibe coding”. My understanding is vibe coding is roughly using AI to write the code for you. There may be other characteristics to this practice, but I haven’t heard of it.
“Vibe coding” came into play in 2 instances and they showed me the potential of using AI to quickly drum up rough codes.
1st instance: SQL code
A couple of weeks ago, I had to deploy a “vibe coding” when doing some work on this website. The backend or host was telling me that I had to do some critical cleanup to make sure my website remained functional.
I followed the instructions and I ended up in my hosting account with instructions to write a SQL code to find all of the plugins deploying autoloader feature in my website.
One problem: I don’t know SQL. At all.
Here’s where “vibe coding” came into play: I asked CoPilot for assistance in writing the code to find the autoloader plugins and list them as well as their sizes in descending order. It gave me its version which I immediately used, maybe with some modifications.
“Error, error, error”.
I then asked CoPilot what did I do wrong?
Now, here’s the thing: CoPilot could see my screen and told me how to fix it. It could see my screen. Very important point to take note of.
The code still wasn’t quite right but the hosting site was directing me to a clue me as to what the error could be. Since CoPilot wasn’t figuring it out, I had to supply my own thinking/problem solving to arrive at replacing CoPilot’s fieldname with another fieldname that I suspected was needed.
And finally, the code worked.
I think this was within 30 minutes.
2nd instance: VBA renaming folders
A few days later, I was faced with renaming a couple of folders. I had a bunch of folders, maybe between 20 to 30 folders, that began with “Post 200 – ” and then a suggested topic. I’ve been numbering my folders for each LinkedIn post and I was up to #199. I needed to rename all of those empty folders from “Post 200 – ” to something else, maybe “Post 250 – “.
I didn’t want to do this manually, so I thought “let’s VBA it”. (Maybe in the future I can look into whether office scripts work for situations like this. Access may have been granted to me.”
I had an old macro that creates a list of folders in Excel so I could see what is in a folder – so a list of folders within a folder. With that macro open, I added the option to rename certain folders, like the one above.
I wrote up one and it didn’t quite work. I asked CoPilot for help and it gave me its version along with explanation of what went wrong in my version. However, I had to play around and do some modifications before it would work.
That incidence took maybe an hour.
My thoughts on vibe coding
“Vibe coding” appears to give a potential solution where its code contains a nugget of the solution. In other words, there are pieces that work but you have to supply the thinking that will get you all the way to a working code. So far, “vibe coding” hasn’t totally worked but it goes a long way, especially for those who kind of have some coding experience.
If you are a newbie and have never done any coding, I don’t know if it will work. If you have strong problem-solving skills and patience, then “vibe coding” could cut short your time at developing a code.
For me, I will definitely use “vibe coding” because my expertise/value is not in programming, so I don’t care if it is doing the work for me. I’m not concerned about losing my coding skills because that is not my skill and that is not my value. My value is something else.
