Code with Guardrails

The whole pitch for vibe coding fits in one sentence: you describe what you want in plain English, and the machine writes the code. That sentence is true. It's also the most expensive true thing in this field, because it quietly implies that plain English is enough, and plain English is not the same as a clear description. I found this out the way I find out most things. Trial, and then error Two methods have worked for me my whole life. The first is trial. The second is error, and it's the one that does the teaching. I can tell you how to make fire by rubbing two sticks together. You'll nod along, and you'll understand every word. Then you'll go outside and fail for two hours, because nobody mentioned how hard to press, or that the wood has to be bone dry, or that some wood won't light no matter how long you work at it. Those little things are the whole skill, and they don't survive being explained. You have to do it. The error half matters more t...

Welcome to the 2nd post in this series. I hope you find it useful. Vibecoding is here and is not going away.  The biggest part of vibecoding, whether you're a decades-old coder or someone who started coding 5 minutes ago, is that you have to look at it as a manager, not a coder. You manage a coder, not write the code. Sure, you may type some code now and then, but in the long term you will prompt the AI to do it. Somebody at work found out you'd built a thing. So now there's a request: a small internal tool, nothing fancy, something to replace the spreadsheet everyone complains about. You said yes, because these days you can say yes. Two weeks later it works. Four people use it every morning. Then one of them asks what happens if two of them hit save at the same instant, and you have no idea. You'd never thought about it. The AI never brought it up, because you never asked, and it doesn't volunteer information unless you told it to.  That's not a story abo...

After 30 years in IT support, networking, training, and a variety of other areas, I have come to realize that technology gets better over time. Wow! I know what a revelation. There is still an argument about who is better, and to borrow a great quote, “From a certain point of view…” honestly, both viewpoints are right. That is the focus of this blog. AI is better at coding. AI can generate code faster and with fewer typos than a human. But can it generate better code? Yes and no. Yes, if it's guided properly, and no if it is not. Vibecoding, according to Webster’s, is a semi-recently coined term for programming by prompting an AI, which then writes the code. In vibecoding, the coder does not need to understand how or why the code works (which, in my opinion, is wrong, but we will get to that soon enough), and often must accept that a certain number of bugs and glitches will be present. I disagree with that last statement. In fact, I think the opposite is true. AI can help remov...