Origins ...

of a vibe coder

Three Epochs

In a Pragmatic Engineer podcast, Grady Booch mentions three eras of programming: some primitive assembly times, then the compilers time, and now this AI-driven one. I’m thinking in terms of process, we’re about to enter a third epoch as well. Waterfall, Agile, and AI.

Waterfall is just the name I’m picking for that period pre-Agile. Everything that was meticulously planned and budgeted in phases with the big bang promise falls in that time. I remember back then I could swear ideally I only needed to think really hard 80% of the time and then 20% to execute the well-laid plan.

Agile debunked all that. With the manifesto the whole industry was put in turmoil. It didn’t take long for Agile to rule the development process. It was such a rush that it seemed like a tsunami had killed the waterfall. And then by the end of the ‘00s it had been so watered down that a second manifesto was needed, thus signaling the death of Agile.

Then we entered a SAFe plateau. The last original process, Kanban, was either wielded to trim that pesky ceremonial Scrum or, if you went pretty far, you ended up in just XP. There was some Lean Startup angle that slowly dissipated too. The final winner was SAFe, which is the process you get when the cool devs have left the building.

The Parrot

For the greatest part of the ‘10s I joined the DevOps revolution. In the strangest ever shift-left, Ops seemed to be tail-wagging the dev process. This was no novel process in my eyes. I quit in desperation when SREs started mandating SDLC. I had no tribe, no thought leadership, I even started getting old and blaming new generations.

I felt like Crusoe on no man’s island, waiting for any signal of optimism, a new wave. And then, suddenly, a SQUAWK. Initially it didn’t bother me, it was just a parrot. With so many concerns I did not see the bird as my savior. I had my eyes perched deep on the horizon looking at my future in desolation. Waiting for a boat.

The parrot kept squawking, then started making more sense and could squawk poems and songs. I started listening when it could squawk code. Suddenly I could play games with it. I would try to code in a way that the parrot could squawk the next line like a copilot. I was so immersed in my parrot games that I did not notice the sail heading my way.

The Wave

Suddenly all the birds flew away, the water receded, the island started growing. I climbed up to the lookout spot and I could see the wave, feel the wind, and noticed a speck that grew into the sail of a windsurf. A dude, riding the wave, flying in my direction. They tossed me a board and yelled “vibe on!” I jumped in and started paddling with everything I had.

That was almost a year ago. I’ve been frenetically paddling with a mix of excitement and fear. The wave is real, it is making the rounds around the planet and reshaping everything. The future is even more uncertain but this time, also exciting. My profession has gone topsy-turvy and all the rule books have been swallowed by the wave.

We live now in some sort of post-apocalyptic Waterworld. The waves keep rolling and we are all desperate to reach high land. To find the map, to set the course. The irony is that if you know a bit of geography you know where to find the highlands. And if you learned navigation you know how to use the North Star to get there.

XP

In the world of Agile, XP has always been the high-water mark. XP is way more than a bunch of practices that were too hard to follow. XP is an attitude towards being truthful, respectful, humble, and professional. It is about the courage to always do the right thing. XP is about getting together and agreeing to achieve excellence and hold each other accountable.

XP practices change, they adapt, they evolve; what stays permanent is the commitment of no compromise. Once you decide to XP you decided to be your best and help your peers be at their best. There cannot be anything better than XP because that would become part of XP. Because XP is the decision you already made, the path you chose to reach the peak of your professional career.

I fear this reshaping of our profession will leave many of us lost at sea. I find the whole narrative around it overly negative. I believe in win-wins, I seek virtuous cycles, I want to surf the wave, to drain it one windmill at a time. There has to be a better way to deal with this uncertainty. Something as powerful as AI cannot be apocalyptic. We cannot live in fear, we must choose courage.

I chose XP. I made that decision 20 years ago and it has always guided me to reach the highest pinnacles of my career. AI has not changed that, it has supercharged it. I’ve found in the last year that my values and principles have survived the wave. I’ve found the wave just supercharges my practices if I have the discipline to stick with them. I’ve found hope and a clear mental map of how to navigate these rough waters.

I don’t think XP needs a change. I am not claiming I am inventing anything new. I think that programming is never going to be the same. I think programming is dead and I like the new name despite the controversy. I am today officially no longer a natural-born programmer. I am now a vibe coder. I wholeheartedly embrace the vibes to the extreme. I am, from now on, an Extreme Vibe Coder.