Theory building

Programming is theory building ^[1] .

There's a mental process in which a programmer understands the problem, the context in which the problem happens, as well as the solution to it, codified by -- code.

In this framework, the code is just a byproduct of the understanding. Whenever understanding is more refined -- either by better understanding the domain or by better modelling the solution as a formal system -- code gets changed. But code changes are just instantiations of changes in understanding, in the underlying theory of what is happening, and why certain things are done this way, and why certain things are done that way.

Vibecoding

Vibecoding, understood as shipping code one hasn't even read, is the exact opposite.

There's perhaps an argument to be made that generating code and then understanding it, modifying it, and only then shipping it, is compatible with theory building.

But vibecoding as such, where you ship an entire app or multiple apps without reviewing how they were built, and why certain choices were made, is not compatible with this view, unless you significantly dilute what a theory is.

Since you don't know how the problem was solved, why certain architectural choices were made, why this function was used and not that function, why this library, and not that one, and so on -- you don't have an underlying theory, and therefore a formalization of the solution for the problem that was solved.

You just know that it was solved, or wasn't solved.

Proliferation of code

GPTs, or generative pre-trained transformers generate text, and in the case of coding agents, they generate code.

It is exceedingly rare for a coding agent to delete code, but it is very frequent for them to generate code.

This may change in the future, but the overall trend with coding agents is more code, not less.

If you don't use a coding agent, but instead have a theory of the problem and a theory of the solution in your head, with time, your codebase is also expected to grow.

As you encounter new edge cases, new aspects of the problem, it is expected that you will express your theory with more words, because you will add more detail, this detail reflecting your more detailed understanding.

Coding agents will add much more code, and with much greater frequency than humans will. Coding agents will also train human operators (of the vibecoding variety) to expect c...

Elman Mansimov

Elman Mansimov