“Slop Coding” and Responsible Testers

When I first heard the term “vibe coding”– a day that shall live in euphemy– I immediately disliked its cutesiness.

I’ve found that in my own work I am doing “vibe coding” to create test tools that I need for various projects. But I have a problem: how do I tell other people what I’ve done? I don’t want to simply say “I created a tool to do x” because maybe they will expect me to stand behind my work, which I am not really in a position to do. As a responsible tester, I need to be clear about what I know and what I don’t know. “Vibe coding” gets the point across, but it sounds too positive, and frankly, childish.

My solution is the term “slop-coding.” Example: “I slop-coded a tool to detect memory leaks.” I will use this phrasing to indicate, to myself as much as others, that I have not systematically tested the tool. Once I do test it well, I will simply say that “I created a tool…”

I was saying this to my colleague Alexander Carlsson and he thought I said “slap-coded.” You know, that also works well.