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.
Slip-coded, when you make a minor mistake.
Or schlep-coded.
Just today I came up with “algorithm alchemy” for LLMs in general. I totally like slop-code.
Maybe we have “meh-chanized” it.
“Hacking” is now largely associated with (black hat) computer security intrusion, however, the white hat context is a form of testing. Thus, I often still say I’ve ‘hacked’ into some software under test to reveal bugs that take longer to find in ‘ordinary operation’. Also, ‘hacking’ in other contexts might refer to unskilled, irregular, or unskillful cuts or chopping, and so the subtext is fitting for slap-dash code. I like saying ‘I hacked together a tool’ as it conveys that it is rough, informal, and not optimal with one word.
I agree that ‘vibe coding’ sounds unserious and smarmy, and not something for people ‘taking testing (or coding) seriously’. By the way, congrats to you both on your book, I picked up a copy for myself and gifted several copies for the developers at my organization. Cheers!