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!
I think there will be a lot of money to be made unpicking vibe-coded production software, in the not too distant future. Lowering the bar for code creation is going to be very good for the tester, I predict.
Feels like AI is just the latest in a long line of abstractions. It has lowered the effort/bar to code things like tool generation significantly. I can create a bunch of things that are essentially disposable, to help with the job at hand. Really good shout about the need to be clear what it is, as people get all excited when things look shiny. I have witnessed many high paid/smart people wonder why there is months work to get from a clickable Figma design to the product…
I might use disposable. Which is definitely less effort than all the caveats I have adding.
[James’ Reply: Disposable? That’s interesting.]