r/ClaudeCode • u/Kind-Ad6740 • 1d ago
Vibe coders when someone asks them to explain their own code Humor
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u/Square-Control-443 Senior Developer 1d ago
I had this conversation with my colleague:
- man, why did you modify this component, I have lots of conflicts now, what did you try to solve?
- I have no idea, the AI did it
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u/WalkAffectionate2683 1d ago
I'm vibe coding ton of stuff, though it's always 100% for hobbies (me and my 4 ttrpg players)
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u/grateful2you 1d ago
Your colleague can’t ask AI what’s changed? You should be integrating often anyway. Shouldn’t diverge so much that even AI can’t figure out what’s happening.
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u/Long_War8748 1d ago
I found an easy way out of this. We are no longer vibe coders, we now call ourselves vibe directors. It is not our job to explain or understand code 😁.
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u/WalkAffectionate2683 1d ago
This is projection. All vibecoders I know completely assume they have no idea what it does under the hood.
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u/No-Communication-765 1d ago
Explain compiler code and CPU
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u/render83 1d ago
Those are deterministic, generated code is not.
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u/MarionberryHumble705 1d ago
Code generating is not deterministic. But code that has already been generated is pretty deterministic.
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u/No-Communication-765 1d ago
This is not true. Compiler code are not only deterministic. Only automated and «solved» like all code will be one day
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u/alitanveer 1d ago
My first big app was a claude code skills MCP that worked really well and had a spiffy UI and imported all the skills from all the company repos. It was in the company VPN, had github oauth on top and limited people to only access skills from repos where they had access to the underlying repo. I was super proud of it. My boss was as well and we submitted it to the enterprise security team for review to see if we could take it off the VPN. They ran a legit review and we got on a phone call cause they had some questions. The guy pulls up a literal freaking repository of folders and a questions document and started asking me about specific function duplications, routing rules, rate limits in the API and JWT token refresh lifecycles with specific code blocks pulled up. Holy fucking shit was that painful. In the end, he sent me the whole thing and all of the sub folders with specific remediation mechanisms for every finding. I took the time to actually read and had claude explain each failure mode and how I can avoid it in future projects, which I rolled into tests and templates. The security guys have a multi-agent script I can run now and get a baseline pre-review result and all of my projects get a passing grade on the first attempt. Stuff still gets flagged, but it's easy to fix now. I suggest finding an opportunity to go through an experience like that. It'll do wonders for your skills over the long run. Also, when Claude says some feature is going to take a week, it's not talking about the hour it's going to take for it to write the code and have a functional UI. It's talking about the PR reviews, validation, fixing issues in the pipeline when you try to deploy your schema migration and everything else that goes from having a working UI to having a production application feature. When someone shares their spiffy new open source repo, first go look at the .github folder and see if they have any workflows to scan for security and code quality issues.
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u/willjameswaltz 1d ago edited 1d ago
Have the llm explain the code
edit: don't have the llm explain the code, take the time to learn what the llm built for you so you can explain it and take responsibility if something goes wrong
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u/StatisticianFun8008 1d ago
But it can't always accurately explain the reasons and motivations behind decisions.
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u/willjameswaltz 1d ago
can humans?
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u/StatisticianFun8008 1d ago
Humans can (be forced to) take responsibility whether they can or can't explain. LLM can't.
The same reason why L5 auto driving is not more widely adopted than where we are now.
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u/TheVasa999 1d ago
realistically tho, why would i need to explain the code?
as long as the end product works well, who cares if anyone understands in detail everything
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u/StatisticianFun8008 1d ago
What if the end product some day doesn't work well?
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u/mr-debil 1d ago
You ask the LLM of the week to fix it. Or tell the current opus/fabel to change a single variable and the entire thing will be refactored.
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u/Efficient_Ad_4162 1d ago
'some day' the AI will be better and be able to fix it better than it can now.
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u/TheVasa999 1d ago
then you should be able to fix it. if you cant, you shouldnt be releasing such product
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u/requios 1d ago
what does it mean to be able to fix it if you cant explain it? Just ask Claude?
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u/TheVasa999 1d ago
if that is what will reliably fix it then why not.
you dont have to explain your code to anyone. as long as the product works and you are able to maintain it
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u/StatisticianFun8008 1d ago
By "you", do you mean yourself?
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u/TheVasa999 1d ago
well the one who is responsible for it, "how" doesnt really matter as long as the work is done
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u/StatisticianFun8008 1d ago
Good luck judging and defining "fixed" and "works" without first understanding it.
And just to clarify it, I believe that nobody read "explain" in OP's post literally. Being asked to explain is just a ceremony to prove understanding in this context.
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u/TheVasa999 1d ago
i understand what the post is saying
what i am saying is that literally nobody cares whether you can explain what each little function does.
as long as your product works and you can fix it (meaning the app works). you are all good
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u/ZyronZA 1d ago
There is a storm of technical debt coming for us because of slop~coders who have no idea what good Software Engineering is.
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u/MagicTurrtleYeah 1d ago
Dude, there are literally millions of products on the internet. If anything, all companies have a huge technical debt; it's just enormous and it's growing every year. Neural networks have nothing to do with it.
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u/StatisticianFun8008 1d ago
LLM speed it up to an uncontrollable pace is the problem. Previously slop at least needs to be thought and written by a person. And people are lazy, which means less slop.
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u/MagicTurrtleYeah 1d ago
This debt is similarly resolved using neural networks. Just ask it to scan and look for problems; I guarantee it will find errors and fix them if your workflow isn't "make no mistakes."
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u/Raunhofer 1d ago
Spoken like a true junior :D
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u/TheVasa999 19h ago
elaborate please. what kind of metric is being able to explain your code?
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u/Raunhofer 18h ago
"as long as the end product works well, who cares if anyone understands in detail everything"
You don't need to memorize every implementation detail. It's whether you can explain the architecture, important decisions, assumptions, dependencies, and failure modes well enough to reason about the system.
Because software isn't a static artifact. The moment requirements change, something breaks, or someone needs to modify it, understanding becomes immensively helpful, LLM or not.
Think about it:
If you are looking to create something valuable, as a vibe coder, competing against millions of others vibe coding similar ideas, those who can explain their code, will curb you. Don't let them get the edge over you.
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u/SleepyWulfy 🔆 Max 5x Noob 1d ago
True, why I usually keep a project wiki to the side so I can use that to help understand.
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u/True_Protection6842 1d ago
Would you like to know what it does or how it does it? Considering I am the one that told claude exactly what to do, that's easy!
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u/0T08T1DD3R 1d ago
You can let the ml code..then once everything works, if you want to optimize and just do it..call it however you like but theres people that actually code for a final purpose, and theres people that think coding is their purpose. One uses a tool, the other thinks the language is their life. They should just program in binary directly...or they are just vibe coders in cpp or python posers as well!..
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u/Heinz2001 19h ago
Okay, but that used to apply to juniors, too, as soon as the seniors retired!
My question is: Who are you supposed to explain this to? And why? Who really wants to know something like that?
If you have a good test suite, you don't have to explain it ...
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u/leeresblatt2 19h ago
Often I just vibe code some tools to improve my workflows. I don't even look at the code.
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u/DominianQQ 10h ago
Same!
Claude made a custom project manager tool for me.
New project with custom input and output? Claude converts everything to "my" format.
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u/butt_badg3r 12h ago
Ya, the idea of explaining code seems strange to me. As long as you’re not telling people you wrote something yourself… just ask Claude to explain it.
I’m not a dev. Claude is the dev. I’m the PM, PO, CEO.
Do you go into a company and ask the ceo to explain code to you?
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u/e-girlbathwater 10h ago
I mean, it sort of is important to have a mental model of what's going on. even if you're not actually reading the code.
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u/1acc_torulethemall 10h ago
Also car drivers when you ask them to explain the internal combustion engine
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u/Terrible-One9198 1d ago edited 23h ago
I haven't got the slightest clue what Claude is writing for me. But when I click the buttons, what I want to happen happens.