I just don’t understand the “real” developer to vibe coding scenario.
Software developer of 17 years here.
For any given project, even tremendously optimized and easy to maintain, is about 90%~95% easy boilerplate code anyone can understand.
With an existing project with already hundreds of examples of how to write that boilerplate code, I can point even just sonnet 4.5 at that, give it the business rules required, and tell it "go do that, use the code base as an example" and it'll pretty much always get it correct first try, with the occasional small thing wrong that is an easy fix.
Once the LLM has an entire codebase to build off of as an example, its efficacy skyrockets.
Add in stuff like LSP feedback, linting rules, a .editorconfig like, an AGENTS.md, and it will be very effective.
Then I can handle that last little bit of 5% of actually important code, allowing me to put way more of my time and energy into the parts that really matter (security hardening, business rules, auth, etc)
I still spend 8 hours on a task but before itd be:
- 4 hrs boilerplate
- 4 hrs important part
Now its:
- 30min boilerplate
- 5 hrs important part
- 2.5 hrs adding in rigorous integration tests for corner cases too
Its about removing all the mental overhead of all the annoying boilerplate easy stuff, like having a lil junior dev I can hand off all the simple tasks to, so I can focus on the "real" work.
That is where real productivity shines with these tools.