Beyond Vibe Coding with Addy Osmani
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Pair programming
12 min read
AI-assisted coding represents a new form of pair programming where the AI acts as a collaborator. Understanding the history and research behind traditional pair programming provides context for why AI coding assistants work the way they do and the cognitive benefits of having a 'second mind' during development.
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Technical debt
11 min read
The '70% Problem' discussed in the article directly relates to technical debt - AI tools can quickly generate code but may leave behind quality issues that accumulate. Understanding the formal concept of technical debt helps readers grasp why that final 30% of software quality is so critical.
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Test-driven development
14 min read
Addy explicitly discusses using tests to 'de-risk' LLM-generated code and keep projects 'green.' Test-driven development is the formal methodology behind this approach, and understanding its principles helps readers apply spec-driven development more effectively with AI tools.
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Listen and watch now on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple. See the episode transcript at the top of this page, and timestamps for the episode at the bottom.
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In this episode
Addy Osmani is Head of Chrome Developer Experience at Google, where he leads teams focused on improving performance, tooling, and the overall developer experience for building on the web. If you’ve ever opened Chrome’s Developer Tools bar, you’ve definitely used features Addy has built. He’s also the author of several books, including his latest, Beyond Vibe Coding, which explores how AI is changing software development.
In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I sit down with Addy to discuss how AI is reshaping software engineering workflows, the tradeoffs between speed and quality, and why understanding generated code remains critical. We dive into his article The 70% Problem, which explains why AI tools accelerate development but struggle with the final 30% of software quality—and why this last 30% is tackled easily by software engineers who understand how the system actually works.
Jump to interesting parts
The 70% Problem (22:15)
Why you should keep expectations low, and control high when using AI coding tools (32:58)
How the engineering manager and product manager roles might be changing with these AI tools (42:49)
An interesting quote from this episode
How Addy uses AI tools for his own coding:
...Gergely (at 06:14): “How do you personally use these AI tools?”
Addy: “I have more recently been focusing on the idea of spec-driven development, having a very clear plan of what it is that I want to build.
There are definitely places where I still vibe code. If it’s for a personal tool, something
This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.