Eric Roby

200,000+ Udemy Students | ~40k YouTube | Software Engineer | AI Nerd | Good Person to Know

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

I’m still confused by the whole “vibe coding” concept.

When I’m working with Claude or Codex, I push back constantly, especially during the planning phase. We go back and forth on architecture, product decisions, and implementation before any code gets written.

Ironically, I spend far less time reviewing the code itself than I do challenging the plan.

So I’m curious…

Do vibe coders just let the AI rip and hope the database schema, migrations, architecture, and everything else work out?

Or is “vibe coding” mostly being used to build demos and static websites rather than real production applications?

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

AirPods have to be one of my favorite pieces of tech of all time.

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

Reiterating off my last post ...

I don’t think every small change needs a huge planning session. Sometimes I’d spend more time explaining the task than it feels worth.

But for bigger work, I’m trying to be more ambitious about what I hand to the agent.

I’m used to going from an epic to stories and then down to individual tasks. Now I’m interested in starting with the epic itself, with the designs and requirements already worked through.

Have the agent keep checking the implementation against that plan, work through what’s missing, and get the larger structure in place. Then iterate on the features and design from there.

I still want the planning. I just don’t always want to be the person handing over every tiny task separately.

I think there’s a lot of room to experiment with how big an assignment we can give these agents.

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

Planning is your edge for if your agent is able to complete large features without help.

I try to get most of my involvement out of the way before the agent starts implementing.

Usually I’m asking for a pretty big feature. So we work through the design, talk about edge cases, and I ask whether there’s anything important we haven’t covered.

I want the plan laid out before I tell it to go.

Then I give it the access it needs in my dev environment. Computer use, the dev database, instructions for creating test users. Once that’s in place, I tell it to work autonomously and come back when it’s complete.

That’s the workflow I’m aiming for. I want to spend my attention figuring out what we’re building with the agent, then give it all the access it needs to be successful

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

My personal model benchmark is honestly still mostly a vibe check.

I’ll look at Artificial Analysis first. A strong ranking holds some weight for me. Then I look at what people are saying about actually using the model.

If it’s OpenAI or Anthropic, I already have subscriptions, so I’m probably going to try it regardless. For another provider, I need a little more convincing.

Then I’ll give it something I’ve already done with a model I liked. A lot of the time that’s a 3D world or a 3D design, using the same prompt so I have something familiar to compare.

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

@petarivanovv9 Great tips brother!

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

@stijnnoorman This really is the secret

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

I have a hard time giving the exact same model another chance once I’ve decided I don’t like working with it.

That’s where I am with Sol 6.1. Most of the time I’d rather use Opus 5.5 and wait for the next OpenAI release.

Every once in a while I’ll use Sol through T3 Code for an orchestrated code review because I’m already paying for the subscription. But it’s not usually the model I think to reach for anymore.

I kind of just forget about it until there’s a new release to try.

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

I still get nervous when an AI agent writes the code and then writes the tests for that code.

If I didn’t write the implementation, reading through the unit tests isn’t automatically easier. I’m still trying to figure out whether the agent is checking the right thing or just giving me something that looks convincing.

I have some of that same hesitation with integration tests, although not as much.

Where I feel a lot more confident is a full Playwright flow or an agent actually using the product with computer use. I can follow what’s happening in the application and compare it with what I wanted.

That doesn’t mean those checks catch everything. But they’re much easier for me to judge than unit tests I’m not confident I can assess.

Seems like the best option right now

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

@RAC It's so freaking cool how we can just build things that we've always wanted to build.

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

@systemdesignone start simple! always go with especially in the AI world

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

@itsalexzajac lol - this is some juniors reality

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

@maria_rcks congrats!

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

@NetworkChuck lol fun little project

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

Anyone that knows me, knows that I love teaching. It is SO cool to be able to create 3d worlds for software teaching

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

Anyone that knows me, knows that I love teaching. It is SO cool to be able to create 3d worlds for software teaching

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

I’ve been sitting in a waiting room for 2 hours.

During that time, I’ve been optimizing the performance of our UI QA tests.

I got certain tests down from 12 minutes to 3 minutes with zero loss in coverage.

And I did all of it from my phone using T3 and Claude Code.

What a time to be alive.

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

The biggest issue I have with Sol is that I simply don’t trust it.

It feels like it does the wrong thing for me far too often.

And on the other side, Astra feels better, but the usage doesn’t even last me a full day.

This is why Opus 5.5 is kicking serious ass right now

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

@etant0x @theo Enterprise comes with more features as well. Like logging, SCIM, data retention, IP allowlist, compliance, all this stuff that huge companies with lots of money care about.

Startups and individuals would not use it

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

at this rate I really just want multiple Opus subs

[Eric Roby @codingwithroby]

The biggest issue I have with Sol is that I simply don’t trust it.

It feels like it does the wrong thing for me far too often.

And on the other side, Astra feels better, but the usage doesn’t even last me a full day.

This is why Opus 5.5 is kicking serious ass right now