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The Vibe Coding Revolution: AI-Assisted Development

How AI coding tools changed my development workflow - from skeptic to convert in the age of Claude Code and Cursor.

Evyatar Bluzer
3 min read

I was skeptical of AI coding assistants. They'll write buggy code. You still need to understand everything. It's just autocomplete. I said all three of these things, and I was wrong.

The Transformation

The old loop was writing code line by line, googling for syntax and APIs, debugging by manual inspection, and iterating slowly. The new loop: describe what I want in natural language, let the AI write a first draft, review and refine, iterate fast. My output increased roughly 3x without sacrificing quality.

Tools I Use Daily

Claude Code

What I reach for on complex, multi-file changes, a year on from first experimenting with it. It understands project context, makes coordinated changes across files, and explains what it's doing along the way. Refactoring, new features, debugging - it handles all of them.

Cursor

My default editor now. Inline completions while typing, quick questions without a context switch, code explanation on demand.

ChatGPT/Claude

For conceptual work: architecture discussions, algorithm design, technology evaluation. A thinking partner more than a code generator.

Changed Practices

Prompting is a Skill

Writing good prompts matters more than I expected, even after writing in March that prompts are code. Clear requirements, relevant context, specific constraints, the format you expect back - the quality of what comes out tracks the quality of what goes in.

Review is Critical

The AI writes; I verify. Does it do what I asked? Did it miss edge cases? Is the approach even right, and what are the security implications? Reviewing AI code is a different skill from reviewing human code.

Documentation Changed

AI generates decent docs from code now - READMEs from implementations, comments from logic, API docs from signatures. The key architectural decisions I still write myself.

What Can't AI Do Yet?

  • Deep architectural judgment
  • User experience intuition
  • Business prioritization
  • Novel algorithm invention

AI amplifies. The thinking is still mine to do.

The AI writes, I verifyTwo columns of four short text lines separated by a highlighted vertical rule, with a header above each column: what the AI writes on the left, what I verify on the right.THE AI WRITESI VERIFYA first draft from a plain descriptionMulti-file changes (Claude Code)Inline completions, quick answers (Cursor)READMEs, comments, API docs from codeRequirements, context, constraints, formatEdge cases, the approach, securityArchitectural judgment, the key decisionsUX intuition, priorities, novel algorithms
The division of labor in the new loop: drafting, multi-file changes, completions and docs moved to the AI, while the prompt, the review and the judgment stayed on my side of the line.

Implications for the Field

For junior developers the skill set is changing: learning to code now includes learning to prompt. Senior developers get to operate at a higher level of abstraction. Teams get smaller while building bigger things.

The economics of software development are shifting, and I'm glad to be building while they do.

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