If You’re Going to Vibe Code, Why Not Do It in C?

Computer science professor Stephen Ramsay wrestles with a provocative question: if AI can write code so well, why not have it program in machine-friendly languages like assembly instead of human-designed ones? Despite his personal distaste for what he calls "vibe coding" — letting AI write your programs — Ramsay admits it works remarkably well, creating robust systems that function properly.

Drawing on programming classics, he notes that most programming languages exist for human convenience, not machine efficiency. "Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute," he quotes from the influential textbook Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

This leads him to envision "vibe-oriented programming languages" designed specifically for AI rather than humans — perhaps executable pseudocode or natural language with coding idioms. While the idea saddens him as someone who loves hand-coding, Ramsay sees parallels to past computational shifts, noting that even Grace Hopper once had to convince skeptics that machines could be trusted to write instructions for other machines.

The future may require rethinking programming languages entirely for an AI-driven world.