Snake Coding

Between Vibe and Intent — Snake Coding in the Pangea Grid

Vibe, Intent, Snake

Coding with promts is seductive. This dimension of seduction is not merely a side effect of new tools, but precisely what shapes the future. Every great wave of technical productivity has been accompanied by some form of seduction. Fifty years ago, it was no different, when coding in assembler was gradually displaced, or at least overlaid, by FORTRAN and COBOL. At that time, a new level of formulation took the place of direct machine orientation.

RPG, the Report Program Generator, also belonged to this development. All these tools were not only technical aids. They standardized the way thoughts were brought into executable form. They did not simply provide a language, but a way of thinking about problems as programmable in the first place.

Today, we are experiencing such a rupture again. But this time the process is more radical. For Vibe Prompting appears with the promise of escaping precisely this normative compulsion. It claims that thought can express itself more directly. One only has to say what one wants. The rest will be brought into form. The prompt appears as a return to a more natural, less disciplined, less formalized mode of control. That is exactly where its seduction lies.

One has the feeling of escaping the corset of programming language, although in truth one is merely entering a new corset — one no longer made of syntax rules, but of probabilities, model…