Things that I really like about Zen:
- New tab URL input, it’s a dialog overlay
- Tabs opening as the first instead of the last in the sidebar
- the tab sidebar
- opening external links is magic, they open in an overlay with the option to expand in a tab. This is probably my favourite, because often I need to open a link from an email, do one thing, then go back to the email. This feature keeps me in the context of what I was doing.
For the first time ever I did some vibe coding this week. I needed what amounts to putting a file in a folder and watch until a file in another folder appears, with a monitoring utility.
I was very impressed with the definition phase. It was a back and forth about the spec until it was what I wanted. I then let it built.
This was quite interesting. It set up a scaffold, wrote tests and ran the tests, fixing errors as it went, then went on to finalize the app. Magic.
Finally it was done, so I go in to play with it. Riddled with bugs. Try to get it to fix them. More bugs. End to end spend a morning doing all this until I gave up and manually wrote what I need in about an hour.
Conclusion: Vibe coding is a complete waste of time. Worse: in the wrong hands it is dangerous. You need to be a pretty damn good programmer to assess the output, and if you are, why the fuck would you use it in this manner?
It reminds me a bit about the no-code/low-code evangelism of some years ago. To the novice it looks magical and a world of possibilities, and the road to riches. But in reality you can only use those things if you have decent programming skills, otherwise it’s a path nowhere.
Need a quick demo? Sure, this might help the novice. Want something for production? Get a professional.