Artisanal coding
I like posting manifestos. Lately, most of them have been of the "we no longer need the meatbags" variety. For a change of pace, here is Ivan Turković's manifesto on artisanal coding.
Artisanal coding: a manifesto for a new era of craftsmanship
Picture a carpenter. They use power tools, but know when to stop and sand a surface by hand. They can feel the material and understand how it behaves. Each piece gets individual attention until it is right.
Artisanal coding follows the same principles:
- Understand the problem before you start writing code.
- Every line should be a deliberate choice.
- Refactoring starts when you can feel that a solution is off. You do not need a tool to tell you.
- Fixing a mistake is only part of the job. Learn something from it.
We are losing our professional muscle memory. When vibe coding takes the place of thinking, skills atrophy. We risk going from people who build things to code operators, endlessly tweaking prompts and debugging someone else's solutions.
AI does not feel the resistance of the material. Working through that resistance is how we learn our craft. Artisanal coding leaves room for AI as a developer's assistant, a digital apprentice.
This is a declaration of independence, a call to slow down, think harder, and stay connected to the things we make. If vibe coding is programming's fast food, artisanal coding is a meal cooked slowly, with care and attention. Yes, it takes longer.