"This review was written as part of the Hanbit Media Reviewer Program, where I received a complimentary copy of the book."Book Overview
This book explores how AI coding assistants like GitHub Copilot and OpenAI Codex are transforming software development. Rather than being a simple introduction to vibe coding, it's a guide that presents practical strategies for surviving as a developer in the AI era.
Author
Addy Osmani is a Senior Engineering Leader at Google, responsible for Developer Experience, performance optimization, and AI-based development tools. With 25 years of industry experience, he has personally tested and evaluated various AI development tools including Cursor, Cline, Copilot, Bolt, v0, Lovable, and Claude Code. O'Reilly
Target Audience
Experienced developers and engineering leaders, product-focused developers
Chapter Summary
Chapter 1: Introduction to Vibe Coding
Introduces the concept of vibe coding, a new programming approach. Vibe coding is a method where developers code by conveying ideas with AI support while going with the vibe, a concept first mentioned by Andrej Karpathy on X.
Moving away from the traditional line-by-line writing approach, the book defines this new way of developing by directly communicating intent to AI as Intent-Driven Programming. This is similar to pair programming, but instead of human-to-human, it's pair programming with AI. Finally, it covers the basics you need to know before getting started, including models, prompts, and tools.
Since AI is not yet omnipotent, it also highlights areas where AI struggles. For example, very complex systems, low-level optimization, system programming, unfamiliar frameworks, and creative design fall into this category.
Chapter 2: Prompt Engineering
Introduces more efficient ways to communicate with AI through prompts. It briefly explains traditional prompt engineering including zero-shot, few-shot, and ReAct with examples.
Chapter 3: The 70% Territory - Bootstrappers and Iterators
Notes that AI can complete about 70% of the total work, but the remaining 30% is considerably difficult. Therefore, it explains how developers actually utilize AI, and this chapter covers the 70% portion.
Two patterns are presented here:
Bootstrapper means creating an initial MVP. Using AI-based app builders like Bolt and v0, you quickly generate new projects, create an initial codebase, and complete the service through validation and iteration.
Iterator involves utilizing AI for code completion and suggestions using tools like Cursor and Windsurf. This applies to test and documentation generation, code completion suggestions, and complex refactoring.
Of course, both can significantly increase development speed, but there are hidden costs. Problems can arise if you use AI-generated code without review.
Chapters 4-5: The 30% Territory - Becoming a Power User
Discusses the remaining 30%, not the 70% mentioned in previous chapters.
It emphasizes that LLMs are tools for power users, and everyone should become power users. This means deeply understanding problems, designing clean solutions, carefully verifying code quality, and making good use of the benefits gained from AI. Don't stick to just one technology or tool, but try more diverse approaches. And it covers debugging strategies, the importance of testing, refactoring, etc. to achieve this.
Chapters 6-7: Full-Stack Development with AI
Shows the process and examples of prototyping with AI, and guides how to efficiently become a full-stack developer by utilizing AI for frontend/backend work.
Chapters 8-9: Security, Reliability, and Ethics
Discusses security, reliability, and maintainability. It covers cases where hardcoding is used, or wrong patterns are employed causing SQL injection, XSS, or authentication issues.
It also mentions ethical issues in vibe coding. There are issues such as intellectual property, bias, and fairness, and the book provides a checklist of points to be careful about when utilizing AI.
Chapter 10: Background Coding Agents
Copilot-style assistants provided in IDEs like Cursor and Windsurf are reactive. However, background coding agents initiate tasks on their own and act proactively to achieve goals. It introduces major autonomous coding agents including Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Google Jules, Cursor IDE, and Devin, and shows best practices for how to utilize them in teams.
Of course, there are still limitations, but personally, I've used background agents through Devin, Claude Code, and Linear, and while review is still important, this significantly reduced the time from modification to deployment.
Chapter 11: Developers in the AI Era
This chapter covers AI utilization beyond code generation.
Testing, Debugging, Maintenance: Introduces methods for performing test automation, intelligent debugging, and predictive maintenance using AI as an auxiliary tool.
Design and UX/UI: Covers AI-based design tools, UX research, and implementing personalized user experiences.
Importance of AI Literacy: Currently, companies evaluate 'AI literacy', the ability to effectively utilize AI tools, when hiring.
But AI isn't everything. Even when doing natural language-centered coding, code and computer operating principles are ultimately important, and developers should become power users who excel at both traditional and new development methods.
Conclusion
After reading to the end, I understood why this book is titled 'Beyond Vibe Coding - A Developer's Survival Guide'. The trend of vibe coding has tremendously lowered the barrier to entry for beginners. However, in actual work rather than personal projects, you can't just leave everything to the vibe, so many people didn't particularly like the concept of vibe coding where you don't review properly and just leave everything to it. This book was good because it guides step by step from starting with vibe coding to actual work application methods.
At first, I thought there would be mixed opinions for developers doing intent-driven programming because it explains prototyping through vibe coding. However, as the chapters progress, there's a lot of content that's helpful for practical work, so I recommend reading to the end.