From Vibe to Rigor: Claude Code in Social Science
Vibe Coding: What is it?
Vibe Coding: What is it?
Criticality
Some questions to ask:
- Does life or death depend on it?
- Does your career depend on it?
- Does anything depend on it?
Accountability
Accountability
Nice write up: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/3/a-computer-can-never-be-held-accountable/
Skills
Johannes’ tips:
- Accept de-skilling
- Write code every day for 8 years before ChatGPT gets released
- Ask the LLM to explain every line of code
- Just make sure you still know how to recognize/fix critical issues
Access to Information
- Coding agent (like Claude Code) needs to know why+how you want to do something (otherwise 🎲)
- Agents ‘see’ repository
- Put background information (e.g., methods chapter, Readme, Claude.md) in repo
Beware of context rot!
Long conversations / Many tokens make models become ‘dumber’
Caution
Note that when using cloud models, the company controlling the API gets this information too!
Local or Cloud Models?
Sensitivity
Costs
| Cloud Models | Local Models |
|---|---|
| Subscription | Hardware + Electricity |
| Environmental | Electricity |
| Societal | Skills |
| Exposure | Maintenance |