I have been seeing a lot of so-called self proclaimed vibe-coders swearing by LLMs making them 10x or 100x devs, but I've yet to see actual vibe coded projects hitting the markets.
Whenever I see said projects, on Github or non-technical friends vibe coding their next new startups asking for a code review, all I can see is boilerplate hell, 100s of lines of redundancies, problems that could've been solved using 5-6 procedures being blown out to 4-5 directories with 20-30 procedures, basically over-engineered beyond belief.
The positive part of this is people who would've never thought of programming/writing code are beginning to do so but their confidence is highly misplaced because they simply don't understand what's going on to a certain degree and don't possess the necessary knowledge nor skillset to review the generated code. A successful compile or output on the web browser is not a very good metric for projects.
Great writeup that captures the current state of affairs.
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Tangential, but hi Nommy :) glad to see you out there, remember competing against you back in school; those web dev comps used to be the shit. Think Exun 2013 was when we went head to head making that fake currency haha.
crinkly · 1h ago
I’m currently enjoying a competitor in our market make a wonderful mistake in this area. They want all in on vibe coding and AI and announced to their customers that they’d rewrite their 25 year old rotting platform using it in 12 months.
6 months late and I know a clean up contractor who is making bank there with no hope of recovering it apparently.
They saw it as a way out from their cheap assery, lack of talent and lowest bidding outsourcer over the years and it’s a dead end. I wonder how many other projects are in this situation.
atonse · 2h ago
For almost all of my professional coding life (~25 years), I don't think I've ever seen the "code" as my product, but instead, an actual business/real-world outcome produced or improved by that code.
Even though I loved programming, the satisfaction usually came from the tools that enabled actual real-world benefit rather than coding for the sake of coding. Which is why I used to find the debates about TDD or tabs/spaces silly. Does this provide faster iteration or more stability/maintainability to solve a real world problem? if it does, great. if it doesn't, you're just wasting everyone's time and money, let's move on.
So in that vein, using things like Claude Code allow me to provide that real world value FASTER, which is ultimately what my clients appreciate. It's allowing me to spend more time being a product manager and less time fiddling around with day to day stuff. And it's not like the code is horrible or anything. I still apply strong architectural principles (code reuse, organized modules, separation of concerns, clear APIs, etc). I'm just not writing every line anymore.
I will be the first to say it's probably going to result in making me a bit more rusty in coding. But I haven't really seen that yet in the last 6 months, mostly because I haven't had to just say "ok forget it, let me just code it" more than once or twice, especially in the last 2 months since I moved over fully to Claude Code. And in those situations, I was able to take over pretty easily.
So far I'm not too worried, but it's hard to tell what the long term impacts will be.
zamalek · 1h ago
I worry about the brain rot because, while I am not purely vibing, I am relying on Claude for most of my typing. I still routinely need to work those hard-earned brain muscles with what it produces; it's terrible at factoring things into components, I've seen it write SQL injection vulnerable code frequently, and it litters the code base with TODOs. If I were to describe it, it's extremely lazy - and you constantly have to remind it to do the work, do it correctly, and course correct it when it's making bad long term decisions.
If I end up brain rotting I am seriously concerned about the quality of code that I will be producing.
But I do agree with the core of your argument. Code is a tool, one that I don't mind replacing.
another_twist · 51m ago
The way I use AI for coding is that I type in the business logic in english and have AI take over the typing. Sometimes I fill in a skeleton and have AI write the boring stuff. But I agree with the author - outsource labor never knowledge. I found AI actually made me a better programmer (judging by feels not metrics) because I know have to explain my thinking which clears up the mud in my head. After which writing the code is leg work better outsourced.
orionblastar · 4h ago
I remember Macworld published an article in 1990 or close to it, "Does the Mac make you stupid?" claiming that Mac users using MacWrite compared to DOS users using WordPerfect made more grammar and spelling mistakes on the Mac than on DOS. Supposedly, the brain's creative side takes over the Analytical/logical side of the brain, and the GUI and mouse confuse the brain. Almost everything is GUI and mouse, except for FreeDOS, GNU/Linux command line shells, etc. Even macOS has a UNIX command line now.
Vibe coding is no different; it uses the creative side of the brain. Not stupid or braindead, just different.
It is a problem to solve, and whoever does it will be rich.
Whenever I see said projects, on Github or non-technical friends vibe coding their next new startups asking for a code review, all I can see is boilerplate hell, 100s of lines of redundancies, problems that could've been solved using 5-6 procedures being blown out to 4-5 directories with 20-30 procedures, basically over-engineered beyond belief.
The positive part of this is people who would've never thought of programming/writing code are beginning to do so but their confidence is highly misplaced because they simply don't understand what's going on to a certain degree and don't possess the necessary knowledge nor skillset to review the generated code. A successful compile or output on the web browser is not a very good metric for projects.
Great writeup that captures the current state of affairs.
----
Tangential, but hi Nommy :) glad to see you out there, remember competing against you back in school; those web dev comps used to be the shit. Think Exun 2013 was when we went head to head making that fake currency haha.
6 months late and I know a clean up contractor who is making bank there with no hope of recovering it apparently.
They saw it as a way out from their cheap assery, lack of talent and lowest bidding outsourcer over the years and it’s a dead end. I wonder how many other projects are in this situation.
Even though I loved programming, the satisfaction usually came from the tools that enabled actual real-world benefit rather than coding for the sake of coding. Which is why I used to find the debates about TDD or tabs/spaces silly. Does this provide faster iteration or more stability/maintainability to solve a real world problem? if it does, great. if it doesn't, you're just wasting everyone's time and money, let's move on.
So in that vein, using things like Claude Code allow me to provide that real world value FASTER, which is ultimately what my clients appreciate. It's allowing me to spend more time being a product manager and less time fiddling around with day to day stuff. And it's not like the code is horrible or anything. I still apply strong architectural principles (code reuse, organized modules, separation of concerns, clear APIs, etc). I'm just not writing every line anymore.
I will be the first to say it's probably going to result in making me a bit more rusty in coding. But I haven't really seen that yet in the last 6 months, mostly because I haven't had to just say "ok forget it, let me just code it" more than once or twice, especially in the last 2 months since I moved over fully to Claude Code. And in those situations, I was able to take over pretty easily.
So far I'm not too worried, but it's hard to tell what the long term impacts will be.
If I end up brain rotting I am seriously concerned about the quality of code that I will be producing.
But I do agree with the core of your argument. Code is a tool, one that I don't mind replacing.
Vibe coding is no different; it uses the creative side of the brain. Not stupid or braindead, just different.
It is a problem to solve, and whoever does it will be rich.