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Oof this bit is rough! > The startup supports Postgres, the most popular developer database system that’s an alternative to Google’s Firebase. Supabase’s goal:

Oof this bit is rough! > The startup supports Postgres, the most popular developer database system that’s an alternative to Google’s Firebase. Supabase’s goal: To be a one-stop backend for developers and "vibe coders."

rychco 1y ago
I don't necessarily think this is a bad goal, but the term "vibe coder" is almost certainly considered derogatory now.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  The day before yesterday I got a technical assignment from a company I was interviewing with to build a Next.js app. Normally I would build it myself, but that day it just felt so tedious, so I gave Claude Code a try. To my surprise, with little to no guidance (probably cuz it was React), it built the app and it even looked very similar to mock-ups the company gave. I changed some things here and there and submitted the task. The whole thing was done in about half an hour. Yesterday they emailed me to schedule the next interview. I'm hooked.
  - vrosas 1y ago
    Sadly it seems the days of take home interview assignments are numbered. I much preferred them to live coding assessments when given the option.
    - tptacek 1y ago
      We still do take-homes. You just design them assuming people are going to use LLMs. They're going to do that on the job anyways, so why tie a hand behind their back?
      - whstl 1y ago
        Same. We just ask people to explain what they delivered, and this is 1000x better and more interesting than any quiz or whiteboard.
        tptacek 1y ago
        LLMs have also allowed us to significantly expand the scope of what we ask candidates to look at. Previously, we were constrained by time budgets (the candidate's, not ours) to a relatively small project, from which we had to read tea leaves; minor variations, objective but still small-bore, were determinative of how candidates ranked. Now we can drop a pretty ambitious project, which creates a lot of variation and room to demonstrate approach.
- michelpp 1y ago
  I turn 50 tomorrow and I love vibe coding. In the hands of an expert with decades of experience in all the internal corners of C, Python and Postgres I find AI tools to be miracles of technology. I know how to ask them exactly what I want and I know how to separate the goodness from the bullshit. If Supabase is bringing AI closer to the developer at the database level then that is a great thing.
  - dwaltrip 1y ago
    Do you have any writings or materials that show your process in depth? I’m interested in learning from those who know how to really squeeze the juice out of these tools.
    - sally_glance 1y ago
      I think what they are saying is the 'secret sauce' to successfully vibe coding is being an expert with all the languages, frameworks and tools yourself. Makes sense to me, vibe coding basically shifts your burden to specification and review, which are traditionally things a senior developer should be good at.
      - dwaltrip 1y ago
        I think there is a lot to be said about what tasks you give to it, how you describe the work and prompt it, and the iteration / workflow loop. I have a limited intuition for this based off my AI usage the past few years, but I want to learn from the pros.
  - Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
    Vibe coding is excellent if you have the experience to understand what the AI is churning out and then what to do with it. The problem we have now is we have people who aren't engineers trying to make an app and they end up creating insecure and buggy messes, then struggle with figuring out how to deploy, or they end up destroying all their code with no recovery because they didn't know anything about version control.
- DidYaWipe 1y ago
  Derogatory and just plain stupid.
gkoberger 1y ago
Enabling more people to make cool things themselves isn't necessarily a bad thing.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- jsheard 1y ago
  It's all fun and games until you realize the cool thing you made is locked into an overpriced cloud stack that will bleed you dry. "Vibe coders" seem to invariably end up offloading as much heavy lifting as possible to ultra-expensive PaaS/SaaS vendors, and those vendors are encouraging it (e.g. Vercel v0).
  - gkoberger 1y ago
    Okay? Let's say it's $200/mo or something for a moderately popular app. An engineer starts at $200/hr, so you're still saving a ton. With Vercel/Netlify, you're paying for ease of use. For a lot of people, that tradeoff is worth it. Not everything can be free.
    - SomeoneOnTheWeb 1y ago
      Starts? With 40h/week, that's basically a $400k annual salary. This is certainly not the start price of an engineer.
      - gkoberger 1y ago
        If you hire someone full time, you can do the math that way. But the market rate for a freelance midlevel US-based engineer would be about double per hour what you'd pay a full-time employee of the same level, to account for taxes/PTO/health care/etc.
        mixmastamyk 1y ago
        Would be happy to find something at half that, but there’s no work right now. Lots of ghost jobs and even upwork has twenty+ applicants fighting over $30/hr scraps.
bena 1y ago
Hey man, their money spends like anyone else's.
biznickman 1y ago
Only rough if you're pretentious. Making it easy for engineers, experienced OR aspiring is huge.
- Rastonbury 1y ago
  Yeah the heroku model, arguably AI makes the barriers for aspiring coders lower which means more potential customers
- zefhous 1y ago
  Part of what I think is rough is the framing of Postgres being "an alternative to Google’s Firebase" in the article. I mean, ok yeah they are both databases in a sense, but they are not the same thing at all. Firebase is a service and Postgres a database technology, and certainly not well-described as an alternative to Firebase by anyone competent in the industry. Lol. I don't mean to demean "vibe coders" exactly either, but rather jumping on the hype train of using that term for your funding pitch. You're using AI to learn to become a software developer? Great! No problem with that. But also — if you now have a database involved and you're handling people's data, you better learn what you're doing. A database provider pushing "vibe coding" is not a good look imo.

rychco 1y ago

I don't necessarily think this is a bad goal, but the term "vibe coder" is almost certainly considered derogatory now.

koakuma-chan 1y ago
The day before yesterday I got a technical assignment from a company I was interviewing with to build a Next.js app. Normally I would build it myself, but that day it just felt so tedious, so I gave Claude Code a try. To my surprise, with little to no guidance (probably cuz it was React), it built the app and it even looked very similar to mock-ups the company gave. I changed some things here and there and submitted the task. The whole thing was done in about half an hour. Yesterday they emailed me to schedule the next interview. I'm hooked.
- vrosas 1y ago
  Sadly it seems the days of take home interview assignments are numbered. I much preferred them to live coding assessments when given the option.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    We still do take-homes. You just design them assuming people are going to use LLMs. They're going to do that on the job anyways, so why tie a hand behind their back?
    - whstl 1y ago
      Same. We just ask people to explain what they delivered, and this is 1000x better and more interesting than any quiz or whiteboard.
      - tptacek 1y ago
        LLMs have also allowed us to significantly expand the scope of what we ask candidates to look at. Previously, we were constrained by time budgets (the candidate's, not ours) to a relatively small project, from which we had to read tea leaves; minor variations, objective but still small-bore, were determinative of how candidates ranked. Now we can drop a pretty ambitious project, which creates a lot of variation and room to demonstrate approach.
michelpp 1y ago
I turn 50 tomorrow and I love vibe coding. In the hands of an expert with decades of experience in all the internal corners of C, Python and Postgres I find AI tools to be miracles of technology. I know how to ask them exactly what I want and I know how to separate the goodness from the bullshit. If Supabase is bringing AI closer to the developer at the database level then that is a great thing.
- dwaltrip 1y ago
  Do you have any writings or materials that show your process in depth? I’m interested in learning from those who know how to really squeeze the juice out of these tools.
  - sally_glance 1y ago
    I think what they are saying is the 'secret sauce' to successfully vibe coding is being an expert with all the languages, frameworks and tools yourself. Makes sense to me, vibe coding basically shifts your burden to specification and review, which are traditionally things a senior developer should be good at.
    - dwaltrip 1y ago
      I think there is a lot to be said about what tasks you give to it, how you describe the work and prompt it, and the iteration / workflow loop. I have a limited intuition for this based off my AI usage the past few years, but I want to learn from the pros.
- Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
  Vibe coding is excellent if you have the experience to understand what the AI is churning out and then what to do with it. The problem we have now is we have people who aren't engineers trying to make an app and they end up creating insecure and buggy messes, then struggle with figuring out how to deploy, or they end up destroying all their code with no recovery because they didn't know anything about version control.
DidYaWipe 1y ago
Derogatory and just plain stupid.

gkoberger 1y ago

Enabling more people to make cool things themselves isn't necessarily a bad thing.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jsheard 1y ago
It's all fun and games until you realize the cool thing you made is locked into an overpriced cloud stack that will bleed you dry. "Vibe coders" seem to invariably end up offloading as much heavy lifting as possible to ultra-expensive PaaS/SaaS vendors, and those vendors are encouraging it (e.g. Vercel v0).
- gkoberger 1y ago
  Okay? Let's say it's $200/mo or something for a moderately popular app. An engineer starts at $200/hr, so you're still saving a ton. With Vercel/Netlify, you're paying for ease of use. For a lot of people, that tradeoff is worth it. Not everything can be free.
  - SomeoneOnTheWeb 1y ago
    Starts? With 40h/week, that's basically a $400k annual salary. This is certainly not the start price of an engineer.
    - gkoberger 1y ago
      If you hire someone full time, you can do the math that way. But the market rate for a freelance midlevel US-based engineer would be about double per hour what you'd pay a full-time employee of the same level, to account for taxes/PTO/health care/etc.
      - mixmastamyk 1y ago
        Would be happy to find something at half that, but there’s no work right now. Lots of ghost jobs and even upwork has twenty+ applicants fighting over $30/hr scraps.

bena 1y ago

Hey man, their money spends like anyone else's.

biznickman 1y ago

Only rough if you're pretentious. Making it easy for engineers, experienced OR aspiring is huge.

Rastonbury 1y ago
Yeah the heroku model, arguably AI makes the barriers for aspiring coders lower which means more potential customers
zefhous 1y ago
Part of what I think is rough is the framing of Postgres being "an alternative to Google’s Firebase" in the article. I mean, ok yeah they are both databases in a sense, but they are not the same thing at all. Firebase is a service and Postgres a database technology, and certainly not well-described as an alternative to Firebase by anyone competent in the industry. Lol. I don't mean to demean "vibe coders" exactly either, but rather jumping on the hype train of using that term for your funding pitch. You're using AI to learn to become a software developer? Great! No problem with that. But also — if you now have a database involved and you're handling people's data, you better learn what you're doing. A database provider pushing "vibe coding" is not a good look imo.