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Vibe coding is mad depressing

bentt 9mo ago
The protocol should be that they hand off the prompts/context and not the generated code.
bjoli 9mo ago
I recently ported c-rrb to c#, and when the first port was done Unused ai to help me refine the code. It was a pleasant experience, apart from the AI every three or four prompts introduced subtle bugs. In the end, Claude and I managed to speed up the code by almost 2x. The worst was pushing the tail into the tree. My original code was pretty slow, but every time AI changed more than 4 lines it introduced subtle bugs. I did not actually think ai would be that useful.
kkarpkkarp 9mo ago
I am freelancer as well and in the last month I got two new clients who asked me to fix the vibe-coded projects. And I am now thinking to specialize in the field: they already know how f*d they are and they are going to pay a lot (or: they have no other opportunity). Something what looked like million-dollar idea created for pennies 3 months later is unbearable, already rotting pale of insanity which no junior human developer or even AI code assistant is able to extend. But they already have investors or clients who use it. And for me, with >20 years of coding experience, this is a lot of fun cleaning it to the state when it is manageable.
rglover 9mo ago
The IKEA Effect [1] is a hell of a drug. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect
supratims 9mo ago
For the longest of times contract (and perm) developers/project managers/agencies have taken a lot of liberties of time and money only to develop sub standard products and then charge more for change requests and bug fixes. The model was long due to be disrupted. This new way of vibe coding is not perfect yet but produces results and thats what the sponsors are looking at as a return on investment. As technologists we have to play a big role to find that right balance and educate everyone, not just the business folks about what could go wrong and where are the areas where it might be actually used.
encyclopedism 9mo ago
The core issue is that AI is taking away, or will take away, or threatens to take away, experiences and activities that humans would WANT to do. Things that give them meaning and many of these are tied to earning money and producing value for doing just that thing. Software/coding is once of these activities. One can do coding for fun but doing the same coding where it provides value to others/society and financial upkeep for you and your family is far more meaningful. For those who have swallowed the AI panacea hook line and sinker. Those that say it's made me more productive or that I no longer have to do the boring bits and can focus on the interesting parts of coding. I say follow your own line of reasoning through. It demonstrates that AI is not yet powerful enough to NOT need to empower you, to NOT need to make you more productive. You're only ALLOWED to do the 'interesting' parts presently because the AI is deficient. Ultimately AI aims to remove the need for any human intermediary altogether. Everything in between is just a stop along the way and so for those it empowers stop and think a little about the long term implications. It may be that for you right now it is comfortable position financially or socially but your future you in just a few short months from now may be dramatically impacted. As someone said "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes". I can well imagine the blood draining from peoples faces, the graduate coder who can no longer get on the job ladder. The law secretary whose dream job is being automated away, a dream dreamt from a young age. The journalist whose value has been substituted by a white text box connected to an AI model. I don't have any ideas as to what should be done or more importantly what can be done. Pandora's box has been opened, Humpty Dumpty has fallen and he can't be put back together again. AI feels like it has crossed the rubicon. We must all collectively await to see where the dust settles.
- cindyllm 9mo ago
  [dead]
- wvenable 9mo ago
  Programmers are the last people on earth who should complain about job loss due to automation. Our entire jobs since the beginning has been automating people out of jobs and we've done a wonderful job of that for decades. Entire classes of jobs no longer exist. Although I'm not personally responsible for anyone losing their job I'm certainly responsible for less people being hired. AI is just the next step and not even a particularly large leap. We already needed less law secretaries due to advances of technology. We killed most journalism two decades ago. Art and Music had Photoshop and autotune. Now we've actually achieved something we've literally been striving for since the dawn of computing -- the ability to speak natural language to a computer and have it do what we ask. But it's just one more step.
Mikho 9mo ago
The author should really rethink the relations with clients and "freedom" they get in the process. Back when I did websites for clients, often after carefully thinking a project through and getting to some final idea on how everything should look, feel, and operate, I presented this optimal concept to clients. Some would start recommending changes and adding their own ideas—which I most often already iterated through earlier during ideation and designing. It rarely builds a good rapport with clients if you start explaining why their ideas on "improvements" are really not that good. Anyway, I would listen to them, nod, and do nothing as to their ideas. I would just stick to mine concept without wasting time for random client's "improvements"—leaving them to the last moment if a client would insist on them at the very end. Funny thing is that clients usually, after more consideration and time would come on their own to the result I came to and presented to them—they just needed time to understand that their "improvements" aren't relevant. Nevertheless, if they insisted on implementing their "improvements" (which almost never happened) I'd do it for additional price—most often for them to just see that it wasn't good idea to start with and get back to what I already did before. So, sometimes, ignoring client's ideas really saves a lot of time.
thendrill 9mo ago
I will just copy paste my comment from another thread but still very relevant> Coding isn’t creative, it isn’t sexy, and almost nobody outside this bubble cares Most of the world doesn’t care about “good code.” They care about “does it work, is it fast enough, is it cheap enough, and can we ship it before the competitor does?” Beautiful architecture, perfect tests, elegant abstractions — those things feel deeply rewarding to the person who wrote them, but they’re invisible to users, to executives, and, let’s be honest, to the dating market. Being able to refactor a monolith into pristine microservices will not make you more attractive on a date. What might is the salary that comes with the title “Senior Engineer at FAANG.” In that sense, many women (not all, but enough) relate to programmers the same way middle managers and VCs do: they’re perfectly happy to extract the economic value you produce while remaining indifferent to the craft itself. The code isn’t the turn-on; the direct deposit is. That’s brutal to hear if you’ve spent years telling yourself that your intellectual passion is inherently admirable or sexy. It’s not. Outside our tribe it’s just a means to an end — same as accounting, law, or plumbing, just with worse dress code and better catering. So when AI starts eating the parts of the job we insisted were “creative” and “irreplaceable,” the threat feels existential because the last remaining moat — the romantic story we told ourselves about why this profession is special — collapses. Turns out the scarcity was mostly the paycheck, not the poetry. I’m not saying the work is meaningless or that system design and taste don’t matter. I’m saying we should stop pretending the act of writing software is inherently sexier or more artistically noble than any other high-paying skilled trade. It never was.
- salutis 9mo ago
  > Coding isn’t creative, it isn’t sexy, [...] Nonsense. Coding is creative the same way mathematics is. > Beautiful architecture, perfect tests, elegant abstractions those things feel deeply rewarding to the person who wrote them [...] Nonsense. Best practices exist to make the code perform well. As a result, every user cares about them, albeit indirectly. > That’s brutal to hear if you’ve spent years telling yourself that your intellectual passion is inherently admirable or sexy. It’s not. Nonsense. Intellectual passion is admirable and sexy for many. This is subjective.
geldedus 9mo ago
"There is no best practices anymore, no proper process, no meaningful back and forth." -- speak for yourself only, my friend.
btheunissen 9mo ago
> The first clues started when a client, who I thought was a software developer, starts merging his own code through the main branch, without warning. No pull request, just straight git push --force origin main ... Last time, I checked this Xcode project did not compiled. Or anything close to it. This doesn't read like a vibe-coding problem, and more of a client boundaries problem. Surely you could point out they are paying you for your expertise, and to supersede your best practices with whatever AI churns out is making the job they are paying you to do even harder, and frankly a little disrespectful ("I know better").
cryptoz 9mo ago
Been writing software for like 20 years now and I love it. I am also a fan of AI-assisted coding, but I only just started using Cursor. Gosh I do not like it at all for a simple reason: since I didn't write the code, in order to understand it I have to read it. But gaining understanding that way takes longer than writing it myself does. When you write the code, you understand it. When you read the code produced by an agent, you may eventually feel like you understand it, but it's not at the same deep level as if your own brain created it. I'll keep using new tools, I'll keep writing my own code too. Just venting my frustrations with agentic coding because it's only going to get worse.
- satvikpendem 9mo ago
  Yep. I had a few vibe coded projects that were fairly far along and then things broke. The code was so convoluted and it took me so long to understand that I just opted to rewrite everything from scratch without AI. Sure, it took longer but I understood all of it.
  - throwaway2037 9mo ago
    No joke: Maybe that is the current value of vibe coding. It helps you get started with a crappy version. In your experience, which one do think would take longer? (1) Vibe code until it breaks, then you rewrite everything from scratch or (2) Write everything from scratch. I don't vide code (yet?), but I do use LLMs to get ideas about how to solve problems and look at same code, especially when I don't what library function to call.
    - satvikpendem 9mo ago
      Yeah I do use it for prototyping when I just want to get some version working, so I'm not knocking that, but it's more so trying to warn pure vibe coders that they won't get far if they don't eventually buckle down and write code themselves, for the LLMs will break the code at some point.
- throwaway2037 9mo ago
  You raise a great point here: > since I didn't write the code, in order to understand it I have to read it. But gaining understanding that way takes longer than writing it myself does. I remember reading Joel Spolsky's blog 25 years ago, and he wrote something like: "It is harder to read code than to write code." I was quite young at that stage in my programming journey, but I remember being simultaneously surprised and relieved -- to know that reading code was so damn hard! I kept thinking if I just worked harder at reading code that eventually it would be as easy as writing code.
ctime 9mo ago
We’re in the geocities phase of LLM, mostly trash, very basic, but eventually, people will either get bored and go back to whatever it is they were doing or actually use the tools for useful and productive work. As for the feelings that using LLM has when it one shots your project start (and does a pretty good job), have a German word: Automatisierungskummer (automation sorrow) • Kummer is emotional heaviness, a mild-to-deep sadness.
- tapete2 9mo ago
  This is not a German word. Pseudo-German at best. Put it into Google and you will see.
  - swah 9mo ago
    Yes, this page is the only match..
- Morromist 9mo ago
  Some remember the Geocities era as one of the best phases of the internet. Its hard to know what things will look like in 20 years but people may miss the time when AI cost nothing, or very little, and was less fettered. I think probably not- it would be like being nostalgic for really low-res, low frame youtube videos, but nostalgia is pretty unpredictable and some people love those old FMV games.
  - zahlman 9mo ago
    > Some remember the Geocities era as one of the best phases of the internet. I remember the feeling of realizing that I had terrible taste just like everyone else and I was putting huge amounts of effort into trying to do seamless tiling background images that still looked awful and distracting and ruined the contrast. And also the feeling of having no idea what to talk about or why anyone would care. Now I have way too much to talk about — so much that I struggle to pick something and actually start writing — and I'm still not sure why anyone would care. But at least I've learned to appreciate plain, solid-colour backgrounds.
  - 9mo ago
thewisenerd 9mo ago
> Hey! I asked AI for this code, do you think this will work? I think you should use it. unfortunately this problem preceeds AI, and has been worsened by it. i've seen instances of one-file, in-memory hashmap proof-of-concept implementations been requested to be integrated in semi-large evolving codebases with "it took me 1 day to build this, how long will it take to integrate" questions
satvikpendem 9mo ago
This article is not about vibe coding per se, it's about not having strong boundaries between you as the developer, and your client. You should not be allowing the client to dictate how you work, much less them having the permissions to merge in code. This was true before AI too, where clients might say, do X this way, and you should simply say no, because they are paying for your expertise*. It's like hiring a plumber then trying to tell them how to fix the toilet. *as an aside, this reminds me of the classic joke where the client asks for the price list for a developer's services: I do it: $500 I do it, but you watch: $750 I do it, and you help: $1,000 You do it yourself: $5,000 You start it, and you want me to finish it: $10,000
- smolder 9mo ago
  The classic version is not a developer, it's a mechanic or some other blue collar job. I've seen it on a sign in a machine shop 20 years ago.
- DonHopkins 9mo ago
  >It's like hiring a plumber then trying to tell them how to fix the toilet. And continuing to shit and piss and puke in the toilet while they are trying to fix it.
  - bheadmaster 9mo ago
    A disgusting analogy, but hilariously accurate.
    - DonHopkins 9mo ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30359560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30359560 DonHopkins on Feb 16, 2022 | prev | next [–] When I implemented the pixelation censorship effect in The Sims 1, I actually injected some random noise every frame, so it made the pixels shimmer, even when time was paused. That helped make it less obvious that it wasn't actually censoring penises, boobs, vaginas, and assholes, because the Sims were actually more like smooth Barbie dolls or GI-Joes with no actual naughty bits to censor, and the players knowing that would have embarrassed the poor Sims. [...] The other nasty bug involving pixelization that we did manage to fix before shipping, but that I unfortunately didn't save any video of, involved the maid NPC, who was originally programmed by a really brilliant summer intern, but had a few quirks: A Sim would need to go potty, and walk into the bathroom, pixelate their body, and sit down on the toilet, then proceed to have a nice leisurely bowel movement in their trousers. In the process, the toilet would suddenly become dirty and clogged, which attracted the maid into the bathroom (this was before "privacy" was implemented). She would then stroll over to toilet, whip out a plunger from "hammerspace" [1], and thrust it into the toilet between the pooping Sim's legs, and proceed to move it up and down vigorously by its wooden handle. The "Unnecessary Censorship" [2] strongly implied that the maid was performing a manual act of digital sex work. That little bug required quite a lot of SimAntics [3] programming to fix! [1] Hammerspace: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Hammerspace https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Hammerspace [2] Unnecessary Censorship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-ayfR3UtcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-ayfR3UtcY [broken link updated] [3] SimAntics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22987435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22987435 and https://simstek.fandom.com/wiki/SimAntics https://simstek.fandom.com/wiki/SimAntics
tptacek 9mo ago
All the consulting practice arguments aside, this is fundamentally a gatekeeping argument about clients staying in their lane. I'm sure doctors feel the same way about patients with weirdly specific questions about HFpEF diagnoses. Doctors have always hated "Doctor Google", and now they have to contend with "Doctor GPT". It's up to you how much sympathy to have for them.
- fetztfetzig 9mo ago
  There is a big difference between a client that thinks for themself, researches and challenges a professionals assesment or a client that wants to dictate or participate in the implementation process. In case of medical services we would talk about a patient that wants to do the operation...
- satvikpendem 9mo ago
  Not related to other types of clients, but for doctors and patients specifically, I have heard stories where doctors dismissed patients' concerns until the patients themselves googled and found out exactly what issue they had and then the doctors were much more amenable to solving it [0]. Indeed, [1] > researchers found that searching symptoms online modestly boosted patients’ ability to accurately diagnose health issues without increasing their anxiety or misleading them to seek care inappropriately [...] the results of this survey study challenge the common belief among clinicians and policy-makers that using the Internet to search for health information is harmful. [0] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/man-googles-rash-discovers-he-has-one-in-a-million-disease-1.4339872/man-googles-rash-discovers-he-has-one-in-a-million-rare-disease-1.4339923 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/man-googles-rash-discover... [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8084564/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8084564/
  - kukkeliskuu 9mo ago
    I think this is similar in other fields, and appears to be related to your self-esteem. Some junior (and sometimes even senior) developers may have hard time accepting improvements on their design and code. If you are identified with your code, you may be unwilling to listen to suggestions from others. If you are confident, you will happily accept and consider suggestions from others and are able to admit that anything can be improved, and others can give you valuable insight. Similarly, it appears that some doctors are willing to accept that they have limited amount of time to learn about specific topics, and that a research-oriented and intelligent patient very interested in few topics can easily know more about it. In such a case a conducive mutual learning experience may happen. One doctor told me that what he is offering is statistical advice, because some diseases may be very rare and so it makes sense to rule out more common diseases first. Other doctors may become defensive, if they have the idea that the doctor has the authority and patients should just accept that.
bamboozled 9mo ago
You have to drive the LLM, you cannot let it drive. Therefore you still need to code. There is no best practices anymore, no proper process, no meaningful back and forth. There absolutely is and you need to work with the tools to make sure this happens. Else chaos will ensue. Been working with these things heavily for development for 6-12 months. You absolutely must code with them.
- chairmansteve 9mo ago
  You are right. They are powerful tools when in the hands of a skilled craftsman.
- satvikpendem 9mo ago
  Their issue is their clients trying to push AI garbage, not themselves. And that's a business professionalism boundary issue, not an AI one.
  - bamboozled 9mo ago
    I was responding to the fact they are saying there is no best practices etc, as I quoted.
jrowen 9mo ago
This sounds a lot more like a typical freelance client horror story than a problem with vibe coding. I was almost expecting to hear that it made the job too easy. This kind of work is perfect for vibe coding. But you should be the one doing it.
1970-01-01 9mo ago
Just fire your customer. You didn't know you could do that? When you freelance, you absolutely can.
issafram 9mo ago
PRs and branch rules are a thing.
moomoo11 9mo ago
“I made a chat app using Claude in two hours” Ah yes a supabase backed, hallucinated data model with random shit, using deprecated methods, and a copy paste UI. Zero access control or privacy, 1% of features, no files uploading or playback or calling. “Can you scale this to 1M users by end of the week? Something similar to WhatsApp or Telegram or Signal” Sybau mf
- zahlman 9mo ago
  >Sybau mf What does this mean?
  - DANmode 9mo ago
    “Shut yo bitch ass up, mothafucka.” Like a neck tattoo, but the text form.
WhyOhWhyQ 9mo ago
For me vibecoding has a similar feeling to a big bag of Doritos. It's really fun at first to slap down 10k lines of code in an afternoon knowing this is just an indulgence. I think AI is actually really useful for getting a quick view of some library or feature. Also, you can learn a lot if you approach it the right way. However, every time I do any amount of vibecoding eventually it just transitions into pure lethargy mode; (apparently lethargia is not a word, by the way). Once you eat half a bag of Doritos, are you really not going to eat the second half... do you really want to eat the second half? I don't feel like I'm benefitting as a human just being a QA tester for the AI, constantly shouting that X thing didn't work and Y thing needs to be changed slightly. I think pure vibecode AI use has a difficult to understand efficiency curve, where it's obviously very efficient in the beginning, but over time hard things start to compound such that if you didn't actually form a good understanding of the project, you won't be able to make progress after a while. At that point you ate the whole bag of Doritos, you feel like shit, and you can't get off the couch.
- iberator 9mo ago
  Whay do you mean? I love Doritos!
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- j45 9mo ago
  Lines of code used to be a moat for a company, it no longer is. Being effective with the code to get the same things done is. That requires a new kind of driving for a new kind of vehicle.
- 112233 9mo ago
  I have yet to find the niche where it is "good at the beginning". So far I've mostly tried asking to build C tools that use advanced linux API. Me: hey make this, detailed-spec.txt AI: okidoki (barfs 9k lines in 15 minutes) all done and tested! Me looks at the code, that has feature-sounding names, but all features are stubs, all tests are stubs, and it does not compile. Me: it does not compile. AI: Yes, but the code is correct. Now that the project is done, which of these features you want me to add (some crazy list) Me: Please get it to compile. AI: You are absolutely right! This is an excellent idea! (proceeds to stub and delete most of what it barfed). I feel really satisfied with the progress! It was a real challenge! The code you gave me was very poorly written! ... and so on.
tonyoconnell 9mo ago
I think building apps and websites for other people is mad depressing. It went from "move this up there, and change that colour to pink" to a client ruining a beautiful site by using a nocode tool. Now they have superpowers to ruin it by adding AI generated code as well. AI can generate absolutely beautiful code if it is generated on the right architecture with the right patterns and rules. The problem isn't the AI it's the people telling AI and developers what to do.
polalavik 9mo ago
similar experience - i freelanced recently (embedded systems) where i was to interface to a "software engineer" doing the backend. Every. single. time. we hit an interface problem he would say “if you don’t understand the error feel free to use ChatGPT”. Dude it’s bare metal embedded software I WROTE the error. Also, telling someone that was hired because of their expertise to chatgpt something is crazy insulting. We are in an era of empowered idiots. People truly feel that access to this near infinite knowledge base means it is an extension of their capabilities.
sshadmand 9mo ago
I feel like it allows me do more of the fun bits of coding and creating. It's not too different than giving the easy/basic/annoying stuff to consultants and less senior engineers. Do people get mad when the hire more devs? You still get to machinate over how to attack a problem in clever ways. Also, you can give 4 out of 5 tasks to the AI and leave the fun bits for yourself.
sergiotapia 9mo ago
The only thing that matters anymore in corporate is: does the code solve the problem. Also, is it just me or has the feeling of victory gone away completely 100% ever since AI became a thing? I used to sweat and struggle, and finally have my breakthrough, the "I'm invicible!" Boris moment before the next thing came into my task inbox. I don't feel that high anymore. I only recently realized this.
sebastiennight 9mo ago
> There is no best practices anymore, no proper process, no meaningful back and forth. Reality check: none of that ever existed, unless either the client mandated it (as a way to tightly regulate output quality from cheaper developers) or the developer mandated it (justifying their much higher prices and value to the customer). Other than that: average customer buying code from average developer means: - git was never even considered - if git was ever used, everything is merged into "master" in huge commits - no scheduled reviews, they only saw each other when it's time for the next quarterly/monthly payment and the client was shown (but not able to use) some preview of what's done so far
ekropotin 9mo ago
Just want to highlight that gmnz.xyz domain is on UCEPROTECTL3 blacklist.
- cweagans 9mo ago
  IMO, UCEPROTECTL3 is a scam and it's not worth even acknowledging their existence. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/eur4ju/removal_from_uceprotectl3_blacklist/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/eur4ju/removal_fr... among many other similar posts. https://www.uceprotect.net/en/index.php?m=7&s=8 https://www.uceprotect.net/en/index.php?m=7&s=8 -- "pay us to fix a problem that we've caused, and if you have the gall to call it what it is (extortion), then we'll publish your email and be massive dicks about it" (To be clear, not all spam blacklists are scams - just UCEPROTECTL3 specifically)
  - ekropotin 9mo ago
    You may be right, and I'd be happy to ignore it, but unfortunately, my work laptop has baked it in. I assume many other companies are using it as well.
    - cweagans 9mo ago
      Baked in?? Are you saying that your work laptop uses email blacklists as a way to block you from e.g. visiting a website? Please say more. Also where do you work so that I know where I never want to work?
      - ekropotin 9mo ago
        I apologize for my sloppy use of words. What I'm saying is that I can't access this website from my work laptop - it shows me branded blocked page. I'm not 100% sure, but I think there is a policy set up on Zcaler, blocking access to the domains defined in some sort of blacklist. The reason why I assumed it's UCEPROTECTL3 is because it's the only positive result I got at online blacklist lookup against gmnz.xyz. And no, I don't feel comfortable sharing my employer.
Uptrenda 9mo ago
This is all over linkedin now. Basically, idea bros manage to get their ideas seemingly working with vibe coding but the moment it breaks they expect they can just "pay to fix the small broken part" and get back to work quickly. Not realising the cost that the developer has to get up to date on the project, then probably fix a mountain of poorly done, insecure work to "quickly finish" the project. A lot of them are also scammers and try to get you to start work on it without even having an contract. Not really worth working on any of these project.
d--b 9mo ago
I see it as a reason why we’re going to remain employable for a while.
randallsquared 9mo ago
> Okay, so this non-technical person is sending me codes now. I started wondering if this person was actually a developer here. Maybe just a typo, or maybe a dialect thing, but does anyone actually use "codes" as a plural?
- kridsdale1 9mo ago
  Always assume the author is ESL in these situations.
- jgilias 9mo ago
  It’s not just that, there are other things in the article pointing to the person being a non-native English speaker. Which is fine, I’m one too. It’s somehow ironic though that his written output could’ve been improved by running it through an AI tool.
  - duskdozer 9mo ago
    I'd much rather read someone's actual errored, nonnative writing than whatever an LLM would produce from it. Not only because it's annoying reading the same fake style over and over, but also because the less fluent they are the less able they are to tell when the LLM output is changing things in ways that don't reflect what they're thinking. And if the main complaint is just a few odd words or structures, it's really not that big of a deal to me.
  - ncallaway 9mo ago
    > his written output could’ve been improved by running it through an AI tool. I mean, it could've been homogonized by running it through an AI tool. I don't think there's a guarantee that it would've been an improvement. Yes, it probably could've helped refine away phrases that give away a non-native English speaker, but it also would've sanded down and ground away other aspects of the personality of the author. Is that an improvement? I'm not so sure.
- Scramblejams 9mo ago
  In other disciplines, yes. Very common to hear it in mechanical or aerospace engineering, for example. They'll say "codes" to refer to multiple programs or "a code" to refer to a single program. It's amusing, when I was in the field I just went with it.
uwagar 9mo ago
u should abuse the non technical person sending you code. not say "thanks, though"
- rtp4me 9mo ago
  What does this mean? How are you going to abuse them? Something is missing here...
kinj28 9mo ago
I run a low code platform for building internal tools & software. One of my prospect about to sign a contract came back telling me that his CTO has asked him to check vibe code tools and build a few internal tools with them. They are a large series D/E company and have over 250 internal tools built on retool (a service that they are migrating from). CTO is puzzled & is thinking if does he even need a platform to build & manage internal tools. On other hand -- another customer of mine built a few internal tools with vibe code (& yes he does have subscription to my low code service) but then when newer requests came for upgrade thats where his vibe coded app started acting up. His candid feedback was -- for internal tools vibe code doesnt work. As a service provider for low code --> we are now providing full fledged vibe code tooling on top. While I dont know how customers who do not wish to code and just have the software will be able to upkeep these softwares without needing professionals.
827a 9mo ago
Yeah, its bad out there. At my company, we have a team of security professionals that focus on keeping our systems (and others') secure. AI for them has gone from "using it for scripting together nmap" to "we really need the platform your team is working on to do X, Y, and Z, so we vibed up this PR". On the engineering side, I don't have the political power to tell them no, because we don't really have senior leadership and we're behind schedule on everything. Why? Well, I spent two hours today resolving dozens of vulnerabilities our code scanners found in some vibed security team PR. The scanners that they set up, and demanded we use. Half the stuff they vibe we literally have to feature flag off immediately after release, because they didn't QA it, but they rarely revisit the feature because to them its always either "on to the next big idea" or, more often, "we're just security, platform isn't our responsibility". The thing is: I know you might read that and think I'm anti-AI. In this specific situation, at my company: We gave nuclear technology to a bunch of teenagers, then act surprised when they blow up the garage. This is a political/leadership problem; because everything, nine times out of ten, is a political/leadership problem. But the incentives just aren't there yet for generalized understanding of the responsibility it requires to leverage these tools in a product environment that's expected to last years-to-decades. I think it will get there, but along that road will be gallons of blood from products killed, ironically, by their inability to be dynamic and reliable under the weight of the additive-biased purple-tailwind-drenched world of LLM vibeput. But, there's probably an end to that road, and I hope when we get there I can still have an LLM, because its pretty nice to be able to be like "heyo, i copy pasted this JSON but it has javascript single quotes instead of double quotes so its not technically JSON, can you fix that thanks"
- otabdeveloper4 9mo ago
  AI is trash. The people who think FizzBuzz is a leetcode programmer question are now vibecoding the same trash as always, except now they think they are smart x10 developers for forcing you to review and clean up their trash.
ModernMech 9mo ago
Honestly the emoji thing I like, it helps me read log output.
mrdosija 9mo ago
Reading the post and some of the comments here, looks to me like people are having bigger problems with how other people use AI than with AI itself.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
Dansvidania 9mo ago
I feel that agent coding is actually giving a second wind of life to solid principles, “proper” software architecture. Now you can nag the llm to follow them and A- it will actually apply them if well directed and does not mind the (small?) extra complexity upfront B- you pretty much immediately see the effects

bentt 9mo ago

The protocol should be that they hand off the prompts/context and not the generated code.

bjoli 9mo ago

I recently ported c-rrb to c#, and when the first port was done Unused ai to help me refine the code. It was a pleasant experience, apart from the AI every three or four prompts introduced subtle bugs. In the end, Claude and I managed to speed up the code by almost 2x. The worst was pushing the tail into the tree. My original code was pretty slow, but every time AI changed more than 4 lines it introduced subtle bugs. I did not actually think ai would be that useful.

kkarpkkarp 9mo ago

I am freelancer as well and in the last month I got two new clients who asked me to fix the vibe-coded projects. And I am now thinking to specialize in the field: they already know how f*d they are and they are going to pay a lot (or: they have no other opportunity). Something what looked like million-dollar idea created for pennies 3 months later is unbearable, already rotting pale of insanity which no junior human developer or even AI code assistant is able to extend. But they already have investors or clients who use it. And for me, with >20 years of coding experience, this is a lot of fun cleaning it to the state when it is manageable.

rglover 9mo ago

The IKEA Effect [1] is a hell of a drug. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect

supratims 9mo ago

For the longest of times contract (and perm) developers/project managers/agencies have taken a lot of liberties of time and money only to develop sub standard products and then charge more for change requests and bug fixes. The model was long due to be disrupted. This new way of vibe coding is not perfect yet but produces results and thats what the sponsors are looking at as a return on investment. As technologists we have to play a big role to find that right balance and educate everyone, not just the business folks about what could go wrong and where are the areas where it might be actually used.

encyclopedism 9mo ago

The core issue is that AI is taking away, or will take away, or threatens to take away, experiences and activities that humans would WANT to do. Things that give them meaning and many of these are tied to earning money and producing value for doing just that thing. Software/coding is once of these activities. One can do coding for fun but doing the same coding where it provides value to others/society and financial upkeep for you and your family is far more meaningful. For those who have swallowed the AI panacea hook line and sinker. Those that say it's made me more productive or that I no longer have to do the boring bits and can focus on the interesting parts of coding. I say follow your own line of reasoning through. It demonstrates that AI is not yet powerful enough to NOT need to empower you, to NOT need to make you more productive. You're only ALLOWED to do the 'interesting' parts presently because the AI is deficient. Ultimately AI aims to remove the need for any human intermediary altogether. Everything in between is just a stop along the way and so for those it empowers stop and think a little about the long term implications. It may be that for you right now it is comfortable position financially or socially but your future you in just a few short months from now may be dramatically impacted. As someone said "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes". I can well imagine the blood draining from peoples faces, the graduate coder who can no longer get on the job ladder. The law secretary whose dream job is being automated away, a dream dreamt from a young age. The journalist whose value has been substituted by a white text box connected to an AI model. I don't have any ideas as to what should be done or more importantly what can be done. Pandora's box has been opened, Humpty Dumpty has fallen and he can't be put back together again. AI feels like it has crossed the rubicon. We must all collectively await to see where the dust settles.

cindyllm 9mo ago
[dead]
wvenable 9mo ago
Programmers are the last people on earth who should complain about job loss due to automation. Our entire jobs since the beginning has been automating people out of jobs and we've done a wonderful job of that for decades. Entire classes of jobs no longer exist. Although I'm not personally responsible for anyone losing their job I'm certainly responsible for less people being hired. AI is just the next step and not even a particularly large leap. We already needed less law secretaries due to advances of technology. We killed most journalism two decades ago. Art and Music had Photoshop and autotune. Now we've actually achieved something we've literally been striving for since the dawn of computing -- the ability to speak natural language to a computer and have it do what we ask. But it's just one more step.

Mikho 9mo ago

The author should really rethink the relations with clients and "freedom" they get in the process. Back when I did websites for clients, often after carefully thinking a project through and getting to some final idea on how everything should look, feel, and operate, I presented this optimal concept to clients. Some would start recommending changes and adding their own ideas—which I most often already iterated through earlier during ideation and designing. It rarely builds a good rapport with clients if you start explaining why their ideas on "improvements" are really not that good. Anyway, I would listen to them, nod, and do nothing as to their ideas. I would just stick to mine concept without wasting time for random client's "improvements"—leaving them to the last moment if a client would insist on them at the very end. Funny thing is that clients usually, after more consideration and time would come on their own to the result I came to and presented to them—they just needed time to understand that their "improvements" aren't relevant. Nevertheless, if they insisted on implementing their "improvements" (which almost never happened) I'd do it for additional price—most often for them to just see that it wasn't good idea to start with and get back to what I already did before. So, sometimes, ignoring client's ideas really saves a lot of time.

thendrill 9mo ago

I will just copy paste my comment from another thread but still very relevant> Coding isn’t creative, it isn’t sexy, and almost nobody outside this bubble cares Most of the world doesn’t care about “good code.” They care about “does it work, is it fast enough, is it cheap enough, and can we ship it before the competitor does?” Beautiful architecture, perfect tests, elegant abstractions — those things feel deeply rewarding to the person who wrote them, but they’re invisible to users, to executives, and, let’s be honest, to the dating market. Being able to refactor a monolith into pristine microservices will not make you more attractive on a date. What might is the salary that comes with the title “Senior Engineer at FAANG.” In that sense, many women (not all, but enough) relate to programmers the same way middle managers and VCs do: they’re perfectly happy to extract the economic value you produce while remaining indifferent to the craft itself. The code isn’t the turn-on; the direct deposit is. That’s brutal to hear if you’ve spent years telling yourself that your intellectual passion is inherently admirable or sexy. It’s not. Outside our tribe it’s just a means to an end — same as accounting, law, or plumbing, just with worse dress code and better catering. So when AI starts eating the parts of the job we insisted were “creative” and “irreplaceable,” the threat feels existential because the last remaining moat — the romantic story we told ourselves about why this profession is special — collapses. Turns out the scarcity was mostly the paycheck, not the poetry. I’m not saying the work is meaningless or that system design and taste don’t matter. I’m saying we should stop pretending the act of writing software is inherently sexier or more artistically noble than any other high-paying skilled trade. It never was.

salutis 9mo ago
> Coding isn’t creative, it isn’t sexy, [...] Nonsense. Coding is creative the same way mathematics is. > Beautiful architecture, perfect tests, elegant abstractions those things feel deeply rewarding to the person who wrote them [...] Nonsense. Best practices exist to make the code perform well. As a result, every user cares about them, albeit indirectly. > That’s brutal to hear if you’ve spent years telling yourself that your intellectual passion is inherently admirable or sexy. It’s not. Nonsense. Intellectual passion is admirable and sexy for many. This is subjective.

geldedus 9mo ago

"There is no best practices anymore, no proper process, no meaningful back and forth." -- speak for yourself only, my friend.

btheunissen 9mo ago

> The first clues started when a client, who I thought was a software developer, starts merging his own code through the main branch, without warning. No pull request, just straight git push --force origin main ... Last time, I checked this Xcode project did not compiled. Or anything close to it. This doesn't read like a vibe-coding problem, and more of a client boundaries problem. Surely you could point out they are paying you for your expertise, and to supersede your best practices with whatever AI churns out is making the job they are paying you to do even harder, and frankly a little disrespectful ("I know better").

cryptoz 9mo ago

Been writing software for like 20 years now and I love it. I am also a fan of AI-assisted coding, but I only just started using Cursor. Gosh I do not like it at all for a simple reason: since I didn't write the code, in order to understand it I have to read it. But gaining understanding that way takes longer than writing it myself does. When you write the code, you understand it. When you read the code produced by an agent, you may eventually feel like you understand it, but it's not at the same deep level as if your own brain created it. I'll keep using new tools, I'll keep writing my own code too. Just venting my frustrations with agentic coding because it's only going to get worse.

satvikpendem 9mo ago
Yep. I had a few vibe coded projects that were fairly far along and then things broke. The code was so convoluted and it took me so long to understand that I just opted to rewrite everything from scratch without AI. Sure, it took longer but I understood all of it.
- throwaway2037 9mo ago
  No joke: Maybe that is the current value of vibe coding. It helps you get started with a crappy version. In your experience, which one do think would take longer? (1) Vibe code until it breaks, then you rewrite everything from scratch or (2) Write everything from scratch. I don't vide code (yet?), but I do use LLMs to get ideas about how to solve problems and look at same code, especially when I don't what library function to call.
  - satvikpendem 9mo ago
    Yeah I do use it for prototyping when I just want to get some version working, so I'm not knocking that, but it's more so trying to warn pure vibe coders that they won't get far if they don't eventually buckle down and write code themselves, for the LLMs will break the code at some point.
throwaway2037 9mo ago
You raise a great point here: > since I didn't write the code, in order to understand it I have to read it. But gaining understanding that way takes longer than writing it myself does. I remember reading Joel Spolsky's blog 25 years ago, and he wrote something like: "It is harder to read code than to write code." I was quite young at that stage in my programming journey, but I remember being simultaneously surprised and relieved -- to know that reading code was so damn hard! I kept thinking if I just worked harder at reading code that eventually it would be as easy as writing code.

ctime 9mo ago

We’re in the geocities phase of LLM, mostly trash, very basic, but eventually, people will either get bored and go back to whatever it is they were doing or actually use the tools for useful and productive work. As for the feelings that using LLM has when it one shots your project start (and does a pretty good job), have a German word: Automatisierungskummer (automation sorrow) • Kummer is emotional heaviness, a mild-to-deep sadness.

tapete2 9mo ago
This is not a German word. Pseudo-German at best. Put it into Google and you will see.
- swah 9mo ago
  Yes, this page is the only match..
Morromist 9mo ago
Some remember the Geocities era as one of the best phases of the internet. Its hard to know what things will look like in 20 years but people may miss the time when AI cost nothing, or very little, and was less fettered. I think probably not- it would be like being nostalgic for really low-res, low frame youtube videos, but nostalgia is pretty unpredictable and some people love those old FMV games.
- zahlman 9mo ago
  > Some remember the Geocities era as one of the best phases of the internet. I remember the feeling of realizing that I had terrible taste just like everyone else and I was putting huge amounts of effort into trying to do seamless tiling background images that still looked awful and distracting and ruined the contrast. And also the feeling of having no idea what to talk about or why anyone would care. Now I have way too much to talk about — so much that I struggle to pick something and actually start writing — and I'm still not sure why anyone would care. But at least I've learned to appreciate plain, solid-colour backgrounds.
- 9mo ago

thewisenerd 9mo ago

> Hey! I asked AI for this code, do you think this will work? I think you should use it. unfortunately this problem preceeds AI, and has been worsened by it. i've seen instances of one-file, in-memory hashmap proof-of-concept implementations been requested to be integrated in semi-large evolving codebases with "it took me 1 day to build this, how long will it take to integrate" questions

satvikpendem 9mo ago

This article is not about vibe coding per se, it's about not having strong boundaries between you as the developer, and your client. You should not be allowing the client to dictate how you work, much less them having the permissions to merge in code. This was true before AI too, where clients might say, do X this way, and you should simply say no, because they are paying for your expertise*. It's like hiring a plumber then trying to tell them how to fix the toilet. *as an aside, this reminds me of the classic joke where the client asks for the price list for a developer's services: I do it: $500 I do it, but you watch: $750 I do it, and you help: $1,000 You do it yourself: $5,000 You start it, and you want me to finish it: $10,000

smolder 9mo ago
The classic version is not a developer, it's a mechanic or some other blue collar job. I've seen it on a sign in a machine shop 20 years ago.
DonHopkins 9mo ago
>It's like hiring a plumber then trying to tell them how to fix the toilet. And continuing to shit and piss and puke in the toilet while they are trying to fix it.
- bheadmaster 9mo ago
  A disgusting analogy, but hilariously accurate.
  - DonHopkins 9mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30359560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30359560 DonHopkins on Feb 16, 2022 | prev | next [–] When I implemented the pixelation censorship effect in The Sims 1, I actually injected some random noise every frame, so it made the pixels shimmer, even when time was paused. That helped make it less obvious that it wasn't actually censoring penises, boobs, vaginas, and assholes, because the Sims were actually more like smooth Barbie dolls or GI-Joes with no actual naughty bits to censor, and the players knowing that would have embarrassed the poor Sims. [...] The other nasty bug involving pixelization that we did manage to fix before shipping, but that I unfortunately didn't save any video of, involved the maid NPC, who was originally programmed by a really brilliant summer intern, but had a few quirks: A Sim would need to go potty, and walk into the bathroom, pixelate their body, and sit down on the toilet, then proceed to have a nice leisurely bowel movement in their trousers. In the process, the toilet would suddenly become dirty and clogged, which attracted the maid into the bathroom (this was before "privacy" was implemented). She would then stroll over to toilet, whip out a plunger from "hammerspace" [1], and thrust it into the toilet between the pooping Sim's legs, and proceed to move it up and down vigorously by its wooden handle. The "Unnecessary Censorship" [2] strongly implied that the maid was performing a manual act of digital sex work. That little bug required quite a lot of SimAntics [3] programming to fix! [1] Hammerspace: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Hammerspace https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Hammerspace [2] Unnecessary Censorship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-ayfR3UtcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-ayfR3UtcY [broken link updated] [3] SimAntics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22987435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22987435 and https://simstek.fandom.com/wiki/SimAntics https://simstek.fandom.com/wiki/SimAntics

tptacek 9mo ago

All the consulting practice arguments aside, this is fundamentally a gatekeeping argument about clients staying in their lane. I'm sure doctors feel the same way about patients with weirdly specific questions about HFpEF diagnoses. Doctors have always hated "Doctor Google", and now they have to contend with "Doctor GPT". It's up to you how much sympathy to have for them.

fetztfetzig 9mo ago
There is a big difference between a client that thinks for themself, researches and challenges a professionals assesment or a client that wants to dictate or participate in the implementation process. In case of medical services we would talk about a patient that wants to do the operation...
satvikpendem 9mo ago
Not related to other types of clients, but for doctors and patients specifically, I have heard stories where doctors dismissed patients' concerns until the patients themselves googled and found out exactly what issue they had and then the doctors were much more amenable to solving it [0]. Indeed, [1] > researchers found that searching symptoms online modestly boosted patients’ ability to accurately diagnose health issues without increasing their anxiety or misleading them to seek care inappropriately [...] the results of this survey study challenge the common belief among clinicians and policy-makers that using the Internet to search for health information is harmful. [0] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/man-googles-rash-discovers-he-has-one-in-a-million-disease-1.4339872/man-googles-rash-discovers-he-has-one-in-a-million-rare-disease-1.4339923 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/man-googles-rash-discover... [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8084564/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8084564/
- kukkeliskuu 9mo ago
  I think this is similar in other fields, and appears to be related to your self-esteem. Some junior (and sometimes even senior) developers may have hard time accepting improvements on their design and code. If you are identified with your code, you may be unwilling to listen to suggestions from others. If you are confident, you will happily accept and consider suggestions from others and are able to admit that anything can be improved, and others can give you valuable insight. Similarly, it appears that some doctors are willing to accept that they have limited amount of time to learn about specific topics, and that a research-oriented and intelligent patient very interested in few topics can easily know more about it. In such a case a conducive mutual learning experience may happen. One doctor told me that what he is offering is statistical advice, because some diseases may be very rare and so it makes sense to rule out more common diseases first. Other doctors may become defensive, if they have the idea that the doctor has the authority and patients should just accept that.

bamboozled 9mo ago

You have to drive the LLM, you cannot let it drive. Therefore you still need to code. There is no best practices anymore, no proper process, no meaningful back and forth. There absolutely is and you need to work with the tools to make sure this happens. Else chaos will ensue. Been working with these things heavily for development for 6-12 months. You absolutely must code with them.

chairmansteve 9mo ago
You are right. They are powerful tools when in the hands of a skilled craftsman.
satvikpendem 9mo ago
Their issue is their clients trying to push AI garbage, not themselves. And that's a business professionalism boundary issue, not an AI one.
- bamboozled 9mo ago
  I was responding to the fact they are saying there is no best practices etc, as I quoted.

jrowen 9mo ago

This sounds a lot more like a typical freelance client horror story than a problem with vibe coding. I was almost expecting to hear that it made the job too easy. This kind of work is perfect for vibe coding. But you should be the one doing it.

1970-01-01 9mo ago

Just fire your customer. You didn't know you could do that? When you freelance, you absolutely can.

issafram 9mo ago

PRs and branch rules are a thing.

moomoo11 9mo ago

“I made a chat app using Claude in two hours” Ah yes a supabase backed, hallucinated data model with random shit, using deprecated methods, and a copy paste UI. Zero access control or privacy, 1% of features, no files uploading or playback or calling. “Can you scale this to 1M users by end of the week? Something similar to WhatsApp or Telegram or Signal” Sybau mf

zahlman 9mo ago
>Sybau mf What does this mean?
- DANmode 9mo ago
  “Shut yo bitch ass up, mothafucka.” Like a neck tattoo, but the text form.

WhyOhWhyQ 9mo ago

For me vibecoding has a similar feeling to a big bag of Doritos. It's really fun at first to slap down 10k lines of code in an afternoon knowing this is just an indulgence. I think AI is actually really useful for getting a quick view of some library or feature. Also, you can learn a lot if you approach it the right way. However, every time I do any amount of vibecoding eventually it just transitions into pure lethargy mode; (apparently lethargia is not a word, by the way). Once you eat half a bag of Doritos, are you really not going to eat the second half... do you really want to eat the second half? I don't feel like I'm benefitting as a human just being a QA tester for the AI, constantly shouting that X thing didn't work and Y thing needs to be changed slightly. I think pure vibecode AI use has a difficult to understand efficiency curve, where it's obviously very efficient in the beginning, but over time hard things start to compound such that if you didn't actually form a good understanding of the project, you won't be able to make progress after a while. At that point you ate the whole bag of Doritos, you feel like shit, and you can't get off the couch.

iberator 9mo ago
Whay do you mean? I love Doritos!
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
j45 9mo ago
Lines of code used to be a moat for a company, it no longer is. Being effective with the code to get the same things done is. That requires a new kind of driving for a new kind of vehicle.
112233 9mo ago
I have yet to find the niche where it is "good at the beginning". So far I've mostly tried asking to build C tools that use advanced linux API. Me: hey make this, detailed-spec.txt AI: okidoki (barfs 9k lines in 15 minutes) all done and tested! Me looks at the code, that has feature-sounding names, but all features are stubs, all tests are stubs, and it does not compile. Me: it does not compile. AI: Yes, but the code is correct. Now that the project is done, which of these features you want me to add (some crazy list) Me: Please get it to compile. AI: You are absolutely right! This is an excellent idea! (proceeds to stub and delete most of what it barfed). I feel really satisfied with the progress! It was a real challenge! The code you gave me was very poorly written! ... and so on.

tonyoconnell 9mo ago

I think building apps and websites for other people is mad depressing. It went from "move this up there, and change that colour to pink" to a client ruining a beautiful site by using a nocode tool. Now they have superpowers to ruin it by adding AI generated code as well. AI can generate absolutely beautiful code if it is generated on the right architecture with the right patterns and rules. The problem isn't the AI it's the people telling AI and developers what to do.

polalavik 9mo ago

similar experience - i freelanced recently (embedded systems) where i was to interface to a "software engineer" doing the backend. Every. single. time. we hit an interface problem he would say “if you don’t understand the error feel free to use ChatGPT”. Dude it’s bare metal embedded software I WROTE the error. Also, telling someone that was hired because of their expertise to chatgpt something is crazy insulting. We are in an era of empowered idiots. People truly feel that access to this near infinite knowledge base means it is an extension of their capabilities.

sshadmand 9mo ago

I feel like it allows me do more of the fun bits of coding and creating. It's not too different than giving the easy/basic/annoying stuff to consultants and less senior engineers. Do people get mad when the hire more devs? You still get to machinate over how to attack a problem in clever ways. Also, you can give 4 out of 5 tasks to the AI and leave the fun bits for yourself.

sergiotapia 9mo ago

The only thing that matters anymore in corporate is: does the code solve the problem. Also, is it just me or has the feeling of victory gone away completely 100% ever since AI became a thing? I used to sweat and struggle, and finally have my breakthrough, the "I'm invicible!" Boris moment before the next thing came into my task inbox. I don't feel that high anymore. I only recently realized this.

sebastiennight 9mo ago

> There is no best practices anymore, no proper process, no meaningful back and forth. Reality check: none of that ever existed, unless either the client mandated it (as a way to tightly regulate output quality from cheaper developers) or the developer mandated it (justifying their much higher prices and value to the customer). Other than that: average customer buying code from average developer means: - git was never even considered - if git was ever used, everything is merged into "master" in huge commits - no scheduled reviews, they only saw each other when it's time for the next quarterly/monthly payment and the client was shown (but not able to use) some preview of what's done so far

ekropotin 9mo ago

Just want to highlight that gmnz.xyz domain is on UCEPROTECTL3 blacklist.

cweagans 9mo ago
IMO, UCEPROTECTL3 is a scam and it's not worth even acknowledging their existence. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/eur4ju/removal_from_uceprotectl3_blacklist/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/eur4ju/removal_fr... among many other similar posts. https://www.uceprotect.net/en/index.php?m=7&s=8 https://www.uceprotect.net/en/index.php?m=7&s=8 -- "pay us to fix a problem that we've caused, and if you have the gall to call it what it is (extortion), then we'll publish your email and be massive dicks about it" (To be clear, not all spam blacklists are scams - just UCEPROTECTL3 specifically)
- ekropotin 9mo ago
  You may be right, and I'd be happy to ignore it, but unfortunately, my work laptop has baked it in. I assume many other companies are using it as well.
  - cweagans 9mo ago
    Baked in?? Are you saying that your work laptop uses email blacklists as a way to block you from e.g. visiting a website? Please say more. Also where do you work so that I know where I never want to work?
    - ekropotin 9mo ago
      I apologize for my sloppy use of words. What I'm saying is that I can't access this website from my work laptop - it shows me branded blocked page. I'm not 100% sure, but I think there is a policy set up on Zcaler, blocking access to the domains defined in some sort of blacklist. The reason why I assumed it's UCEPROTECTL3 is because it's the only positive result I got at online blacklist lookup against gmnz.xyz. And no, I don't feel comfortable sharing my employer.

Uptrenda 9mo ago

This is all over linkedin now. Basically, idea bros manage to get their ideas seemingly working with vibe coding but the moment it breaks they expect they can just "pay to fix the small broken part" and get back to work quickly. Not realising the cost that the developer has to get up to date on the project, then probably fix a mountain of poorly done, insecure work to "quickly finish" the project. A lot of them are also scammers and try to get you to start work on it without even having an contract. Not really worth working on any of these project.

d--b 9mo ago

I see it as a reason why we’re going to remain employable for a while.

randallsquared 9mo ago

> Okay, so this non-technical person is sending me codes now. I started wondering if this person was actually a developer here. Maybe just a typo, or maybe a dialect thing, but does anyone actually use "codes" as a plural?

kridsdale1 9mo ago
Always assume the author is ESL in these situations.
jgilias 9mo ago
It’s not just that, there are other things in the article pointing to the person being a non-native English speaker. Which is fine, I’m one too. It’s somehow ironic though that his written output could’ve been improved by running it through an AI tool.
- duskdozer 9mo ago
  I'd much rather read someone's actual errored, nonnative writing than whatever an LLM would produce from it. Not only because it's annoying reading the same fake style over and over, but also because the less fluent they are the less able they are to tell when the LLM output is changing things in ways that don't reflect what they're thinking. And if the main complaint is just a few odd words or structures, it's really not that big of a deal to me.
- ncallaway 9mo ago
  > his written output could’ve been improved by running it through an AI tool. I mean, it could've been homogonized by running it through an AI tool. I don't think there's a guarantee that it would've been an improvement. Yes, it probably could've helped refine away phrases that give away a non-native English speaker, but it also would've sanded down and ground away other aspects of the personality of the author. Is that an improvement? I'm not so sure.
Scramblejams 9mo ago
In other disciplines, yes. Very common to hear it in mechanical or aerospace engineering, for example. They'll say "codes" to refer to multiple programs or "a code" to refer to a single program. It's amusing, when I was in the field I just went with it.

uwagar 9mo ago

u should abuse the non technical person sending you code. not say "thanks, though"

rtp4me 9mo ago
What does this mean? How are you going to abuse them? Something is missing here...

kinj28 9mo ago

I run a low code platform for building internal tools & software. One of my prospect about to sign a contract came back telling me that his CTO has asked him to check vibe code tools and build a few internal tools with them. They are a large series D/E company and have over 250 internal tools built on retool (a service that they are migrating from). CTO is puzzled & is thinking if does he even need a platform to build & manage internal tools. On other hand -- another customer of mine built a few internal tools with vibe code (& yes he does have subscription to my low code service) but then when newer requests came for upgrade thats where his vibe coded app started acting up. His candid feedback was -- for internal tools vibe code doesnt work. As a service provider for low code --> we are now providing full fledged vibe code tooling on top. While I dont know how customers who do not wish to code and just have the software will be able to upkeep these softwares without needing professionals.

827a 9mo ago

Yeah, its bad out there. At my company, we have a team of security professionals that focus on keeping our systems (and others') secure. AI for them has gone from "using it for scripting together nmap" to "we really need the platform your team is working on to do X, Y, and Z, so we vibed up this PR". On the engineering side, I don't have the political power to tell them no, because we don't really have senior leadership and we're behind schedule on everything. Why? Well, I spent two hours today resolving dozens of vulnerabilities our code scanners found in some vibed security team PR. The scanners that they set up, and demanded we use. Half the stuff they vibe we literally have to feature flag off immediately after release, because they didn't QA it, but they rarely revisit the feature because to them its always either "on to the next big idea" or, more often, "we're just security, platform isn't our responsibility". The thing is: I know you might read that and think I'm anti-AI. In this specific situation, at my company: We gave nuclear technology to a bunch of teenagers, then act surprised when they blow up the garage. This is a political/leadership problem; because everything, nine times out of ten, is a political/leadership problem. But the incentives just aren't there yet for generalized understanding of the responsibility it requires to leverage these tools in a product environment that's expected to last years-to-decades. I think it will get there, but along that road will be gallons of blood from products killed, ironically, by their inability to be dynamic and reliable under the weight of the additive-biased purple-tailwind-drenched world of LLM vibeput. But, there's probably an end to that road, and I hope when we get there I can still have an LLM, because its pretty nice to be able to be like "heyo, i copy pasted this JSON but it has javascript single quotes instead of double quotes so its not technically JSON, can you fix that thanks"

otabdeveloper4 9mo ago
AI is trash. The people who think FizzBuzz is a leetcode programmer question are now vibecoding the same trash as always, except now they think they are smart x10 developers for forcing you to review and clean up their trash.

ModernMech 9mo ago

Honestly the emoji thing I like, it helps me read log output.

mrdosija 9mo ago

Reading the post and some of the comments here, looks to me like people are having bigger problems with how other people use AI than with AI itself.

deleted 9mo ago

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Dansvidania 9mo ago

I feel that agent coding is actually giving a second wind of life to solid principles, “proper” software architecture. Now you can nag the llm to follow them and A- it will actually apply them if well directed and does not mind the (small?) extra complexity upfront B- you pretty much immediately see the effects