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I was skeptical about Lovable as software engineer until I saw it used. Last month I visited warehouse in Berlin. People who work there(with no technical back

I was skeptical about Lovable as software engineer until I saw it used. Last month I visited warehouse in Berlin. People who work there(with no technical background) build over 15 lovable apps for themselves -> starting from checkin system, to very sophisticated dashboards. Those were non technical people, and they did all with no engineers or IT. Those apps they were using were better than 90% of internal apps I've seen in my career.

weird-eye-issue 1mo ago
There's one time I meant to search somebody's email address in our internal system but I accidentally searched it in Google instead because I forgot to put in the custom search operator in the URL/search bar I actually got a Google search result back because a business's internal CMS and marketing systems had gotten indexed which had their full email list with the capabilities to delete and send newsletters. The email address I searched had subscribed to this business's newsletter which got it indexed It appeared it was built by Lovable I'm all for vibe coding too but there's a good chance when people do it they are leaking data like this
- podviaznikov 1mo ago
  yeah, I agree with those things in the abstract. But then I remember all the absolutely horrible half finished internal software most companies have(never enough time, often afterthought, cutting corners etc) and then I saw those internal Lovable apps made by people who actually needed those. And now it's not so clear anymore! Half baked ugly app does by the engineer who doesn't need it and don't want to fix bug vs pretty Lovable app made by people who use it everyday.
  - podviaznikov 1mo ago
    Like I don't use Lovable myself because I can make my own software already, but I definitely changed my opinion after I saw it int he wild and compared to all the internal software I saw in the past 20 years.
    - owebmaster 1mo ago
      That's vibecoding. Lovable is one of a million apps doing the same
      - podviaznikov 1mo ago
        I don't know. It seems like "product development" to me and not vibecoding.
        weird-eye-issue 1mo ago
        That's just kind of the same thing honestly at this point
        podviaznikov 1mo ago
        maybe I'm using wrong definition. For me Vibe coding is mostly making apps via AI by people who have no domain knowledge in what they are doing or no technical expertise. If you technical or do have tons of domain expertise in the are(like those warehouses worker that did things for themselves) - I wouldn't call it vibe coding personally. It just regular product development in my eyes and i would try to separate two cases.
        somenameforme 1mo ago
        I think the main connotation of vibe coding is cluelessly producing code that's notably poor quality. But at this point I think the term is becoming a mixture of gatekeeping and denial. The reality is that the latest models are reliably producing competent to excellent quality code and architecture, even without particularly insightful prompting. And I see no reason to think they won't continue to improve for the foreseeable future. Recently I had a bug in a program I'm writing with Claude. I manually figured out the issue and gave it the steps to solve it. But the thing that surprised me is that the newest model immediately pointed out what the bug was (which I did not say) and it was not at all obvious, even from the steps I told it to take to fix it. Since then I've been being much 'lazier' with the models and having just as good of results. No idea what Lovable adds to the picture. I always thought the site was a bit sketchy because of that. Prompt engineering has always been overblown, and they're just working as a middleman between people and Claude. But hey they now have $400M and I do not, so props to them.
dpacmittal 1mo ago
One of my cousins built an ERP for a factory he was managing. It looked great, and seemed to work great. He has no technical background, and seeing the app work gave me real paranoia about my job security. However, when I looked underneath the code, it was a mess. Biggest problem I saw in the brief time I spent looking at it's internals was that it wasn't using foreign keys in database. Sales invoices had customer info duplicated, and not referenced from the customer table like any sane developer would do. Same thing with purchase orders and supplier info. AI coded apps look great at surface level, but contains huge footguns underneath.
- pixelatedindex 1mo ago
  Did they validate the result? Is it correct / accurate? If it is, then it passes the “good enough” test. For non-tech folks who just vibe code a fix, “technical debt” is not in their vocabulary. And if it works well, I don’t see the issue.
  - kikimora 1mo ago
    There was research showing how AI performance degrades as you go from green field into support. My guess ERP in question will break after some time as agent will add more bugs than new features. Plus recovering data will be extremely difficult.
  - jbstack 1mo ago
    The other day, someone tried to convince me to play Russian roulette. I was skeptical as it sounded dangerous. However, I validated the result by pointing the gun at my forehead and pulling the trigger several times in a row without anything bad happening. Now I'm been persuaded that it's good enough as a form of entertainment. Someone else told me it's still dangerous, but it works well so I don't see the issue.
allthetime 1mo ago
I recently consulted for a vibe-founder who built yet-another ai voice chat and what shocked me about lovable was the lock-in. The supabase backend is completely inaccessible except through the lovable interface. You don’t have a supabase account, you can’t manage any of it directly. The limits are also restrictive unless you wanna empty your bank account. I guess cheaper than paying us full time though.

weird-eye-issue 1mo ago

There's one time I meant to search somebody's email address in our internal system but I accidentally searched it in Google instead because I forgot to put in the custom search operator in the URL/search bar I actually got a Google search result back because a business's internal CMS and marketing systems had gotten indexed which had their full email list with the capabilities to delete and send newsletters. The email address I searched had subscribed to this business's newsletter which got it indexed It appeared it was built by Lovable I'm all for vibe coding too but there's a good chance when people do it they are leaking data like this

podviaznikov 1mo ago
yeah, I agree with those things in the abstract. But then I remember all the absolutely horrible half finished internal software most companies have(never enough time, often afterthought, cutting corners etc) and then I saw those internal Lovable apps made by people who actually needed those. And now it's not so clear anymore! Half baked ugly app does by the engineer who doesn't need it and don't want to fix bug vs pretty Lovable app made by people who use it everyday.
- podviaznikov 1mo ago
  Like I don't use Lovable myself because I can make my own software already, but I definitely changed my opinion after I saw it int he wild and compared to all the internal software I saw in the past 20 years.
  - owebmaster 1mo ago
    That's vibecoding. Lovable is one of a million apps doing the same
    - podviaznikov 1mo ago
      I don't know. It seems like "product development" to me and not vibecoding.
      - weird-eye-issue 1mo ago
        That's just kind of the same thing honestly at this point
        podviaznikov 1mo ago
        maybe I'm using wrong definition. For me Vibe coding is mostly making apps via AI by people who have no domain knowledge in what they are doing or no technical expertise. If you technical or do have tons of domain expertise in the are(like those warehouses worker that did things for themselves) - I wouldn't call it vibe coding personally. It just regular product development in my eyes and i would try to separate two cases.
        somenameforme 1mo ago
        I think the main connotation of vibe coding is cluelessly producing code that's notably poor quality. But at this point I think the term is becoming a mixture of gatekeeping and denial. The reality is that the latest models are reliably producing competent to excellent quality code and architecture, even without particularly insightful prompting. And I see no reason to think they won't continue to improve for the foreseeable future. Recently I had a bug in a program I'm writing with Claude. I manually figured out the issue and gave it the steps to solve it. But the thing that surprised me is that the newest model immediately pointed out what the bug was (which I did not say) and it was not at all obvious, even from the steps I told it to take to fix it. Since then I've been being much 'lazier' with the models and having just as good of results. No idea what Lovable adds to the picture. I always thought the site was a bit sketchy because of that. Prompt engineering has always been overblown, and they're just working as a middleman between people and Claude. But hey they now have $400M and I do not, so props to them.

dpacmittal 1mo ago

One of my cousins built an ERP for a factory he was managing. It looked great, and seemed to work great. He has no technical background, and seeing the app work gave me real paranoia about my job security. However, when I looked underneath the code, it was a mess. Biggest problem I saw in the brief time I spent looking at it's internals was that it wasn't using foreign keys in database. Sales invoices had customer info duplicated, and not referenced from the customer table like any sane developer would do. Same thing with purchase orders and supplier info. AI coded apps look great at surface level, but contains huge footguns underneath.

pixelatedindex 1mo ago
Did they validate the result? Is it correct / accurate? If it is, then it passes the “good enough” test. For non-tech folks who just vibe code a fix, “technical debt” is not in their vocabulary. And if it works well, I don’t see the issue.
- kikimora 1mo ago
  There was research showing how AI performance degrades as you go from green field into support. My guess ERP in question will break after some time as agent will add more bugs than new features. Plus recovering data will be extremely difficult.
- jbstack 1mo ago
  The other day, someone tried to convince me to play Russian roulette. I was skeptical as it sounded dangerous. However, I validated the result by pointing the gun at my forehead and pulling the trigger several times in a row without anything bad happening. Now I'm been persuaded that it's good enough as a form of entertainment. Someone else told me it's still dangerous, but it works well so I don't see the issue.

allthetime 1mo ago

I recently consulted for a vibe-founder who built yet-another ai voice chat and what shocked me about lovable was the lock-in. The supabase backend is completely inaccessible except through the lovable interface. You don’t have a supabase account, you can’t manage any of it directly. The limits are also restrictive unless you wanna empty your bank account. I guess cheaper than paying us full time though.