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Show HN: I vibecoded a 35k LoC recipe app

recipeninja.ai

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Re: Show HN: I vibecoded a 35k LoC recipe app

#81

Post by n_ary »

osigurdson wrote: post #44

I have a paid subscription to Windsurf using Claude. I struggle to find much utility in terms of actually writing code. It spends a lot of time trying / retrying and glitching out. I'm sure in a couple of years it will be amazing (assuming a fundamental breakthrough isn't required) but it isn't quite there yet. LLMs are super useful but currently, the primary use case is teaching, not doing. For this reason, I think…

To correctly vibe code something useful, I find that I need to religiously give faith to the tool and forget all about SWE principles and best practices and instead treat it like a child who makes mistakes and corrections while the adult must not intervene or admonish too much but rather nudge it to right direction.

Also vibe code has a parallel feature, while the code is generating, you are also doing live review and correcting it towards right direction, so depending on your experience, the end product can be a bad mess or wonderful piece of creation and maintenance dream.

The issue with seasoned SWE is that, the moment a mistake(or bad pattern) is made, the baby is thrown with bath water.

For a tiered app like the one presented, 35k LOC is not really that impressive if you think about it. A generic react based front end will easily need a large number of LOC due to modular principle of components, various amounts of hooks and tests(nearly makes us 25-40% of LOC). A business layer will also have many layers of abstractions and numerous impl. to move data between layers.

The vibe code shines, when you let it build one block at a time, limit the scope well and focus. Also, 2-3 weeks is a lot of time to write 35k LOC. at start of any new project, LOC generation rate is very high. But in maintenance phase it significantly falls as smaller changes are more common.

Re: Show HN: I vibecoded a 35k LoC recipe app

#82

Post by myvoiceismypass »

tomblomfield wrote: post #16
nine_k wrote: post #15

Impressive! 35 kLOC is quite a bit. I wonder how straightforward and maintainable this app ended up to be. This would require taking a look at the sources. While good Rails code tends to be very terse, frontend may be quite voluminous. > I believe within a couple of months, when things like log tailing and automated testing and native version control get implemented This sounds a bit too optimistic, especially around…

Since I wrote the blog post, I actually added automated tests which Windsurf / Claude Code runs before committing any change. It saved me a lot of headaches when the LLM decided to make random logic changes for no reason.

The LLM swaps out business logic without you knowing it? As someone who worries about determinism and doesn’t do much vibe coding, I am curious what’s going on here, thanks!

Re: Show HN: I vibecoded a 35k LoC recipe app

#83

Post by notfed »

matsemann wrote: post #66
nine_k wrote: post #15

Impressive! 35 kLOC is quite a bit. I wonder how straightforward and maintainable this app ended up to be. This would require taking a look at the sources. While good Rails code tends to be very terse, frontend may be quite voluminous. > I believe within a couple of months, when things like log tailing and automated testing and native version control get implemented This sounds a bit too optimistic, especially around…

Yeah, without trying to be dismissive I'm a bit unsure where the 35kLOC are going?

The vibes? It was vibecoded.

Re: Show HN: I vibecoded a 35k LoC recipe app

#87

Post by ff133 »

a012 wrote: post #84

Opened and the first recipe was “Thick white cum soup”, glad I’m my mobile phone, not at work

Sounds spicy...

Dish: Fek Yerr AI Slop Garbage Plate All Ingredients

    motherboard, 1, diced
    cpu, 1, diced
    olive oil, 2 tbsp
    binary code (0s and 1s), 1 cup
    soy sauce, 3 tbsp
    teriyaki sauce, 2 tbsp
    ram chips, 1 cup
    microchips, 1/4 cup
    led lights, as needed

Re: Show HN: I vibecoded a 35k LoC recipe app

#88

Post by smrtinsert »

matsemann wrote: post #66
nine_k wrote: post #15

Impressive! 35 kLOC is quite a bit. I wonder how straightforward and maintainable this app ended up to be. This would require taking a look at the sources. While good Rails code tends to be very terse, frontend may be quite voluminous. > I believe within a couple of months, when things like log tailing and automated testing and native version control get implemented This sounds a bit too optimistic, especially around…

Yeah, without trying to be dismissive I'm a bit unsure where the 35kLOC are going?

probably includes npm packages. Actual loc is probably 2-3k.

Re: Show HN: I vibecoded a 35k LoC recipe app

#89

Post by n_ary »

esperent wrote: post #33
DidYaWipe wrote: post #30

What is "vibecoded" supposed to mean?

It's a newish term that I have understood to mean coding by letting the AI do nearly all the work, just telling it what you want done in broad strokes. If the code returned seems to "vibe" with what you're trying to do, then accept it. Contrasted to AI assisted coding, where you would give much more detailed prompts with technical specifications, and read over every line to make sure you understand it before acceptin…

In theory, vibe coding can let someone with very limited technical expertise build complete apps, so understandably a lot of people are excited by it.

Actually it is booming. In bsky, X and Linkedin, I see another recipe/todo/budget management/profit tracking/SaaS starter template/landing page/people-to-follow-directory etc. being pumped out every single day. Before GenAI, this would be more like one partial feature per user every month, now post GenAI, entire product in weeks or even hours.

I believe, the indie entrepreneurs are making the maximum bang for the bucks with AI codegen compared to any other groups.

Re: Show HN: I vibecoded a 35k LoC recipe app

#90

Post by groggo »

Nice work! I also made a recipe app, but after seeing the recipes people generated on yours, I'm choosing not to share it at this time.

Seriously though - vibecoding is great. Even better (or only feasible) as engineers who can dive in when we need to.

My app is iOS and I had never done any Swift. I do have AI generation but that was more of a fun afterthought. The main utility is extracting recipes from the web and having a synced shopping list that I can share with my wife.

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