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Vibe code is legacy code

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Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#11

Post by mrits »

hibikir wrote: post #4

I think you are not going far enough though: All code is legacy code. So vibe coding's ability to make writing more code faster isn't special because it's code nobody understands: Your hand-rolled code is also bad. Once you embrace the fact that all the code is legacy, then it's clear how writing more code, faster cannot be helpful from a maintenance POV: You are just creating more work for yourself. And no, librarie…

All code is a liability but all code is not legacy. I'm not OP but I agree Vibe is legacy simply because there is no longer anyone around that is qualified to maintain it or know the reasoning behind it (there never was)

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#12

Post by croes »

hibikir wrote: post #4

I think you are not going far enough though: All code is legacy code. So vibe coding's ability to make writing more code faster isn't special because it's code nobody understands: Your hand-rolled code is also bad. Once you embrace the fact that all the code is legacy, then it's clear how writing more code, faster cannot be helpful from a maintenance POV: You are just creating more work for yourself. And no, librarie…

My hand rolled code isn’t legacy code for at least three months. After that I need my documentation to make changes.

Vibe code is legacy from day one and with changing styles

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#14

Post by stevekrouse »

hibikir wrote: post #4

I think you are not going far enough though: All code is legacy code. So vibe coding's ability to make writing more code faster isn't special because it's code nobody understands: Your hand-rolled code is also bad. Once you embrace the fact that all the code is legacy, then it's clear how writing more code, faster cannot be helpful from a maintenance POV: You are just creating more work for yourself. And no, librarie…

Fair! I agree that we want as little code as we can get away with. We love pull requests with a lot of red (deleted lines).

Like you say about libraries, it is possible to have code that isn't your problem. It's all about how leaky the abstraction is. Right now LLMs write terrible abstractions, and it's unclear how long it'll take for them to get good at writing good code.

I am excited to invest more in tools to make the understanding of code easier, cheaper, and more fun. My friend Glen pointed one way in this direction: https://glench.github.io/fuzzyset.js/ui/

As Geoffrey Litt likes to say, LLMs can help with this by building us throwaway visualizers and debuggers to help us understand our code.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#16

Post by henriquegodoy »

I'm seeing a real-world example of Jevons paradox playing out here. When AI coding tools first emerged, everyone predicted mass developer unemployment. Instead, I'm watching demand for skilled developers actually increase.

What's happening is that all this "vibe coded" software needs someone to fix it when it breaks. I've been getting more requests than ever to debug AI-generated codebases where the original "developer" can't explain what any of it does. The security audit work alone is keeping me busy - these AI-generated apps often have vulnerabilities that would never pass a human code review. It reminds me of when WordPress democratized web development. Suddenly everyone could build a website, but that just created a massive market for developers who could fix broken WordPress sites, migrate databases, and patch security holes. The difference now is the scale and complexity. At least with WordPress, there was some underlying structure you could reason about. With vibe coding, you get these sprawling codebases where the AI has reinvented the wheel five different ways in the same project, used deprecated libraries because they were in its training data, and created bizarre architectural decisions that only make sense if you don't understand the problem domain.

So yeah, the jobs aren't disappearing - they're just shifting from "build new features" to "fix the mess the PM made last weekend when they tried to ship their own feature."

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#17

Post by codingdave »

> We already have a phrase for code that nobody understands: legacy code.

Wow, no. Bad misunderstanding of what legacy means.

Long-lived organizations all eventually go through tech renovations, where they re-platform their business functionality onto more modern systems. But sometimes, the cost/benefit analysis to that re-platforming doesn't make sense... yet. The pieces of the business still running on the former platform are legacy code.

People do understand it. Often, deeply understand it because they wrote it, and have lived and supported it for years. They know the reason behind the tech debt, all the odd tech constraints that drove it to where it is, they can keep the thing running without breaking a sweat. It is second-nature to them.

But it is not easy for anyone other than them. That is the true risk of legacy code, and that is probably where the author got off-track. They may have only ever worked in orgs after the last of the legacy coders left, and everything was a disaster. You definitely do not want to let a legacy system get to that point... and at the same time, if you ever do get there, the cost/benefit analysis has changed and you need to retire the legacy stack.

All that being said, now, yes, we can compare it to vibe coding. If nobody understands the code from the beginning, you never have that magical timeframe when someone just keeps the system alive with ease. You never solved business problems with it. It is just bad code launching straight into the disaster-filled zone where nobody can maintain anything.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#18

Post by lawlessone »

mrits wrote: post #11
hibikir wrote: post #4

I think you are not going far enough though: All code is legacy code. So vibe coding's ability to make writing more code faster isn't special because it's code nobody understands: Your hand-rolled code is also bad. Once you embrace the fact that all the code is legacy, then it's clear how writing more code, faster cannot be helpful from a maintenance POV: You are just creating more work for yourself. And no, librarie…

All code is a liability but all code is not legacy. I'm not OP but I agree Vibe is legacy simply because there is no longer anyone around that is qualified to maintain it or know the reasoning behind it (there never was)

The argument against this can be summed up as throwing more data, training and gpu's at the problem until it works again.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#19

Post by msgodel »

pyman wrote: post #2

Something interesting is happening. A false narrative is spreading online, pushed by people who know little about engineering, and others who should know better. They claim junior devs are now 10x more productive, and project managers are shipping code themselves. Now, close your eyes for five seconds and try to picture what that code looks like. It's 100% legacy, disposable code. The problem isn't AI, or PMs turning…

People are focusing on the artifacts because they can't point to the theory in the physical world, but it's the theory and its correspondence to the artifacts that they actually want.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#20

Post by xnx »

Is the argument that it's better to start from an empty code editor than having AI create a working first version?

I've found it faster to have AI write the code, revise with instructions as necessary, and delve into the code itself if I need to.

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