"the more you understand the less you are vibing" also works as a philosophical claim, and a truthful one in the opinion of this one reader.
Vibe code is legacy code
111–120 of 473 posts
Re: Vibe code is legacy code
#112Don't you think the next step is a programming language that isn't even meant to be human readable? What's the point of using an LLM to generate python or Swift or whatever? The output of the LLM should be something that runs and does whatever it's been asked to do... why should the implementation be some programming language that was designed for humans to grok? Once that's true the idea of it being maintainable bec…
That begs the question of what abstraction layer is necessary beyond an assembler, if any? If human handcrafted ASM outcompetes compiled C then why not give LLMs the wheel on ASM? Then another question is - are there enough good ASM publically available as examples?
Re: Vibe code is legacy code
#113Vibe code may be "disposable," but isn't "legacy code" if it has automated tests that the product owner can read and understand.
There are approximately two definitions of "legacy" code that I'm familiar with. One is: "valuable code that you're afraid to change." This definition is subjective. I might be afraid to change code that you're unafraid to change, especially if it's code that you wrote (because you remember, at least vaguely, how your code is "supposed" to work).
Another definition of "legacy" is attributed to Michael Feathers: "Legacy code is simply code without tests." The definitions overlap because code without tests is definitely scary to change, because it's very hard to be sure whether or not you've broken it, or even understood it in the first place.
When vibe-coding with an LLM that generates automated tests, (as they mostly all do nowadays), it's not legacy code. The tests both specify and ensure correct behavior.
Automated tests are particularly useful for vibe coding, because they help prevent LLMs from hallucinating answers. (This is also why type checkers are so helpful for LLMs.)
Once the code has tests, you can pretty much let the LLMs change anything they want, including refactoring the architecture. LLMs are extremely good at refactoring code with automated tests, in the sense that they'll puke out some hallucinated, hilariously wrong answer, and then refine their answer automatically until it passes the tests. (Just like I did when I was a junior engineer.)
But watch out, because sometimes the LLMs try to delete tests that are hard to pass. If vibe-coding means reading no code, not even the tests, then, yeah, you're gonna have a bad time. But if it means "only reading the tests and not reading the application code," then vibe coding works pretty well, actually.
What the new systems give you (and especially junior engineers/PMs) is disposable code with automated tests, ensuring that that you can dispose of the code and regenerate it (aka refactor it) and add features with confidence.
That's the very opposite of "legacy code."
Re: Vibe code is legacy code
#114A story about a non-technical friend: friend vibe coded a SaaS last year and started generating revenue with almost no marketing; all word of mouth and inbound in a niche industry. Used Replit and Supabase to build the thing; I am still really impressed by what he was able to do given how complex the app ended up becoming as he interacted with customers. What I think happened: there are two incumbents in this space t…
Man. Script kiddies are everywhere and if you have vulnerable code, it is basically a matter of time until one of them finds a hole.
Re: Vibe code is legacy code
#115A story about a non-technical friend: friend vibe coded a SaaS last year and started generating revenue with almost no marketing; all word of mouth and inbound in a niche industry. Used Replit and Supabase to build the thing; I am still really impressed by what he was able to do given how complex the app ended up becoming as he interacted with customers. What I think happened: there are two incumbents in this space t…
> Was it worth it? Yes, it is terrible, shoddy, insecure code, but he proved out a viable business with just a few hundred dollars of investment. How much is it costing him to hire someone to reimplement his idea correctly?
Never mind what it's costing the vibe coder to fix this.
The important question is: what was the cost and consequences of the exploits for users of the service?
Re: Vibe code is legacy code
#116A story about a non-technical friend: friend vibe coded a SaaS last year and started generating revenue with almost no marketing; all word of mouth and inbound in a niche industry. Used Replit and Supabase to build the thing; I am still really impressed by what he was able to do given how complex the app ended up becoming as he interacted with customers. What I think happened: there are two incumbents in this space t…
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Re: Vibe code is legacy code
#117A story about a non-technical friend: friend vibe coded a SaaS last year and started generating revenue with almost no marketing; all word of mouth and inbound in a niche industry. Used Replit and Supabase to build the thing; I am still really impressed by what he was able to do given how complex the app ended up becoming as he interacted with customers. What I think happened: there are two incumbents in this space t…
It’s not a “hack” when you have your stripe keys in the frontend.
It’s called a skill issue and to prevent these you have to actually spend time learning instead of vibing.
It’s literally the same as driving a car without license.
Everyone can do it - but shouldn’t.
Re: Vibe code is legacy code
#118Don't you think the next step is a programming language that isn't even meant to be human readable? What's the point of using an LLM to generate python or Swift or whatever? The output of the LLM should be something that runs and does whatever it's been asked to do... why should the implementation be some programming language that was designed for humans to grok? Once that's true the idea of it being maintainable bec…
This must be how physicists feel when people start spouting Rogan-esque quantum mechanics nonsense.
Re: Vibe code is legacy code
#119A story about a non-technical friend: friend vibe coded a SaaS last year and started generating revenue with almost no marketing; all word of mouth and inbound in a niche industry. Used Replit and Supabase to build the thing; I am still really impressed by what he was able to do given how complex the app ended up becoming as he interacted with customers. What I think happened: there are two incumbents in this space t…
The fact your friend is suffering no consequences and is able to just carry on is exactly what is wrong with this industry.
In a perfect world the creation of software would have been locked down like other engineering fields, with developers and companies suffering legal consequences for exposing customer information.
Re: Vibe code is legacy code
#120A story about a non-technical friend: friend vibe coded a SaaS last year and started generating revenue with almost no marketing; all word of mouth and inbound in a niche industry. Used Replit and Supabase to build the thing; I am still really impressed by what he was able to do given how complex the app ended up becoming as he interacted with customers. What I think happened: there are two incumbents in this space t…
I would not default to assuming it was his competitors, that sounds like scapegoating to deflect responsibility. What most likely happened is his site was scanned by one of the increasingly sophisticated exploit crawlers (anyone who runs an internet facing site and can view traffic knows what I'm talking about). His site got flagged as vulnerable, the hacker found out it was built like swiss cheese and had fun with i…
Who else would spend the time and effort to figure out you leaked your stipe key to your front end? Sure people have bots to do that, but it’s kinda unbelievable someone would run such a bot on their vibe coded website.