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Vibe code is legacy code

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Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#161

Post by YokoZar »

risyachka wrote: post #117
CharlieDigital wrote: post #67

A 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.

Just because it's an easy hack doesn't mean it isn't one. It's still lockpicking when it's MasterLock.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#162

Post by delfinom »

mikert89 wrote: post #128
matt_cogito wrote: post #97

All production code will be written by AI. The question is not if. It is WHEN. What we are seeing right in front of our eyes is how the boundaries of what is possible in the realm of software programming has gone from AI/LLMs poorly writing simple scripts, to being able to "zero-shoot" and "vibe code" a complex system, with a set of instructions written in natural language. What we might be seeing in 2025 is how prog…

Yeah I think its over, it will take a while for the effects to ripple through society, but writing code will be seen as something like wood working

I'm more curious how society will look when half the population is living in tents.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#163

Post by anamexis »

YokoZar wrote: post #159
anamexis wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how any of that implies that an incumbent did it.

If you were a criminal trolling the Internet for vulnerable servers and found stripe keys... would your first instinct be to refund customers rather than do some other sort of crime? Like what's the motivation you envision here?

There are black hat hackers that take great joy in just causing as much chaos as possible, particularly with such vibe-coded apps. Even with stripe keys, it's not like they could direct money elsewhere.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#164

Post by phyzix5761 »

zerotolerance wrote: post #157
CharlieDigital wrote: post #67

A 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…

Did he need it to prove a business viable if there were already players in the market? No. Do you ever need to validate that people would switch providers of a commodity product or service if presented with a cheaper option? Also no. What did he learn then, that he can create a partial solution that people might pay for initially (no data on renewals) but will ultimately have to actually hire people to build a real p…

As a business owner I can tell you that price is not the only factor people look at when choosing to engage with a business. I've tried the whole "cheapest offer in the market" thing and its backfired terribly. The main insight I've gained is that customers have a perceived value of a product that aligns with things like branding, marketing, previous experiences, and perceived popularity. People are willing to pay more for these things.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#165

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

calrain wrote: post #80
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…

Have you seen how enterprises write code for internal use? It's no different to vibe coding, except if you ask an LLM to harden your code base to pass a pen test, it will do something. Enterprises just don't give a sh!t.

In many cases some of the stuff at the big enterprises is shockingly, remarkably bad. I've seen multiple contracting firms leave things behind that wouldn't warrant a passing grade in an 'intro to programming' class.

Most of the time it's not "don't give a sh!t"--it's they genuinely don't know any better, no actual stakeholders even see the codebase nor are in any position to pass judgement, etc.

Most of the time folks that are "enterprise architects" or some such haven't written code in a decade and spend many hours a day on meetings.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#166

Post by [deleted] »

doesnt_know wrote: post #119
CharlieDigital wrote: post #67

A 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.

[deleted]

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#167

Post by Zopieux »

doesnt_know wrote: post #119
CharlieDigital wrote: post #67

A 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.

how dare you stifle innovation with your communist laws, I thought this was America

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#168

Post by woooooo »

doesnt_know wrote: post #119
CharlieDigital wrote: post #67

A 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.

The 80s and 90s devs who built our current software infra were, on average, FAR less credentialed than today's juniors and mids who mostly don't understand what they're building on.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#169

Post by sshine »

efitz wrote: post #154

If you vibe coded it, why can’t you vibe support it? I think the whole premise of the article is wrong because it compares apples to oranges, assuming that you’re going to maintain “vibe code” in a traditional way.

Because support requires understanding. If you can maintain long-term context for the LLM, then you have an approximation of actionable institutional knowledge.

But context is text documentation, and that stuff rots just as much, if not more, when LLMs generate it.

Nothing beats having the actual code and the thoughts that went onto it in your wetware. I still remember the hardest problems in my professional life in the last 15 years down to a scary detail.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#170

Post by raincole »

bdangubic wrote: post #138

I have been SWE for almost three decades now - have read all the comments in this post and almost every negative comment about vibe coding holds true about almost every single ‘human-coded’ codebase I’ve ever seen ( some notable exceptions of course :) )

Yeah since when prototypes built to throwaway are a bad thing? They're arguably the most important step to build a business.

Legacy code isn't a bad thing either. The majority of code that actually generates revenue right now is probably considered "legacy" by the devs working there.

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