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Vibe code is legacy code

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Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#231

Post by xwolfi »

ggregoryarms wrote: post #181
asadotzler wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what legacy means. Legacy means the people who understood it are gone and you're left with code that's hard to maintain because it's hard to understand because the people who understood it are gone.

I find this a bit like saying that we can't understand East of Eden because Steinbeck is dead.

Yeah, we all own all code, if we can't understand the code we own, we study it. If we need to change it, we change it.

"Legacy" for me is a bad word. I refuse to use it, and I scold my colleagues when they do: it's our code, we modernize it if we don't like it, and if we stop using it, then it's finished code. What is this false dichotomy between legacy code and "not in prod yet code" ?

In companies we call our regulatory prosecutions for fraudulent behavior that are so complex that they last for 10 years "legacy matters". Do you think that points at a statement of factual representation, or at a ridiculous attempt at distancing ourselves from our actual responsibilities ?

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#232

Post by daveguy »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #198
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 also "worth it" to start a burger stand and make $1000 a day by vibing and not wasting time on food hygiene training or practices. Gotta move fast and test the market after all. I predict 2030: all sites in most countries will need a license to operate and something like SOC2 certification. Even for your blog.

Nah, it'll still depend on size of user base, revenue, and safety requirements of the domain. A random personal blog won't hit any of those criteria.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#233

Post by Ferret7446 »

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…

This is morally equivalent to building a house with no engineering experience and someone coming around and kicking it down. The problem isn't vibe coding per se, but lacking some key knowledge to be able to make important judgements which may (should) result in legal liability

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#234

Post by Ferret7446 »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #198
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 also "worth it" to start a burger stand and make $1000 a day by vibing and not wasting time on food hygiene training or practices. Gotta move fast and test the market after all. I predict 2030: all sites in most countries will need a license to operate and something like SOC2 certification. Even for your blog.

I think it should only apply to commercial services FWIW. Amateur sites should be caveat emptor

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#235

Post by JackFr »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #120
WD-42 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a strictly hobby web app that I work on. 6-7 years ago I inadvertently pushed AWS email service credentials to GitHub.

Half an hour after the push I got an email and text from GitHub that I had exposed credentials. I quickly logged in to my AWS to turn off the service, to see that AWS had suspended that service because the bounce rate on the 80000 emails sent in that 15 minute period was too high. It was crazy just how fast it was exploited.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#236

Post by svieira »

WD-42 wrote: post #102
codingdave wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the definition is that if a business has some ancient COBOL code with one guy left who understands it, then your definition would say that is not legacy code. And that is what makes no sense. It becomes legacy when it is no longer running on a tech stack that matches the future strategy of the organization. Legacy is a strategic label, not an engineering label. There is no age where something becomes…

Okay, I could get behind that definition if you could tell me what you call code that aligns perfectly with the "strategic future of the organization" but nobody at said company understands or can work on?

Critical magic

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#237

Post by joshdavham »

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…

This is why I think it's irresponsible to announce to the world that your app was vibe coded. It's like putting a target on your back for hackers.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#238

Post by joshdavham »

> If you don't understand the code, your only recourse is to ask AI to fix it for you, which is like paying off credit card debt with another credit card.

Excellent article! But I wonder if the above point will always be true. Maybe AI at some point could become better at cleaning its own mess?

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#239

Post by mvkel »

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…

"Tech debt" is a misnomer. It implies that at some point it should be paid down. There are very few examples where dedicating real efforts exclusively to paying down tech debt led to anything beneficial for the customer.

Some of the software we know and love today started with someone writing their very first line of PHP code, or Rails.

Vibe coding is ultimately about getting ideas shipped faster. Code quality is an engineer recruiting/retention strategy.

As we saw with that Tea app (which wasn't even vibe coded), you're only as secure as your weakest firebase store.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#240

Post by doix »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #134
WD-42 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's def a hacker from a the incumbent because: 1) They took action after getting the Stripe key by refunding all customers 2) They drafted an email to all customers after a hack that got the mailing list and API route to send emails 3) Not once has the hacker asked for compensation of any kind nor a ransom

Not sure how to word this, but are you "new" on the internet? People used to break stuff "for the lulz" since the dawn of time.

I remember when I was a kid running a tiny forum with phpbb or something, and some script kiddies from g00nsquad (can't remember exact spelling, but something like that) defaced it. They didn't ask for money, they just did it for fun.

Sure things have changed now and the internet has become more corporate, but I reckon there are still people out there doing this stuff l because they can.

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