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Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders

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Re: Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders

#61

Post by scuff3d »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #57
scuff3d wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether the board is hand solder or not, the person designing it still has to know what they're doing. I think a comparison that fits better is probably PCB/circuit design software. Back in the day engineering firms had rooms full of people drafting and doing calculations by hand. Today a single engineer can do more in an hour then 50 engineers in a day could back then. The critical difference is, you still have to k…

Sure, we can use that comparison if you'd like. And sure you need to know what you're doing as well. But "vibe coding" is this vague term that is used on the entire spectrum, from people that do "build me a billion dollar SAAS now" kind of vibe coders, to the "build this basic boilerplate component" type of vibe coders. The former never really get too far. The later have staying power because they're actually able to…

I don't think the term applies to the latter. By definition if you're "vibe coding" you don't care about the output, just that it "works".

I think AI is useful for research and digging through documentation. Also useful for generating small chunks of code at a time, documentation, or repetitive tasks witb highly structured inputs and outputs. Anything beyond that, in my opinion, is a waste of time. Especially these crazy ass agent workflows where you write ten pages of spec and hope the thing doesn't go off the rails.

Doesn't matter how nice a house you build if you build it on top of sand.

Re: Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders

#62

Post by mlyle »

scuff3d wrote: post #55
ryandrake wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. I've been pretty critical of AI coding, but at the urging of some other HN posters, I shelled out a few bucks and started giving Claude Code a chance. After about 2 months of using it for various personal Python and C++ projects, my current problem with it is 1. how much babysitting you need to do to keep it on track and writing code the way you'd like it written, and 2. how much effort you need to…

Yeah in general I think agents are a mistake. People are desperately trying to make these things more useful then they are. It's more useful as a research assistant, documentation search, and writing code a few lines at a time. Or yesterday for work I had to generate a bunch of json schemas from Python classes. Friggin great for that. Highly structured input, highly structured output, repetitious and boring.

I still think vibe coding is a win. Sure, you can't turn it loose on a massive codebase, yet.

But in about 45 minutes I got 700 lines of relatively compact web code to use plotly, jszip, and paraparse to suck in video files, CSV telemetry, and logfiles, help you sync them up, and then show overlays of telemetry on the video. It can also save a package zip file of the whole situation for later use/review. Regex search of logs. Things linked so if you click on a log line, it goes to that part of the video. WASD navigation of the timeline. Templating all the frameworks into the beginning of the zip file so it works offline. etc.

I am not an expert web developer. It would have taken me many hours to do this myself. It looks crisp and professional and has a big featureset complexity.

(Oh, yah, included in the 45 minutes but not the line count: it gave me a ringbuffer for telemetry and a CSV dumper for it and events, too).

The last couple of revisions, it was struggling under the weight of its context window a bit and I ended up making the suggested changes by hand rather than taking a big lump of code from it. So this feels like an approximate upper limit for the complexity of what I can get from ChatGPT5-thinking without using something like Claude Code. Still, a whole lot of projects are this size or smaller.

Re: Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders

#64

Post by scuff3d »

_joel wrote: post #58
scuff3d wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been plenty of articles about it recently, seems real enough to me.

I wonder if that's sustainable though, as either the tools get better or companies realise it's not a magic bullet? Time will tell.

It's not. The cost of fixing the garbage will outweigh any savings on the front end. Any experienced dev will tell you it's easier to spend a little extra up front to make things more maintainable then it is to fix a mess later.

And even the tools get better, they'll never get to the point where you don't need experts to utilize them, as long as LLMs are the foundation.

Re: Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders

#65

Post by kelnos »

amacbride wrote: post #51

I'm going to push back hard on the folks dunking on "vibe coders" -- I have been programming longer than most of you have been alive, and there are times when I absolutely do vibe coding: 1) unfamiliar framework 2) just need to build a throwaway utility to help with a main task (and I don't want to split my attention) 3) for fun: I think of it as "code sculpting" rather than writing So this is absolutely a utility I…

I too have probably been programming longer than most people here, and I'll vibe code on occasion for your #2 reason. (Recently I needed to take an OpenAPI spec file and transform/reduce it in some mechanical ways; didn't feel like writing the code for it, didn't care if it was maintainable, and it was easily verifiably correct after a quick manual skim of its output.)

I don't think #1 is a good place to vibe code; if it's code that I'll have to maintain, I want to understand it. In that case I'll sometimes use an LLM to write code incrementally in the new framework, but I'll be reading every line of it and using the LLM's work to help me understand and learn how it works.

A utility like pyscn that determines code quality wouldn't be useful for me with #1: even in an unfamiliar framework, I'm perfectly capable judging code quality on my own, and I still need and want to examine the generated code anyway.

(I'm assuming we're using what I think is the most reasonable definition of "vibe coding": having an LLM do the work, and -- critically -- not inspecting or reviewing the LLM's output.)

Re: Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders

#66

Post by scoopdewoop »

scuff3d wrote: post #61
lacy_tinpot wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, we can use that comparison if you'd like. And sure you need to know what you're doing as well. But "vibe coding" is this vague term that is used on the entire spectrum, from people that do "build me a billion dollar SAAS now" kind of vibe coders, to the "build this basic boilerplate component" type of vibe coders. The former never really get too far. The later have staying power because they're actually able to…

I don't think the term applies to the latter. By definition if you're "vibe coding" you don't care about the output, just that it "works". I think AI is useful for research and digging through documentation. Also useful for generating small chunks of code at a time, documentation, or repetitive tasks witb highly structured inputs and outputs. Anything beyond that, in my opinion, is a waste of time. Especially these c…

By whose definition? Yours? That seems circular.

Re: Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders

#67

Post by amacbride »

kelnos wrote: post #65
amacbride wrote: post #51

I'm going to push back hard on the folks dunking on "vibe coders" -- I have been programming longer than most of you have been alive, and there are times when I absolutely do vibe coding: 1) unfamiliar framework 2) just need to build a throwaway utility to help with a main task (and I don't want to split my attention) 3) for fun: I think of it as "code sculpting" rather than writing So this is absolutely a utility I…

I too have probably been programming longer than most people here, and I'll vibe code on occasion for your #2 reason. (Recently I needed to take an OpenAPI spec file and transform/reduce it in some mechanical ways; didn't feel like writing the code for it, didn't care if it was maintainable, and it was easily verifiably correct after a quick manual skim of its output.) I don't think #1 is a good place to vibe code; i…

I was using the definition of “let the LLM take the lead in writing the code, but review it afterwards“ so I don’t think our opinions are in conflict.

I think of coding agents as “talented junior engineers with no fatigue, but sometimes questionable judgment.”

Re: Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders

#68

Post by scuff3d »

scoopdewoop wrote: post #66
scuff3d wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the term applies to the latter. By definition if you're "vibe coding" you don't care about the output, just that it "works". I think AI is useful for research and digging through documentation. Also useful for generating small chunks of code at a time, documentation, or repetitive tasks witb highly structured inputs and outputs. Anything beyond that, in my opinion, is a waste of time. Especially these c…

By whose definition? Yours? That seems circular.

By the guy who have birth to the whole stupid trend:

"... fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forgete that the code even exists."

If you're "vibe coding" you don't know and you don't care what the code is doing.

Re: Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders

#69

Post by scuff3d »

xkbarkar wrote: post #40
scuff3d wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given an entire industry is cropping up to fix the mess these people make, I think less of them care then you think.

Hard disagree. Vibe code has its downsides but is not nearly as terrible as threatened coders on the forums make it seem.

It's not a threat to software engineers at all. These things are worse than useless when someone who doesn't know what they're doing tries. If anything they're going to create jobs.

Vibe coders are the new script kiddies.

Re: Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders

#70

Post by maleldil »

scoopdewoop wrote: post #66
scuff3d wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the term applies to the latter. By definition if you're "vibe coding" you don't care about the output, just that it "works". I think AI is useful for research and digging through documentation. Also useful for generating small chunks of code at a time, documentation, or repetitive tasks witb highly structured inputs and outputs. Anything beyond that, in my opinion, is a waste of time. Especially these c…

By whose definition? Yours? That seems circular.

Karpathy's, the person who is credited for inventing the term.

https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383

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