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My business partner sent a 5K vibe-coded PR that he didn't even test

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31–40 of 124 posts

Re: My business partner sent a 5K vibe-coded PR that he didn't even test

#31
post #11

Doesn't sound like AI is necessarily the root the problem. If he's not the person to test, iterate, and deliver quality with AI, he probably wouldn't be without it. You just figured it out sooner. Or, if you have reason to believe he's got what it takes - treat it like an leaving opportunity, give him room to make mistakes. This is, ime, what a rookie AI user mistake looks like. It is easy to get carried away by the…

> If he's not the person to test, iterate, and deliver quality with AI, he probably wouldn't be without it

I see the take quite often on HN, and I have a major gripe with it. Yes, people were lazy and we had these problems before LLMs hit the scene, but clearly there has been a sea-change in both the frequency and degree of this behaviour since.

A problem can both exist independent of a catalyst and be exacerbated by it. Arguments that try to window-dress this away are not particularly productive.

Re: My business partner sent a 5K vibe-coded PR that he didn't even test

#32
post #12
post #11

Doesn't sound like AI is necessarily the root the problem. If he's not the person to test, iterate, and deliver quality with AI, he probably wouldn't be without it. You just figured it out sooner. Or, if you have reason to believe he's got what it takes - treat it like an leaving opportunity, give him room to make mistakes. This is, ime, what a rookie AI user mistake looks like. It is easy to get carried away by the…

*learning opportunity. Damn autotype

There is a certain irony blaming the autotype rather than the lack of review...

Re: My business partner sent a 5K vibe-coded PR that he didn't even test

#34
In my opinion, software engineering was never mainly about programming. Programming is a rather small part of the software engineering cycle.

Programming by hand is one way (it also works with AI), to make decisions. Decisions about scalability, maintainability and sanity of your software. And still this will pay off!

To me it sounds as if he is a very bad software engineer.

Re: My business partner sent a 5K vibe-coded PR that he didn't even test

#35
Software engineers are splitting into two camps either by choice or by being forced to by management. Those who have the self-discipline to use LLMs responsibly and those that are going all-in on AI. Imo there's a place for both camps but I don't think they can coexist in the same team.

Re: My business partner sent a 5K vibe-coded PR that he didn't even test

#36
post #2

OP and long time lurker here, I'm desperate and looking for honest-to-god advice on what to do. I am one of those neurodivergent people who loves programming because it gives me the right stimulation. I also enjoy drawing, gardening, and exercise. I don't own a car because I love walking, and such. So I'm wondering if it's time to call it quits with programming (for a living). Luckily I have some savings and I have o…

No it's absolutely not time to let go. You are one of a limited set of people with pre-AI taste and intuition for good software. They aren't making any more of them. And you'll be a super valuable asset anywhere you go. I mean, if you want to retire go ahead, but don't do it because of AI. AI is just a tool to generate code faster. It doesn't replace the work of actually making design decisions and knowing what will…

Look at the COBOL devs. They are been called in their retirement years. You don't want that to be you. Life is short

Re: My business partner sent a 5K vibe-coded PR that he didn't even test

#37
This is literally the recipe for the coming software apocalypse.

Just watch the software engineers who say "Let's be careful" lose their jobs and get replaced by non-technical vibe-coders churning out 10K lines of dirty insecure, unmaintainable code per day... Ticking time bomb.

I swear, good engineers are going to move to North Korea to monetize because of the amount and size of 'opportunities' this will create.

It seems so far-fetched but that's the direction it seems to be heading.

Re: My business partner sent a 5K vibe-coded PR that he didn't even test

#38
AI is not the problem here, but the difference in deep beliefs of the company founders.

When I had partners in my business I studied them first deeply like I was going to marry them because I WAS going to marry them!

You should agree on your values or else the company will go nowhere. One founder will raw one way and the other the opposite making the boat to stay in the same place.

I have a software company and the opposite problem: I am obsessive about testing and meta programming. We write way more testing code than code, we automate everything with meta programming.

It was clear several times that we tested and automated way more than necessary. We automated things that only used once for example(although we used later multiple times on other projects).

So we had not the usual problems than companies have like bloat or security vulnerabilities but we had the problem of having software that was was super expensive because we did double or triple the code than the competition with tests that developers hated(they are boring to write). Our software took also way more time to market.

Companies love to buy the cheapest they can today and tomorrow we will see, so that put us in a difficult position. It was specially hard at first, but then this principles gave us an edge(because most companies would compromise early and not reap the benefits later).

Had I a business partner with a different mindset and beliefs, it would have been impossible to me not to change course of the boat in hard times.

BTW we use LLMs with great success. It let's us test even more spending way less than before.

Re: My business partner sent a 5K vibe-coded PR that he didn't even test

#39
post #9

The problem is not vibe coding. The problem is the people doing this were never good software engineers before vibe coding. Simply put you still need good practices to produce working good code with AI. Oddly what I have found best is patterns that many would cringe and demeans unit test and integration test. Yes I still vibe unit test and integration test, but more than ever I have to put on my PM and QA hat, even m…

> The problem is not vibe coding.

Except that it is the enabler. Without AI there are no 5K lines of code that no human has ever seen. AI introduces a new category of problem that did not exist before.

Re: My business partner sent a 5K vibe-coded PR that he didn't even test

#40
> Well, as much as people lose all their muscle by been bed-ridden, he's lost all his brain by being AI Assisted™.

Wanna know the answer of those who lost all their brain cells to that?

"If there are bugs, it's only because the prompt was off. I'm a better prompt-engineer than your business partner, so this could never ever happen to me."

And off to the couch they go sit and shut their brains off.

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