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

ycj.bearblog.dev

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

#61

Post by greggoB »

p2detar wrote: post #44
greggoB wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think the argument is quite valid. OP writes "business partner". It begs the question - would their business partner get on board if they didn't have a AI subscription by their side? How about instead of 5K PR, OP got the same half-baked buggy crap or absolutely nothing instead? We don't know the business partner, but we are ready to throw the problem at AI agents right away. Well, I find this not particularly prod…

> but we are ready to throw the problem at AI agents right away

I'm not sure I understand this correctly, but I assume it means blaming the agents? If so, that's not my point - I'm describing how many people are using them to be lazy, which shouldn't be particularly controversial.

To your other question: if OP had gotten half the size PR to go through, that sounds more manageable to me? If they had gotten nothing, that could be a useful signal about the capability of their business partner, worth knowing now rather than later. Could one imagine a situation where AI enables a thoughtful business partner to provide more value? Absolutely. Should this be the default assumption? I'd argue that it absolutely shouldn't.

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

#62

Post by JodieBenitez »

yhcj wrote: 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…

I think AI is not really the subject. You probably chose a bad partner. As for quitting, since you mentioned gardening:

"C’est une folie de haïr toutes les roses parce qu’une épine vous a piqué."

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

#63

Post by greggoB »

yhcj wrote: post #49
p2detar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument is quite valid. OP writes "business partner". It begs the question - would their business partner get on board if they didn't have a AI subscription by their side? How about instead of 5K PR, OP got the same half-baked buggy crap or absolutely nothing instead? We don't know the business partner, but we are ready to throw the problem at AI agents right away. Well, I find this not particularly prod…

we started this project before was mainstream (we got sidetracked by other work) and him having less experience but being a very good programmer (I went with him to college and worked together for years), he would listen to my input, fix, and adjust. I have decades of experience. This is all but gone

Really sorry to hear so. Your story reinforces a fear I have that humanity is being squeezed out of all manner of things (pre AI too, but even more so since).

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

#64

Post by p2detar »

yhcj wrote: post #54
p2detar wrote: post #43

> Well, as much as people lose all their muscle by been bed-ridden, he's lost all his brain by being AI Assisted™. > THIS is what I am so against when people use AI for everything. This sounds horrendous but can we please stop equating vibe-coding to AI-assisted coding? They are not the same thing. It's one thing to submit 5K vibe-coded untested PR and another thing to use AI to add functionality in a granular way th…

That's the thing, that's how he started, but knowing his personality, I knew the temptation would be too high. I warned him. Then yesterday when I started asking him questions about how certain stuff worked, he had absolutely no clue. He didn't even read the docs summarizing what the PR did. In his mind AI is just assisting him. It's just like the alcoholic saying "one more drink won't harm me, I can quit any time".

Thanks for expanding on this! I appreciate it and my sympathy to you.

I do have a similar case at work, but it's my superior in that case - shipping large volumes of code with Claude, 100% vibed. It's slightly different in the sense of him having almost no clue about programming but having very well self-organization and discipline. Rigorously documents his work (with Claude of course) and commits his Claude sessions in the repo. Funny enough we got 2 paying customers for one the projects he vibed. It blew my mind. I don't know how this will play out, but it's been a bit scary and pushed a lot of us to do more with AI rather than manual coding. I still can't get myself to commit to 100% vibe-coded stuff though.

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

#65

Post by k310 »

marcta wrote: post #5
k310 wrote: post #3

> After this project, I'm done. I might turn into a yoga teacher. I gather that you don't have the "juice" to demand better. Even AI testing AI would be better (in some parallel universe?) than not testing at all. So become a consultant, preaching the simple gospel of "test this goddamn thing before unleashing it, or the tougher gospel of "Well if AI is doing all the work, then why don't you find a job that tolerates…

Which business will hire a consultant who doesn't fully endorse the AI-everything religion?

Which businesses? Ones who have refunded $10,000 on a $5.00 order or whose database was corrupted by sloppy code.

Unfortunately, there is demand for people who know to sanity check things. It's not glamorous, but neither is damage control.

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

#66

Post by socketcluster »

yhcj wrote: post #58
socketcluster wrote: post #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…

exactly how I feel. I mean let's face it, we were overpaid and underworked because we were considered magicians, but the magic is gone. What I fear is that it's impossible for the untrained to see the difference between a highly-technical developer and the vibe-coder. Software is so buggy nowadays (just look at Facebook, or Facebook Ads. Crazy) I wonder what's going to happen in the long run. I was banking on the opp…

>> I was banking on the opportunities it will create but nah

Seems we're on the same wavelength because I had the exact same thought about this.

But actually, I'm probably not so fussy. I wouldn't mind cleaning up the mess if I'm paid hourly... But now my concern is: What if they want me to clean up the mess but demand that I do it in a particular way which makes it impossible?

I'm already seeing signs of this. This was already kind of the case in my last job; I had to fix things and implement new features but we had to keep the same clunky, over-engineered architecture. My current job doesn't have the same degree of architectural legacy baggage but there is a lot of bureaucracy to deal with instead, which is itself restrictive.

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

#67

Post by pentaphobe »

I'm not sure we yet have the measure of how much agents/chatbots will alter our cultural norms, communication style, etc..

A lot of very quick "AI is not the problem" responses (and all in their own top threads. writing rather than conversing.. perhaps a pattern there? but I digress)

Agree with the pretext that some problems may be due to bad habits being amplified

But to me that default chorus of the "you're holding it wrong" thought-terminating cliche sounds no different to

"social media is not an issue, people just need to use control" or "ads are not the issue here, just ignore them.."

Or "hey, the button which randomly gives the pigeon seeds when pushed is not the issue here, pigeons just shouldn't be so needy"

Also I've seen good engineers (and non-engineers) get swept up in the "magic" of genai progressively lose chunks of their formerly consistent, and long-standing good behaviours

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

#68

Post by netdevphoenix »

lxgr wrote: post #55
netdevphoenix wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes I still vibe unit test and integration test, False sense of security. What's stopping the agents from doing an elaborate form of "Assert.IsTrue(true)" in some/most/all of the tests since you are vibing it and not reviewing it?

If you're working with agents that severely misaligned you'll probably have issues way beyond fake tests.

It seems to me that chances of misalignment are a function of accumulated usage time. Eventually, it will happen.

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

#69

Post by encyclopedism »

greggoB wrote: post #31
Valodim wrote: 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…

I agree with your sentiment. Simply saying 'AI' is not the reason, clouds what is actually happening. To illustrate I suggest playing the word swapping game. Swap AI in the sentence "AI isn't the problem" with, guns, drugs, gambling, or dare I say social media!

Human behaviour is complex. Patterns of behaviour that occur in general (there are always outliers of course) dictate so much in society, culture, politics and inter-human relations. Changing these behavioural patterns will affect meaningful real world change.

Social media has affected change in human behaviour. I suspect AI will too. We are starting to see the first shoots of the changes AI will bring.

Human behaviour on the average will choose convenience over effort. It is very difficult to buck this trend societally. To be clear, AI provides an immense amount of convenience.

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