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

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

#81

Post by aogaili »

potro wrote: post #80
aogaili wrote: post #79

It seems to me the author is gradually accepting the fact that business people (and their grandparents) can now produce thousands lines of code. This was not feasible a year ago. Now, regarding the quality of the code, the edge cases etc, surely someone familiar with the failure modes can review and prompt the AI better. But that doesn't negate the fact that these people are producing huge amount of code using natura…

> But that doesn't negate the fact that these people are producing huge amount of code using natural language without any programming background. Huge amount of *non-working* code, as illustrated by this article. Also author is not super clear on this point, but according to article the partner has programming background.

Yes - but also there are numerous examples of people generating highly functional code. And that fact that this code is at a none working state does not imply that the entire 5k LOC are be distracted, there is probably a lot of business logic coded in there.

The issue here is that the author is now forced to use AI to review the 5k lines and he seems to opposed to the idea hence my point that these developers will eventually be forced to adapt.

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

#82

Post by tpxl »

sillyfluke wrote: post #60
tpxl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The differentiator right now is taste. Most people have none (like the business partner in the OP), and some people have plenty (like you seem to have). These two sets of people will produce wildly different results with the same tools. Two things you can do regarding programming here. 1. Be a consultant for a high wage, use AI, produce good results quickly - little to negative intellectual joy here. You still have t…

1. is a bit contradictory or at the least a "devils in the details" wishful fantasy which hasn't been showcased convincingly in the wild yet (by "the wild", I mean software eng shops and corps). It's assumed the devs who have taste were able to implement their taste fine pre-AI, sure, but the whole gotcha in 1. is that the ones with good taste currently are not confident in implementing their good taste while simulta…

I disagree. There is a lot of boilerplate to write and mundane things to check, which AI can speed up a lot. I'm not talking about 'software engineering' here, but about 'programming', which consists of a lot of write DTO->write rest interface->write interface->write simple select query->map response. The good taste here comes from the architectural design and the UI design.

The amount of 'software engineers' who couldn't design a table to be readable or a flow to be intuitive is off the charts. AI neither helps nor harms here, it just makes implementing good and bad decisions faster.

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

#83

Post by beej71 »

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 called it quits about 8 years ago (I'm 55), mostly due to the fact that I couldn't get excited about anyone's "next big thing". Got into teaching, which was a new, rewarding skill to work on mastering. (I've still got a long way to go--what a challenging field!)

But of course I am teaching CS, and now it's just a nightmare of trying to figure out how to teach it. We have a lot of people saying we still need to teach the basics in addition to AI-assisted, and we have a lot of people saying to just teach vibe coding, and a lot of people saying just teach SE and no coding. And we're just trying to do the best we can for the students, while wondering if the field even has a sensible future.

(Anecdata: universally, my hired grads have told me they are incredibly grateful to have gotten through college before LLMs hit the scene.)

And it's a pisser, because teaching CS was great. I get to try to optimize learning and talk about what I love? Heaven.

I think I'm in this category of software engineer in terms of how much I love the work:

Requirements gathering: 5%

Functional spec: 5%

Design doc: 20%

Programming: 65%

Deployment: 5%

And engineers who were here:

Requirements gathering: 20%

Functional spec: 25%

Design doc: 25%

Programming: 5% (or 0%!)

Deployment: 25%

are having a much easier time with this transition. Unfortunately for me, programming is also the most fun to teach.

I have a lot of other interests outside of CS, one of which would actually pay money (GIS). Not sure how to get paid for dualsporting, hiking, bicycling, geology, visiting museums, writing (I do get paid grocery money for this), hand-coding, or reading. But I'm open to suggestion. :)

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

#84

Post by ponector »

dist-epoch wrote: post #23
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…

Why not become a machine gun operator?

Pretty much anyone can volunteer and became an UAV drone operator in Ukraine. Get an experience you'll use in the WW3!

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

#85

Post by greggoB »

piva00 wrote: post #72
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 one of my most repeated tropes on HN is bringing up that scale and degree matter. A problem of a kind is of a completely different kind when the scale is another order of magnitude. A simple example: with picture editing software people have been able to create believable fake content for a long time, it did require skill which limited the scale, with genAI creating in seconds, by anyone, a much more plausibl…

Seems like exactly the kind of distinction that would be a common refrain on HN, yet somehow on this topic it's gone out the window.

> A simple example: with picture editing software

Actually reminds me of a story a professor in a comsci ethics class once told about how the police in South Africa (during the apartheid years) would take photos of everyone protesting the regime at the university campus. Back then (this was the 80s) nobody really cared - what were they going to do, go through all the photos by hand?

He said "imagine how much more concerned people would be today". That was in 2011 or so.

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

#86

Post by greggoB »

encyclopedism wrote: post #69
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 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 an…

> Human behaviour on the average will choose convenience over effort.

That's pretty much my take on it, yeah.

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

#87

Post by preg_match »

netdevphoenix wrote: post #46
mbrumlow wrote: 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…

> 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?

Agreed. If you don’t want to read the code that’s fine, but you have to read the testing code. Otherwise you have no idea what’s going on.

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

#88

Post by huurtehoog »

kakacik wrote: post #51
lmz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most businesses globally don't work in idiotic and often amoral mode of 'move fast and break things' Not sure what business you are in but the non tech industries (corporate IT, in house apps) have not, in general, been associated with quality. Cost cutting, outsourcing to the lowest bidder: yes. Quality: no.

Mostly banking but dipped my feet in many other areas in the past (telco, insurance, municipalities, army etc). Its true budgets are often the problem, but not much 'move fast and break things' mantra of SV, rather 'move as much as low budget and corresponding quality and bureaucracy allows you to'

There's a lot of distortion on this forum. Some people don't consider anything less than being overpaid by venture capital furnaces as worthwhile work.

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

#89

Post by yhcj »

p2detar wrote: post #64
yhcj wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

no worries, a lot of these assumptions exist mostly in my head as a frustrated dev.

and yeah luckily I ended up quitting just right when coding was getting easy with LLMs and even back then (3 years ago) I remember our PMs and bosses saying "look why does it take you a week? I did in in two hours!"

Got riddance to get out of those jobs, BUT I do agree that paying customers != shipping software. Getting paid customers is a great skill and it's the skill my friend has (he's an A class marketer, and not in a fishy or scammy way). The guy just understands marketting. That's why I'm working with him.

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

#90

Post by yhcj »

pentaphobe wrote: post #67

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…

social media in an excellent example, alcohol, or even marihuana where it's pretty much legal to consume in my home country and a total pain in the ass for those of us who hate the smell.

Sucks that my children have to smell it, really different from my chilhood.

I don't know almost anyone who preferred having a childhood today (with so much social media and doomscrolling) as compared to the 80's and 90's, when it was just kids playing hide and seek outdoor, a few Michael Jackson home-recorded cassettes, and of course Sonic 2.

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