I've done a fair amount of vibe coding cleanup, ironically using a fair about of LLMs, a lot of leadership are under the false impression that more code means better product, their ignorance is my gain.
Vibe coding cleanup as a service
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Re: Vibe coding cleanup as a service
#12Vibe code has a lot in common with legacy code.
Low confidence to change it, low internal and external quality.
Also some differences: low age-to-quantity ratio, schedule pressure, inflated expectations.
It's most cost-effective to shift errors from runtime to compile time and from compile time to design time.
Unfortunately, AI rushes people to runtime as fast as possible.
Re: Vibe coding cleanup as a service
#13I wonder how many of these vibe coding build apps will grow to massive apps/be really popular (I imagine a lot of them will)... and what kind of security vulns we'll see everywhere because of how it was initally built...
i can only imagine that services like described in this article will become a very common part of getting proof of concepts built with AI into production.....
Re: Vibe coding cleanup as a service
#14Vibe Coding is accelerating the death of documentation and architectural clarity.
Companies are measuring success by tokens generated and time-to-prototype, ignoring the massive, hidden cost of cleanup/maintenance.
The real skill is now cleanup, not generation.
Re: Vibe coding cleanup as a service
#15Talk about sloppy seconds
Re: Vibe coding cleanup as a service
#16I wonder if vibe coding is a bit like DIY plumbing. You can do it yourself a bit and then later when water starts gushing all over your bathroom you hire an emergency plumber at a high fee. You learn a little more for next time.
And on youtube, you can find many expert DIYer plumbers who go to greater lengths than pros.
Re: Vibe coding cleanup as a service
#17> Startups save weeks getting to MVP with Vibe Coding, then spend comparable time and budget on cleanup. But that’s still faster than traditional development.
That's the core of situation as described in the article. I wonder how true that is, that it's faster overall than having developers build the MVP.
From what I've seen, I think developers can build just as fast, especially with AI assistance. They may not want to though, knowing full well the MVP/prototype will go directly into production.
Better to take some time to have a decent architecture early on. Product and management probably see that as a waste of time.
On the other hand, vibe coding allows the product team to make exactly what they want without having to explain it to developers. That's the real draw to this, basically a much better figma.
Perhaps there is a market for a product oriented vibe coding tool, that doesn't pretend to make code, but gives developers much better specifications while allowing the product and business side better input in the process.
Re: Vibe coding cleanup as a service
#18Vibe code has a lot in common with legacy code. Low confidence to change it, low internal and external quality. Also some differences: low age-to-quantity ratio, schedule pressure, inflated expectations. It's most cost-effective to shift errors from runtime to compile time and from compile time to design time. Unfortunately, AI rushes people to runtime as fast as possible.
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Re: Vibe coding cleanup as a service
#19Janitor Engineers [0] are already a thing? Damn. Also, all links in this article starting from the "Why AI code fails at scale" section are dead for some reason, even though it was written only 5 days ago. That raises some questions...
EDIT: Not trying to offend anyone with this [0], I've actually had the same half-joking retirement plan since the dawn of vibe coding, to become an "all-organic-code" consultant who untangles and cleans up AI-generated mess.
Re: Vibe coding cleanup as a service
#20I have been taking on "rescue" projects for a while through my business. Previously, the barely-functioning code was usually being generated via outsourcing agencies but it seems the new source is now going to be LLMs. I imagine it will be the same set of issues really. Just a different way of cost cutting measures. There can be good reasons to take shortcuts but, in my experience, the problems start when you're not…
Probably a good idea to at least add some vibe-coding terms to your website for SEO.