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“Vibe Coding” vs. Reality

cendyne.dev

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Re: “Vibe Coding” vs. Reality

#111

Post by [deleted] »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #101
Etheryte wrote: post #24

At this point in time, we're following the time corporate got on the outsourcing craze step for step. It had all the hype, hands off, cheaper for the same work, faster to market, every other argument you've all certainly heard. Then the reality hit. The whole discussion around LLM coding agents feels indistinguishable.

> Then the reality hit. The reality in which people like me get to do work for US/UK for 4x the salary relative to equivalent work locally, and some of this work is actually cleaning up after folks elsewhere, who being cheapest labor available still got 4x their local salary for this work, and the total is still 4x cheaper than what the US/UK company would pay locally? :). (I'm only half-joking; in a previous life, I…

[deleted]

Re: “Vibe Coding” vs. Reality

#112

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Etheryte wrote: post #24

At this point in time, we're following the time corporate got on the outsourcing craze step for step. It had all the hype, hands off, cheaper for the same work, faster to market, every other argument you've all certainly heard. Then the reality hit. The whole discussion around LLM coding agents feels indistinguishable.

> It had all the hype, hands off, cheaper for the same work, faster to market, every other argument you've all certainly heard.

Like some of the other responses, I'm baffled by your comment. Have you not seen what's happened in the past 5 years or so?

Yes, there was an outsourcing craze to India after the .com bubble burst in the early 00s that largely failed - the timezone, cultural differences, and lack of good infrastructure support made it fail.

The past 2 companies I've worked for offshored the majority of their software engineering work, and there was no quality difference compared to American devs. The offshore locations were Latin America and Europe, so plenty of timezone overlap. The companies are fully remote, so what difference does it make if the dev is in your same city or a thousand miles away?

I think offshoring has absolutely put downward pressure on US dev salaries in the past couple years.

Re: “Vibe Coding” vs. Reality

#113

Post by MR4D »

MarkMarine wrote: post #92

This is the go community saying a computer will never best human go players. We already have examples of a model finding more performant sorts [0], given the right incentives and time, and the right system for optimizing (LLMs trained on “average code” probably aren’t it) the computer will best us at creating things for the computer. Is “vibe coding” real today? Not in my experience, with even Claude code. My hand ha…

I think it’s partially there:

For creating website (not apps) it absolutely is there. This is just the first rung on the ladder though. It’s not doing Linux kernel development yet, but that time will come eventually. In between are all the other rungs. AI will climb them one by one.

Re: “Vibe Coding” vs. Reality

#115

Post by Clubber »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #101
Etheryte wrote: post #24

At this point in time, we're following the time corporate got on the outsourcing craze step for step. It had all the hype, hands off, cheaper for the same work, faster to market, every other argument you've all certainly heard. Then the reality hit. The whole discussion around LLM coding agents feels indistinguishable.

> Then the reality hit. The reality in which people like me get to do work for US/UK for 4x the salary relative to equivalent work locally, and some of this work is actually cleaning up after folks elsewhere, who being cheapest labor available still got 4x their local salary for this work, and the total is still 4x cheaper than what the US/UK company would pay locally? :). (I'm only half-joking; in a previous life, I…

The company I worked for 15 years ago outsourced QA to save money. It was sold as paying $15 for a 4080 video card. When they opened the package, instead of a 4080, it was a brick. The salt in the wound was when they realized they overpaid 3x for a $5 brick. If it wasn't for vendor lock-in (they being the vendor), they would be dead.

The local QA person could run through 100 or so scenarios a day. The offshore people could do 2 a day. They never improved. The offshore people who are tops aren't cheap.

Re: “Vibe Coding” vs. Reality

#116

Post by jetrink »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #37
varenc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speeding up your work does lead to job loss. If some developers can suddenly be 3x as productive than a company doesn't need as many engineers.

That assumes a static demand for development services, which has, more or less, never happened since computing became a thing. Python, and other high level languages made a lot of development much faster, but it never lead to reduced engineering needs. Cloud made deploying services massively easier, and as a result we actually have a lot more people working in infrastructure. Faster development mostly leads to expand…

Jevon's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

"In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that technological improvements that increased the efficiency of coal use led to the increased consumption of coal in a wide range of industries. He argued that, contrary to common intuition, technological progress could not be relied upon to reduce fuel consumption."

Re: “Vibe Coding” vs. Reality

#117

Post by bobxmax »

Trasmatta wrote: post #15
bobxmax wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a company relatively well-known in Startup-land and I've replaced a product team which had 9 devs 2 years ago with 2 devs with AI. Devs are just coping so hard around LLMs its hard to watch. OTOH the few engineers who have embraced it are excelling.

Are you a developer yourself? Product people love the idea of being able to fire their dev teams, but I'm not sure they understand the implications (some of wich may not become clear for years).

Yes, I'm a developer. LLMs allow engineers to become product people themselves.

Re: “Vibe Coding” vs. Reality

#118

Post by bobxmax »

vunderba wrote: post #57
bobxmax wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a company relatively well-known in Startup-land and I've replaced a product team which had 9 devs 2 years ago with 2 devs with AI. Devs are just coping so hard around LLMs its hard to watch. OTOH the few engineers who have embraced it are excelling.

I'd take strong opinions for/or against with a grain of salt. It's likely you're suffering a bit from baader meinhof. I could certainly see a possible reduction in engineering team size, but going from 9 to 2 makes me question how much of that reduction was a result of over-hiring in the first place.

Probably a bit of both.

Re: “Vibe Coding” vs. Reality

#120

Post by margalabargala »

MarkMarine wrote: post #92

This is the go community saying a computer will never best human go players. We already have examples of a model finding more performant sorts [0], given the right incentives and time, and the right system for optimizing (LLMs trained on “average code” probably aren’t it) the computer will best us at creating things for the computer. Is “vibe coding” real today? Not in my experience, with even Claude code. My hand ha…

Where we are now, I wonder if is similar to the early days of compiled languages existing, back when people still somewhat commonly wrote assembly by hand and didn't trust compilers.

Sure, things like Roller Coaster Tycoon exist, but but writing in a compiled language is so much faster, easier, and more broadly accessible than writing in assembly that compilers took over.

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