The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok • Hacker News Board

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#121

Post by dghlsakjg » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 7:41 PM UTC

tock wrote: post #80

shimman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that plus having tens of billions of gulf money certainly helps you subsidize your moronic failures with money that isn't yours while you continue, and fail to, achieve profitability in any time horizon within a single lifespan.

Huh what moronic failure did Anthropic do? Every Claude Code user I know loves it.

The people who don’t love it probably stopped using it.

You don’t have to go far on this site to find someone that doesn’t like Claude code.

If you want an example of something moronic, look at the ram usage of Claude code. It can use gigabytes of memory to work with a few megabytes of text.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#122

Post by pron » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 7:41 PM UTC

semicolon_storm wrote: post #14

It’s truly strange that people keep citing the quality of Claude code’s leaked source as if it’s proof vibe coding doesn’t work. If anything, it’s the exact opposite. It shows that you can build a crazy popular & successful product while violating all the traditional rules about “good” code.

1. "Vibe coding" is a spectrum of how much human supervision (and/or scaffolding in the form of human-written tests and/or specs) is involved.

2. The problem with "bad code" has nothing to do with the short-term success of the product but with the ability to evolve it successfully over time. In other words, it's about long-term success, not short-term success.

3. Perhaps most importantly, Claude Code is a fairly simple product at its core, and almost all its value comes from the model, not from its own code (and the same is true on the cost side). Claude Code is relatively a low stakes product. This means that the problems caused by bad code matter less in this instance, and they're managed further by Claude Code not being at the extreme "vibey" end of the spectrum.

So AI aside, Claude Code is proof that if you pour years and many billions into a product, it can be a success even if the code in the narrow and small UI layer isn't great.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#123

Post by blks » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 7:41 PM UTC

conductr wrote: post #112

semicolon_storm wrote: post #14

It’s truly strange that people keep citing the quality of Claude code’s leaked source as if it’s proof vibe coding doesn’t work. If anything, it’s the exact opposite. It shows that you can build a crazy popular & successful product while violating all the traditional rules about “good” code.

It kind of reminds me of grammar police type personalities. They are so hung up on the fact it reads “ugly” they can’t see the message; this code powers a rapidly growing $400B company. They admit refactoring is easy, but fail to realize they probably know that too and it’s just not a priority yet.

They won’t stay 400B for long, and Claude Code will have no effect on that.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#124

Post by hungryhobbit » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 7:41 PM UTC

scrame wrote: post #7

This is the guy that created bittorrent, btw. I know that was a long time ago, but he's not just some random blogger.

Given his background, you'd think he'd know that he should provide some evidence for his position (instead of making this completely unsupported rant).

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#125

Post by therobots927 » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 7:42 PM UTC

dogline wrote: post #86

I think it's becoming clear we're not anywhere near AGI, we figured out how to vectorize our knowledge bases and replay it back. We have a vectorized knowledge base, not an AI.

Great way of putting it. That’s clearly what it is and it’s very good at that job. But it’s insane to pretend like it can be used with minimal supervision in all or even most applications.

From a tech discourse perspective, things have never been less productive than they are right now. I feel like we’re witnessing the implosion of an industry in real time. Thanks in no small part to venture capital and its henchmen.

Everyone seems to be drinking the proverbial kool-aid, and everyone else who is looking at the situation skeptically are labeled luddites. I expect we’ll get some clarity over the next few years on who is right. But I don’t know. It feels like the breakdown of shared epistemology. The kind of shared epistemology on which civilization was built.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#126

Post by hombre_fatal » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 7:43 PM UTC

kennywinker wrote: post #79

hombre_fatal wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, many of the complaints seem more like giddy joy than anything. The negative emotion regex, for example, is only used for a log/telemetry metric. Sampling "wtf?" along would probably be enough. Why would you use an agent for that? I don't see how a vibe-coded app is freed from the same trade-offs that apply to a fast-moving human-coded one. Especially since a human is still driving it, thus they will take the sa…

I think the thing is that people expect one of the largest companies in the world to have well written code. Claude’s source code is fine for a 1-3 person team. It’s atrocious for a flagship product from a company valued over $380 BILLION. Like if that’s the best ai coding can do given infinite money? Yeah, the emperor has no clothes. If it’s not the best that can be done, then what kinda clowns are running the show…

I just think this is the nature of all software, and it was wrong to assume AI fundamentally changes it.

Seems like you're also under the impression that privately developed software should be immaculate if the company is worth enough billions, but you'd be wrong about that too.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#127

Post by rustystump » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 7:44 PM UTC

semicolon_storm wrote: post #14

It’s truly strange that people keep citing the quality of Claude code’s leaked source as if it’s proof vibe coding doesn’t work. If anything, it’s the exact opposite. It shows that you can build a crazy popular & successful product while violating all the traditional rules about “good” code.

I think it is crazy popular for the model and not the crappy vibe code.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#128

Post by yakattak » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 7:45 PM UTC

semicolon_storm wrote: post #14

It’s truly strange that people keep citing the quality of Claude code’s leaked source as if it’s proof vibe coding doesn’t work. If anything, it’s the exact opposite. It shows that you can build a crazy popular & successful product while violating all the traditional rules about “good” code.

Honestly for such a powerful tool, it’s pretty damn janky. Permissions don’t always work, hitting escape doesn’t always register correctly, the formatting breaks on its own to name a few of the issues i’ve had. It’s popular and successful but it’s got lots of thorns

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#129

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 7:46 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #48

semicolon_storm wrote: post #14

It’s truly strange that people keep citing the quality of Claude code’s leaked source as if it’s proof vibe coding doesn’t work. If anything, it’s the exact opposite. It shows that you can build a crazy popular & successful product while violating all the traditional rules about “good” code.

Value to customer. Literally the only thing that matters.

Value isn't a one-shot, though. Value sustained over time is what matters.

Well, if unmaintainable code gets in the way of the "sustained over time" part, then that is still a real problem.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#130

Post by remus » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 7:46 PM UTC

acedTrex wrote: post #72

semicolon_storm wrote: post #14

It’s truly strange that people keep citing the quality of Claude code’s leaked source as if it’s proof vibe coding doesn’t work. If anything, it’s the exact opposite. It shows that you can build a crazy popular & successful product while violating all the traditional rules about “good” code.

Its a buggy pos though, "popular and successful" have never been indicators of quality in any sense.

I think this is a pretty interesting comment because it gets to the heart of differing views on what quality means.

For you, non-buggy software is important. You could also reasonably take a more business centered approach, where having some number of paying customers is an indicator of quality (you've built something people are willing to pay for!) Personally I lean towards the second camp, the bugs are annoying but there is a good sprinkling of magic in the product which overall makes it something I really enjoy using.

All that is to say, I don't think there is a straightforward definition of quality that everyone is going to agree on.