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Vibe coding creates a bus factor of zero

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Re: Vibe coding creates a bus factor of zero

#141

Post by fragmede »

robertlagrant wrote: post #119
fragmede wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As programmers, the bus factor is something to be noted and avoided, but in medicine, it goes the other direction. Private practice is one doctor, and a whole support staff for that single individual. Why are we so eager to be replaceable?

Doctors keep patient notes, and EHRs and patients can recall histories separately to that doctor. Doctors also go through relatively standardised training. That single individual is important, but it's not the same. What's more the same would be if they were practicing healthcare on a species that they had invented, and no one knew anything about it, and the species was crucial to a company's survival.

Doctor Smith's ENT doctor's office has a bus factor of one. If doctor Smith dies, that company goes under. Their patients are going to have to find a new ENT doctor. There's a life long relationship people have with their doctors. If that doctor retires, it's a big deal to all of their patients who now have to find a new doctor. ENTs are fairly standardized, thankfully, so their patients can just go elsewhere if there's a bus event, but doctor smith is crucial to the company's survival. The continuity of business plan there is patients can find another ENT doctors and the employees can go to another practice.

Aka, why we should ask vendors for their source code in case they go under.

Re: Vibe coding creates a bus factor of zero

#142

Post by johnfn »

matt_kantor wrote: post #139
johnfn wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think this is a problem. But the article goes one step further than claiming it's a problem - it claims that a bus factor of 0, and by extension, vibe coding, is "fundamentally flawed". I don't think that a bus factor of 0 is indicative of a "fundamental flaw".

I think they meant: 1. If a process necessarily results in bus factors of zero, that process is flawed. 2. The nature of vibe coding is such that it always produces code with a bus factor of zero (i.e. this is a "fundamental" fact of vibe coding). I definitely agree with the first point, and I think agree with the second as well (at least if "vibe coding" carries its original implication that you don't even look at/c…

Thanks for breaking that down.

I think I would disagree a bit with both.

It doesn't seem a priori evident that producing a bus factor of zero is bad. For instance, using a library which is not maintained has a bus factor of zero. That doesn't seem "flawed" to me. I think the problem I find with the author's, and your, statements is absolutism. Few things in engineering are ever truly 100% right or 100% wrong choices. Using a library with no maintainers is decision with tradeoffs, but in some contexts those tradeoffs would be worth it. Similarly, vibe coding code that has a bus factor of zero is also a decision with tradeoffs, and sometimes tradeoffs are worth it.

As for the second point - is it really so. hard to read the code that an LLM produces? I am continuously reading output from LLMs for any code which is even remotely important. Again, this is another decision with tradeoffs. Sometimes I vibe-code a 500 loc script, but I can manually verify the output of the script, and therefore there is no reason to read every line. Sometimes I am working on more important code that must be right; I typically inspect it line by line, like a code review.

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