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Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

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Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#141

Post by linkjuice4all »

3D printing does bear some similarity to vibe coding/LLM-generated code. I do occasionally see "product" 3D printed items but the bigger value-add for 3D printing has been rapid prototyping and then running that design through actual production testing.

An example 3D workflow: Prototype design -> 3D print -> test/break -> production design -> real manufacturing process

The equivalent vibe code Vibecobe -> slop -> test/break -> real developers -> real development process

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The real test for vibe coded stuff (much like 3D printed crap at craft fairs) will be if someone actually buys it. But much like those 'makers', vibe coders will have to go through the "real development process" if they want to make money at scale.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#142

Post by HerbManic »

rglover wrote: post #41

> When you spend two years making useless Arduino projects, you develop instincts about electronics, materials, and design that you can’t get from a tutorial. When vibe coding goes straight to production, you lose that developmental space. The tool is powerful enough to produce real output before the person using it has developed real judgment. The crux of the problem. The only way to truly know is to get your hands…

Yep. Increases output but reduces understanding.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#143

Post by bonesss »

ramathornn wrote: post #82
jmull wrote: post #64

> The central promise—that distributed digital fabrication would bring manufacturing back to America, that every city would have micro-factories, that 3D printing would decentralize production—simply didn’t materialize. I never heard that. It didn’t seem like 3D-printing ever showed sings of displacing existing ways of manufacturing at scale, did it? Units per hour and dollars per unit was never its strength. It was…

> BTW, I think a lot of people were/are greatly overestimating the value of coding to business success. Fully agree - We already saw dev prices drop significantly when offshore dev shops spun up. I've had great, and also horrible experiences working with devs that could produce lines of code at a fraction of the price of any senior type dev. The higher paid engineers i've worked with are always worth their salary/hou…

One thought experiment I keep having when I see LLM hype: imagine if our outsourcing companies could be as blasé about copyright as OpenAI, and how profitable they could be.

I mean, rename some dudes over there to ‘transformer’, and let them copy & paste from GitHub with abandon… I know we could get a whole browser for less than a few grand.

We wouldn’t, because it’d be copyright-insane. But if we just got it indirect enough, maybe fed the info to the copiers through a ‘transforming’ browser to mirror the copyright argument, I bet we could outperform OpenAI in key metrics.

Coding is formalizing for the compiler. The other 99% of the job is softly getting the PHB not to fuck the entire company and being unique in not doing dumb shit everyone thinks is popular now but will regret soon. It’s all like IT tribal tattoos. Barely cool for a couple of years, and then a lifelong source of shielded regret.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#144

Post by AntiDyatlov »

LastTrain wrote: post #53
itunpredictable wrote: post #2

The author of this article gives a more balanced POV than mine. I think most (maybe overwhelming majority) of publicized vibe coding projects are complete technical virtue signaling.

I’m no fan of vibe coding but I usually find that people who use the term virtue signaling have none and hate those that do.

It's not virtous to make a show of one's virtue, virtue signaling is a baplutely a real thing, and a defect.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#145

Post by giancarlostoro »

jajuuka wrote: post #128
fishpen0 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it stunted out. Outside of only the densest areas, maker spaces never really formed. The stuff remains accessible as a hobby only to the wealthy who can afford all these tools and machines in the majority of the country. I'm a nearly 40 minute drive to the closest maker space and I'm in one of the 10 densest populated cities in the country. The last city I lived in, the maker space was too popular and raised…

I saw that happen in a decent sized college town near where I live. They had a maker space spring up when 3D printing was the hottest thing. It didn't last very long though. I'm a bit surprised that 3D printer machines haven't become cheaper. Like solid machines sub-$100. 3D printer pens are the only thing that came close to doing that.

I think its the Ender that goes as low as $170 or so, which isn't terrible.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#146

Post by dolebirchwood »

movedx01 wrote: post #58
tayo42 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people build to impress with an implementation that no one cares about really? Or to share the end product? I think now you are freed up to make a shooter that people will actually want to play. Or at least attempt it. We probably need to come to terms with the idea that no one cares about those details. Really, 2 years ago no one would have cared about your hand crafted 3d shooter either I think.

It doesn't matter, neither of those scenarios makes the effort impressive in this case. The vibe coded thing might even be useful - that does not make it impressive though. Effort does.

> The vibe coded thing might even be useful - that does not make it impressive though.

Then "impressive" shouldn't even be the benchmark. If someone gifted me $10K, I'm not going to care if they earned it in a competition or won it in a lottery. Value is value. I'm gratefully accepting it and not being snobby about it. I couldn't care less about how "impressive" anything is if it's useful to me.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#148

Post by tsss »

OakNinja wrote: post #84
jmull wrote: post #64

> The central promise—that distributed digital fabrication would bring manufacturing back to America, that every city would have micro-factories, that 3D printing would decentralize production—simply didn’t materialize. I never heard that. It didn’t seem like 3D-printing ever showed sings of displacing existing ways of manufacturing at scale, did it? Units per hour and dollars per unit was never its strength. It was…

I recently wrote a blog post about exactly this, and I agree with your perspective. Vibe coding helps with showing other people your idea and get them to understand it, try it and, most importantly, help you fail fast. But as the product matures, the gains of using LLM's and agentic engineering will go from 10000% efficiency to something like maybe 30(?)% productivity gain? Which is still awesome, of course. "The rea…

It's not awesome, not for us. 30% productivity gain would be enormous. Just imagine 30% of developers losing their jobs, in addition to outsourcing and all the new graduates flooding out of colleges after CS has been hyped so much in the recent years.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#149

Post by sosborn »

tsss wrote: post #148
OakNinja wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently wrote a blog post about exactly this, and I agree with your perspective. Vibe coding helps with showing other people your idea and get them to understand it, try it and, most importantly, help you fail fast. But as the product matures, the gains of using LLM's and agentic engineering will go from 10000% efficiency to something like maybe 30(?)% productivity gain? Which is still awesome, of course. "The rea…

It's not awesome, not for us. 30% productivity gain would be enormous. Just imagine 30% of developers losing their jobs, in addition to outsourcing and all the new graduates flooding out of colleges after CS has been hyped so much in the recent years.

I really doubt that 30% productivity gain would result in 30% developers losing their jobs. Believing this would require an assumption that businesses and economies will never grow.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#150

Post by moregrist »

jmull wrote: post #64

> The central promise—that distributed digital fabrication would bring manufacturing back to America, that every city would have micro-factories, that 3D printing would decentralize production—simply didn’t materialize. I never heard that. It didn’t seem like 3D-printing ever showed sings of displacing existing ways of manufacturing at scale, did it? Units per hour and dollars per unit was never its strength. It was…

> It didn’t seem like 3D-printing ever showed sings of displacing existing ways of manufacturing at scale, did it?

It didn’t and I’m not sure anyone who knew anything about at-scale manufacturing ever saw it that way. Injection molding is far cheaper per unit and more accurate.

But 3D printing has made a major impact on prototyping. Parts that would have taken serious machine shop work or outsourcing can be printed in a few hours. It really changed the game for mechanical engineers.

In terms of vibe coding, time to demo/prototype is greatly reduced. That definitely takes time and cost away from R&D. But I don’t know that it’s had much impact on transfer to manufacturing, which can easily be the hard final 20%.

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