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The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

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Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#171

Post by SoftTalker »

andrenotgiant wrote: post #28
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.

> you can build a crazy popular & successful product while violating all the traditional rules about “good” code which has always been true

Not only true but I would guess it's the normal case. Most software is a huge pile of tech debt held together by zip-ties. Even greenfield projects quickly trend this way, as "just make it work" pressure overrides any posturing about a clean codebase.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#172

Post by roxolotl »

thwarted wrote: post #93
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 shows that you can build a crazy popular & successful product while violating all the traditional rules about “good” code. We already knew that. This is a matter of people who didn't know that or didn't want to acknowledge that thinking they now have proof that it doesn't matter for creating a crazy popular & successful product, as if it's a gotcha on those who advocate for good practices. When your goal is to c…

WiB is different from Move Fast and Break Things and again different from YAGNI though.

WiB doesn't mean the thing is worse, it means it does less. Claude Code interestingly does WAY more than something like Pi which is genuinely WiB.

Move Fast and Break Things comes from the assumption that if you capture a market quick enough you will then have time to fix things.

YAGNI is simply a reminder that not preparing for contingencies can result in a simpler code base since you're unlikely to use the contingencies.

The spaghetti that people are making fun of in Claude Code is none of these things except maybe Move Fast and Break Things.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#174

Post by jkingsman »

greedo wrote: post #160

I've been a skeptic about LLMs in general since I first heard of them. And I'm a sysadmin type, more comfortable with python scripts than writing "real" software. No formal education in coding at all other than taking Harvard's free online python course a few years ago. So I set out to build an app with CC just to see what it's like. I currently use Copilot (copilot.money) to track my expenditures, but I've become en…

I really identify with this. As an engineer, I really do enjoy building things. However, a lot of times, what I want is a thing that is built. A lot of time, that means I build it, which sometimes I enjoy and sometimes I don't; so many of my half finished projects are things that I still think would be awesome to have but didn't care to invest the time in building.

LLM-driven develop lets me have the thing built without needing to build the thing, and at the same time I get to exercise some ways-to-build I don't use as often (management, spec writing, spec editing, proactive unblocking, etc.). I have no doubt my work with LLMs has strengthened mental muscles that are also be helpful in technical management contexts/senior+principal-level technical work.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#175

Post by themafia »

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.

The model is the product.

It shows that you can have a garbage front end if people perceive value in your back end.

It also means that any competitor that improves on this part of the experience is going to eat your lunch.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#176

Post by AstroBen »

tock wrote: post #113
moritzwarhier wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if the comment was referring to this, but recently, people have been posting stuff about them requiring their new hire Jared Sumner, author of the Bun runtime, to first and foremost fix memory leaks that caused very high memory consumption for claude's CLI. The original source was them posting about the matter on X I think. And at first glance, none of it was about complex runtime optimizations not prese…

Ah I believe codex has similar issues. Terrible code quality but goes to show it doesn't really matter in the end.

> it doesn't really matter in the end

if you have one of the top models in a disruptive new product category where everyone else is sprinting also, sure..

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#177

Post by eloisant »

pron wrote: post #122
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 simp…

The very definition of "vibe coding" is using AI to write software and not even look at the code it produces.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#178

Post by johnfn »

"Laughing" at how bad the code in Claude Code is really seems to be missing the forest for the trees. Anthropic didn't set out to build a bunch of clean code when writing Claude Code. They set out to make a bunch of money, and given CC makes in the low billions of ARR, is growing rapidly, and is the clear market leader, it seems they succeeded. Given this, you would think you'd would want to approach the strategy that Anthropic used with curiosity. How can we learn from what they did?

There's nothing wrong with saying that Claude Code is written shoddily. It definitely is. But I think it should come with the recognition that Anthropic achieved all of its goals despite this. That's pretty interesting, right? I'd love to be talking about that instead.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#179

Post by is_true »

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.

There's also a business incentive for code produced by LLM companies to be hard to maintain. So you keep needing them in the future.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#180

Post by mbreese »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #165
MBCook wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VHS was not worse is better. It’s better is better.

Betamax was arguably better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war

Arguably better quality, but at the cost of being shorter. In the great trade off of time, size, and quality, I think VHS chose a better combination.
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