Will vibe coding end like the maker movement? • Hacker News Board

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#191

Post by scottLobster » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC

lich_king wrote: post #134

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 never heard that I did, a lot, maybe fifteen years ago. There was a lot of talk about a "3D printing revolution" and being years away from being able to make whatever you want at home. For a while, the "maker" moniker was strongly associated with home manufacturing maximalists. I still don't get the point the article is making, though. That 3D printer thinking was obviously naive because it underestimated the dif…

Also hiring. It's easier to find people with JIRA experience than people in your vibe-coded ticket manager, even if it is technically superior for your application.

If there is any commonality between the 3D printing craze and vibe-coding, they're both renditions of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should".

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#192

Post by adventured » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC

LarsDu88 wrote: post #160

Vibe coding isn't so much a movement as a big fat tool that was air dropped from space after the megacorps decided to dump billions of dollars into LLMs and LLM companies. It's like comparing Christianity to water wheels or gay pride to to the Saturn V rocket. It's just not really analogous in any way. I do agree with the author about commoditization, however. The most likely outcome is that software will be commodit…

The outsource-prompting-to-India stage will almost entirely be skipped (it already has been).

Developing nations that were looking to tech to climb the economic ladder, are watching that ladder be pulled up.

Most of the upside will go to the US and China. Europe is lagging shockingly on AI spend, they're extremely far behind (but with constant plan announcements). If you didn't know any better, you'd think Europe believed the year was 2010.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#193

Post by t_sea » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC

TIL the Maker movement died I guess?

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#194

Post by jajuuka » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 9:10 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #145

jajuuka wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For sure the prices aren't terrible. But I figured they would get cheaper still.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#195

Post by tracker1 » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 9:12 PM UTC

eleventyseven wrote: post #151

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 never heard that. Once the predictions of a magical future turn out to be false, techies suddenly don't remember. Kind of like when the cult leader's prediction of doomsday doesn't show, there's always another magical prediction of a new future coming. Here are just a few major mainstream sources: 2012, Cornell Prof and Lab Director, in CNN: "We really want to print a robot that will walk out of a printer. We hav…

At some scales, Obama was right... a lot of companies that do plastic extruded parts also do 3D printing for lower volume fulfillment. You can also do some types of parts that you couldn't make through extrusion.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#196

Post by pm90 » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 9:12 PM UTC

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…

Correct. Almost nobody talked about “getting manufacturing back to the US”. Almost always it was just people glad they could build things.

Its also interesting how the author frames the results: Shenzhen is now better than it was ever before at manufacturing. The maker culture succeeded!

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#197

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 9:13 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#198

Post by bob1029 » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 9:13 PM UTC

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.

I've frequently argued to my organization's leadership that the product could be open source on GitHub with a flashing neon sign above it and it wouldn't change anything about the business. A competitor stealing our codebase would probably be worse off than if they had done anything else. Conway's law and all that.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#199

Post by pfdietz » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 9:15 PM UTC

Conscat wrote: post #68

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 was a kid at the time, but adults, magazines, and other children convinced me that 3D printing at home would likely replace a huge number of products. This included extremely optimistic speculation, like printers producing smart phones or houses. Then I dated a boy who used his 3D printer to substitute The Container Store at a higher cost with greater effort and lower quality, and that soured me on the concept.

What we're seeing instead are companies you can send CAD files to, get estimates, and receive the parts back in a few days.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#200

Post by pm90 » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

Hard disagree with this take. Mass adoption of any technology is almost always a good thing; the more people are looking at the sane problem, the more clever/elegant/innovative solutions come out of it.

Im also not sure if “vibe coding” did not have a phase where early adopters were mucking around? I saw the early versions of gpt much earlier than chatgpt and a lot of folks were using transformers for coding before claude.