Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vibecoders Can't Build for Longevity

blog.d11r.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 38 posts

Re: Vibecoders Can't Build for Longevity

#21

Post by andrei_says_ »

reverius42 wrote: post #16
ting0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that there are a new group of coders that are coming in, which is opening its own new can of worms. However, even experienced coders are still producing slop. The difference between slop and quality seems to be how much you baby the LLM, carefully pay attention to its outputs and its behavior, and stringently test everything produced. The more auto-pilot, the worse the result. The larger the code-base, t…

My mental model of "Claude is a 19 year old intern who never gets tired but is very overconfident" never fails. Would you hand off some of your well defined tasks to your diligent 19 year old intern? Sure! Would you check their work? Of course! Would you hand off all of a major tech company to be entirely built by interns? Of course not!

Stupid but industrious and prolific. Also very confident.

Re: Vibecoders Can't Build for Longevity

#22

Post by Ekaros »

reverius42 wrote: post #17
bluefirebrand wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would argue that we are seeing a new emerging group of coders come into the realm of programming and we are judging them at their worst and comparing them to our best. Maybe, but the world seems to be inviting this comparison by acting as though they are going to disrupt and replace the established experienced coders The judgement and pushback is pretty warranted

It's a little more nuanced than this. Claude can't actually replace an experienced coder, but in two steps: 1. Claude makes every experienced coder more productive, 2. The industry decides to hire fewer experienced coders to get the same level of productivity, We have now accomplished putting some large percentage of experienced coders out of work without actually replicating what they do. It is, however, making me a…

I have long questioned the mantra that software needs more investments or even produce positive returns when it gets it. Just look at what many of these big companies with untold resources and investments have actually produced in recent years... Maybe cost optimisation and freeing up capital for something else is the correct move.

Re: Vibecoders Can't Build for Longevity

#23

Post by pu_pe »

The main thrust of the article is that codebases can grow too large to be manageable by LLMs.

> It simply will not fit the context window, and README files are of limited use.

I think many useful applications can be built without reaching current context window limits, which will certainly grow. Besides, there are many tricks that Claude Code and Codex use for getting around this problem, such as compacting and sharding a task across many agents.

Re: Vibecoders Can't Build for Longevity

#24

Post by coldtea »

ting0 wrote: post #10

If you want proof that there's a serious issue with vibe-coding over the long-term, all you need to do is be a Claude Code user and see how for every release they make they either create 5 new bugs, or re-introduce 5 they've already patched 15 times over the last year. The creators of Claude can't even vibe-code well. Claude Code is one of the sloppiest, least stable tools I've ever used. Anthropic has already proudl…

Any specific example? Because in regular use, it's hassle free.

Re: Vibecoders Can't Build for Longevity

#25

Post by tonyedgecombe »

reverius42 wrote: post #16
ting0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that there are a new group of coders that are coming in, which is opening its own new can of worms. However, even experienced coders are still producing slop. The difference between slop and quality seems to be how much you baby the LLM, carefully pay attention to its outputs and its behavior, and stringently test everything produced. The more auto-pilot, the worse the result. The larger the code-base, t…

My mental model of "Claude is a 19 year old intern who never gets tired but is very overconfident" never fails. Would you hand off some of your well defined tasks to your diligent 19 year old intern? Sure! Would you check their work? Of course! Would you hand off all of a major tech company to be entirely built by interns? Of course not!

Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord:

I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.

Re: Vibecoders Can't Build for Longevity

#26

Post by aurareturn »

ting0 wrote: post #10

If you want proof that there's a serious issue with vibe-coding over the long-term, all you need to do is be a Claude Code user and see how for every release they make they either create 5 new bugs, or re-introduce 5 they've already patched 15 times over the last year. The creators of Claude can't even vibe-code well. Claude Code is one of the sloppiest, least stable tools I've ever used. Anthropic has already proudl…

If they want to stop feature development and focus on stability, they can.

But given how few people are working on Claude Code and how many features it keeps on adding (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47495527), I think Claude Code is doing fine.

Re: Vibecoders Can't Build for Longevity

#27

Post by coldtea »

reverius42 wrote: post #19
bluefirebrand wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is, however, making me a bit crazy that the industry's response to (presumed!) increased productivity has been to cut costs rather than invest more broadly and deeply in software It's almost like they don't actually believe (or care if) it is increasing productivity and are just using it as an excuse to cut costs

Still doesn't make sense to me then, even ignoring AI -- why are they cutting costs while making record revenues and profits?

Because they're seeing the writing on the wall - the economic is going to shit.

Their "record revenues and profits" just come from squeezing their customers, already at breaking point, to the max, to just move the needle in the stock market. They know this is not sustainable at all.

Re: Vibecoders Can't Build for Longevity

#28

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Ekaros wrote: post #22
reverius42 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little more nuanced than this. Claude can't actually replace an experienced coder, but in two steps: 1. Claude makes every experienced coder more productive, 2. The industry decides to hire fewer experienced coders to get the same level of productivity, We have now accomplished putting some large percentage of experienced coders out of work without actually replicating what they do. It is, however, making me a…

I have long questioned the mantra that software needs more investments or even produce positive returns when it gets it. Just look at what many of these big companies with untold resources and investments have actually produced in recent years... Maybe cost optimisation and freeing up capital for something else is the correct move.

I like to think of the Facebook iOS app which had 18,000 classes in it. It was so large that it couldn't be loaded into Xcode. Imagine if those programmers had Claude back then, they could have produced ten times as much code.

Re: Vibecoders Can't Build for Longevity

#29

Post by marginalia_nu »

blinkbat wrote: post #3

> If you keep vibe-adding features, and somehow keep getting customers to pay for this thing, what happens once the codebase becomes so complex that an LLM cannot fit it inside its “brain”? you realize this point is well, well beyond what a human can "fit" in their brain as well? you start making shorthands and assumptions about your systems once they get too large.

This is true, but it ignores the fact that claude constantly pushes the code toward more complexity.

Any given problem has a spectrum of solutions, ranging from simple and straightforward, to the most cursed rube goldberg machine you've ever seen. Claude biases toward the latter.

When working on larger code bases, especially poorly factored ones (like the one claude tends to build unsupervised), it's default mode of operation is to build a cursed rube goldberg machine. It doesn't take too long before it starts visibly floundering when you ask it to make changes to the software.

Complexity management is something human software engineers do constantly. Pushing back against complexity and technical debt is the primary concern for a developer working on a brownfield project. Everything you do has to take this into account.

Claude doesn't.

Re: Vibecoders Can't Build for Longevity

#30

Post by rvz »

ting0 wrote: post #10

If you want proof that there's a serious issue with vibe-coding over the long-term, all you need to do is be a Claude Code user and see how for every release they make they either create 5 new bugs, or re-introduce 5 they've already patched 15 times over the last year. The creators of Claude can't even vibe-code well. Claude Code is one of the sloppiest, least stable tools I've ever used. Anthropic has already proudl…

> The creators of Claude can't even vibe-code well. Claude Code is one of the sloppiest, least stable tools I've ever used

Claude Code was not designed on a stable architecture and was completely vibe-coded itself on a weekend so much that the authors can't read the code and are instead more like sales focused than engineering focused other than the Bun authors who are doing the actual work.

If it wasn't for the Bun developers, Claude Code itself would become completely unmaintainable.

Post reply on HN