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

Vibe coding kills open source

arxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 304 posts

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#201

Post by jvanderbot »

WarmWash wrote: post #29

Small bespoke personalized on the spot apps are the future with LLMs. The future will absolutely not be "How things are today + LLMs" The paradigm now for software is "build a tool shed/garage/barn/warehouse full of as much capability for as many uses possible" but when LLMs can build you a custom(!) hammer or saw in a few minutes, why go to the shed?

From what - OS libraires only? Assembly?

The danger is not "Nobody uses OSS".

The danger is "building software becomes exponentially more difficult without a commons to build from".

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#202

Post by tracker1 »

echelon wrote: post #43
nicoburns wrote: post #37

Something I've noticed is that AI code generation makes it easier/faster to generate code while shifting more work of the work of keeping code correct and maintainable to the code review stage. That can be highly problematic for open source projects that are typically already bottlenecked by maintainer review bandwidth. It can be mitigated by PR submitters doing a review and edit pass prior to submitting a PR. But a…

The maintainers can now do all the work themselves. With the time they save using AI, they can get much more work done. So much that having other engineers learn the codebase is probably not worth it anymore. Large scale software systems can be maintained by one or two folks now. Edit: I'm not going to get rate limited replying to everyone, so I'll just link another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46765…

No, because proper QA/QC will be the bottleneck.... AI is ill-suited to test for fit/use. I built an ANSi terminal with AI assist (rust/wasm/canvas)... it literally took longer to get the scrollback feature working with keyboard and mousewheel interactions than it took to get the basic rendering correct. And there are still a few bugs in it.

In the end, you should not just skip QA/QC and fitness testing. Many things can fit a technical spec and still be absolutely horrible. With AI assisted developmnet, imo it's that much more important to get the UX right. I don't want 10x the apps if they're all half-implemented garbage that look like garbage are hard to use and just painful to install, maintain and use.

Library creation still has a place here... and so far, getting AI code assistants to actually understand and use a given library that may be less popular has been at the very least, interresting.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#203

Post by romanows »

pmarreck wrote: post #115

Related but not sure how much attention it's getting: GPL is a dead man walking since you can have any LLM cleanroom a new implementation in a new language from a public spec with verifiable "never looked at the original source" and it can be more permissively-licensed however you wish (MIT, BSD etc). case in point, check out my current deps on the project I'm currently working on with LLM assist: https://github.com/…

As long as you hold the copyright to your "validate" project, you can dual license it. So can release it under the (A)GPL and also use it in your closed-source commercial project. I think you would need to make contributors sign a contributor license agreement (CLA) though, to continue using their contributions to "validate" in your closed-source offering.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#204

Post by progx »

Sevii wrote: post #153

Vibecoding is great for open source. Open source is already dominated by strong solo programmers like antirez, linus, etc. People with very strong motivations to create software they see as necessary. Vibecoding makes creating open source projects easier. It makes it easier to get from an idea to "Hey guys check this out!" The only downside to open source is the fly by PRs vibecoding enables which are currently drain…

And make one PR after another, i can see how happy Linus & Co. would be of all the garbage features ;-)

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#205

Post by 9dev »

ipaddr wrote: post #149
9dev wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I don't believe that. Smartphones have amazing cameras, and we still have photographers. There are CNC saws and mills that will ship you your perfectly realised CAD prints, yet there are still carpenters and a vibrant community of people making their own furniture. These examples go on and on. Without any kind of offence implied: As maintainer of a few open source projects, I'm happy if it stops being an employab…

Photographers use cameras so increasing cameras makes more photographers. CNC saws use to take pencil draws as input and now they can handle files. People always made handmade furniture while CNCs existed. Open source projects around a need will continue. Things like youtube downloader fills a need. But many projects were showing off what you as a developer can write to impress a community. Those are dead. Projects t…

> Open source projects around a need will continue. Things like youtube downloader fills a need.

Good! We like things filling a need.

> But many projects were showing off what you as a developer can write to impress a community. Those are dead.

Good! The world doesn't need more vanity.

> Projects that showcased new coding styles or ways to do things are dead.

That I doubt. People who want to share ideas for the sake of discussing these on an intellectual level will absolutely continue to do so. An LLM doesn't help in any way in this domain.

> Faang open source employment was never a thing. Faang filtered by leetcode, referrals, clout and h1 visas.

Replace FAANG with SMB companies, then. The point is that people were only doing open source as a means to bolster their CV. There is nothing lost to the open source community as a whole if these people leave. Yes, the amount of contributions and projects will shrink. I'm arguing that that's okay: The vital pieces that need to be maintained will be maintained by companies that are forced to pay for that maintenance, and people who enjoy making and participating in open source software development will continue to do so.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#206

Post by bloomca »

echelon wrote: post #169
joks wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The same thing that happened to illustration and art is happening here" What are you talking about? Illustrators and artists are not being replaced by AI or required to use AI to "keep up" in the vast majority of environments. > "I don't get the sour opinions." The reasoning for folks' "sour opinions" has been very well-documented, especially here on HN. This comment reads like people don't like AI because they th…

> What are you talking about? Illustrators and artists are not being replaced by AI or required to use AI to "keep up" in the vast majority of environments. I don't know what jobs have been impacted yet, but there will likely be pressure for all content creators and knowledge workers to use the tools to get more work done. We'll probably start seeing this in software development this year. The tools finally feel read…

> I don't know what jobs have been impacted yet, but there will likely be pressure for all content creators and knowledge workers to use the tools to get more work done.

You claimed that it already happened to illustrators and artists, and while I am sure they use it one way or another, I don't think it transformed the industry. Now, I am not saying that it won't amount to anything in software, I just don't think it is ready as of right now outside of greenfield projects, mostly because the scope is limited.

I am pretty positive that at some point we'll have a tool which will automate the generation -> code review -> fixing (multiple loops) -> releasing without people. Currently people are the bottleneck and imo a better way is to exclude people completely outside of initial problem statement and accepting the result. Otherwise it is just too janky, that 10x comes with a huge asterisk that can unironically slow you down after all said and done.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#207

Post by tracker1 »

Sevii wrote: post #153

Vibecoding is great for open source. Open source is already dominated by strong solo programmers like antirez, linus, etc. People with very strong motivations to create software they see as necessary. Vibecoding makes creating open source projects easier. It makes it easier to get from an idea to "Hey guys check this out!" The only downside to open source is the fly by PRs vibecoding enables which are currently drain…

I think the solution to the latter is simply to maintain high standards in terms of structure and organization. I've always been a fan of KISS should override any other non-requirement of software. Any my non-requirement, I mean anything that is just subjective. Don't create complexity you don't actually need, or that doesn't make an outsized contribution to making other areas of the code easier to reason with.

Sometimes having dozens of one-off scripts is easier/simpler than trying to create the uber-flexibly one tool does all solution.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#208

Post by ozten »

kode-targz wrote: post #166
ozten wrote: post #162

Generative AI is a major setback to OSS licensing. I've been on projects where we needed to do a "cleanroom" implementation and vet the team has never viewed the source code of competing products. Now in the gen AI era, coding agents are IP laundering machines. They are trained on OSS code, but the nuances of the original licenses are lost. On the whole, I think it is a net gain for civilization, but if we zoom into…

It could be a net gain for civilization if it stayed open, decentralized and off the hands of private companies, but that's not at all the case. Only tecchies care or even know about open models

Regardless of open or closed models, the reason it is a net gain is that the cost of software production is collapsing and will trend towards zero.

Example: We can achieve more climate solutions (and faster) thanks to technological acceleration.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#209

Post by tracker1 »

ozten wrote: post #162

Generative AI is a major setback to OSS licensing. I've been on projects where we needed to do a "cleanroom" implementation and vet the team has never viewed the source code of competing products. Now in the gen AI era, coding agents are IP laundering machines. They are trained on OSS code, but the nuances of the original licenses are lost. On the whole, I think it is a net gain for civilization, but if we zoom into…

Probably fair... would also be interesting to try to limit the use of say GPL code to maintaining interoperability, not duplication of internal methods, etc. I also think that the amount of MIT/ISC/BSD, etc. licensed code, with whatever MS and other commercial entities have contributed for this use is probably enough to not be a significant difference to model quality though.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#210

Post by pepperball »

kibwen wrote: post #92
croes wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>LLMs democratise access to coding Vibe coders don't code, they let code. So LLMs democratise access to coders.

Closed-source models aren't "democratizing" access to anything. If you wanted to hire a contractor to write some code for you, that's always been possible.

[dead]
Post reply on HN