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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?

#251

Post by eibrahim »

The maker movement comparison is interesting but I think it breaks down in one key way: the marginal cost of software distribution is basically zero. 3D printing still requires physical materials and shipping. Vibe coded apps can reach users instantly if there's a discovery mechanism.

The real parallel might be the early web era where anyone could make a website but finding them required Yahoo directories and later Google. Right now vibe coded apps have the same discovery problem - they exist but there's no effective way to find or evaluate them.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#252

Post by rcxdude »

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 think volume and cost was never really the issue. Even if 3D printing something was 3x the cost it could justify itself just by the sheer amount of overhead it can otherwise remove. Ultimately what limits 3D printing is what you can make with it, and the fact that it doesn't remove assembly as a manufacturing step. If you could 3D print full products then I think the promised revolution would have happened. (As it stands 3D printing has already had a massive impact on manufacturing. More stuff than you would think is 3D printed now, it's just not complete consumer items)

(Not to mention, it's only in the last few years where consumer-accessible 3D printers are more than hobbyist grade that required a huge amount of tinkering to actually work properly)

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#253

Post by strken »

MrDarcy wrote: post #166
nineteen999 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't even have to offshore for lots of bad code to be written. Looks at the scores of Ycombinator startups that wrote a shitload of awful code and failed. Good ideas, pretty websites, but not a lot of substance under the hood. The VC gathering aspect and online kudos was way more important to them than actually producing good code and a reliable product that would stand the test of time. Pretty much the most det…

> Looks at the scores of Ycombinator startups that wrote a shitload of awful code and failed. This can also be restated as, look at all the startups that wrote a shitload of awful code and succeeded. That’s an indicator code quality doesn’t matter at macro scales. We already knew this though even if we didn’t explicitly say it. It’s more about organization, coordination, and execution than code.

This seems like it's reading too much into things. I'm sure driving an ambulance slower vs faster doesn't make a difference to survival in most cases, but on the margins it absolutely does.

Startups are also quite different from ambulances; surviving and minimising patient harm isn't the most important thing for a startup. Instead, it's building a profitable and valuable business. You're not just worrying about the margins, you're also hoping to squeeze out every bit of growth you can.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#254

Post by appellations »

bob1029 wrote: post #198
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.

The problem wouldn’t be your competitors cribbing your ideas, it would be more like letting anyone with a bone to pick audit you for minor compliance violations, customers relying on internal implementation details or judging you unfairly for legacy horrors, or devs getting self conscious about their sloppy 2am fix and prolonging an outage for rational public image/ego reasons

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#255

Post by cobolexpert »

the_af wrote: post #105
Aurornis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you didn't catch it, this is a joke calling out the comment above it for using a couple obvious LLM-isms. The comment above may have been a joke, too. It's hard to tell any more.

> It's hard to tell any more. Wait, I think I have the answer! "You're in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling toward you. You reach down and flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why…

What do you mean I'm not helping?

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#256

Post by keybored »

stavros wrote: post #242
keybored wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I make visualizations by watching TV every day. My visual cortex just has a constant stream of making visualizations all day. All these maker types dropping that differentiator immediately in the name of pragmatism.

Yeah whatever, I'm not going to let you gatekeep my enjoyment. What's the last thing you made?

I’ve never written “maker” in my bio. What are you trying to prove?

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#257

Post by incognito124 »

ElijahLynn wrote: post #246
nicetryguy wrote: post #241

Ok, i just generally disagree with the premise. Why does it have to be "100% vibe coded" or "0% vibe coded"? There is a very happy medium that is getting ignored here. As a coder with various language experiences, i can just get like a good kick and a template with Claude and continue in any language i want and have the LLM do the redundant parts. As someone with some soldering experience, i could have an LLM cook up…

LLMs = The Age of the Builder Never has it been more exciting to be a builder (software)! So much momentum and so little getting blocked. I am learning faster than ever even with LLMs doing so much of the heavy lifting. It is so fast to iterate and just MAKE STUFF!!!

I wonder if you'll remember next year what you're building today. My guess is: no, you're not actually learning or remembering anything you build

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#258

Post by stavros »

keybored wrote: post #256
stavros wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah whatever, I'm not going to let you gatekeep my enjoyment. What's the last thing you made?

I’ve never written “maker” in my bio. What are you trying to prove?

That your opinion on who's a "real maker" and who isn't is irrelevant.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#259

Post by ytoawwhra92 »

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…

Nah.

There are corners of the industry where people still write ASM by hand when necessary, but for the vast, vast majority it's neither necessary (because compilers are great) or worthwhile (because it's so time consuming).

Most code is written in high-level, interpreted languages with no particular attention paid to its performance characteristics. Despite the frustration of those of us who know better, businesses and users seem to choose velocity over quality pretty consistently.

LLM output is already good enough to produce working software that meets the stated requirements. The tooling used to work with them is improving rapidly. I think we're heading towards a world where actually inspecting and understanding the code is unusual (like looking at JVM/Python bytecode is today).

Future liabilities? Not any more than we're currently producing, but produced faster.

Re: Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

#260

Post by slopinthebag »

stavros wrote: post #74

I don't know about anyone else, but since vibe coding, I'm making more things than I've ever made before. Just a constant stream of making, all day. Couldn't be happier. I make things because I want to see them exist, not because it was hard.

Usually people would try to become rich so they could pay others to make stuff for them, now you can just spend a moderate amount of money having an LLM make it for you.
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