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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

#251

Post by bit-anarchist »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #184
kypro wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument against this is that human coders are also non-deterministic, so does it really matter if it's a human or an AI agent producing the code – assuming the AI agent is capable of producing human-quality code or better? I agree it's not a layer of abstraction in the traditional sense though. AI isn't an abstraction of existing code, it's a new way to produce code. It's an "abstraction layer" in the same way a…

> The argument against this is that human coders are also non-deterministic, so does it really matter if it's a human or an AI agent producing the code Actually yes, because Humans can be held accountable for the code they produce Holding humans accountable for code that LLMs produce would be entirely unreasonable And no, shifting the full burden of responsibility to the human reviewing the LLM output is not reasonab…

> Holding humans accountable for code that LLMs produce would be entirely unreasonable

Why? LLMs have no will nor agency of their own, they can only generate code when triggered. This means that either nature triggered them, or people did. So there isn't a need to shift burdens around, it's already on the user, or, depending on the case, whoever forced such user to use LLMs.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#252

Post by zozbot234 »

azan_ wrote: post #91
slopinthebag wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, just get hundreds of billions of dollars in investments to build a leading product, and then use your massive legal team to force the usage of your highly subsidised and marketed subscription plan through your vibe coded software. This is excellent evidence that code doesn't matter.

> Yes, just get hundreds of billions of dollars in investments to build a leading product, and then use your massive legal team to force the usage of your highly subsidised and marketed subscription plan through your vibe coded software. What? Your comment makes absolutely zero sense. Legal team forces people to use Claude Code?

Claude Code is the only coding harness you're allowed to use with fixed-price subscriptions as opposed to PAYGO API access. There's also rumors that the subscriptions are heavily subsidized compared to API, or at least cross-subsidized to the effect that the heaviest users of Claude Code (controlling for subscription level) end up paying vastly lower unit prices for their token use. These restrictions are enforced legally.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#253

Post by bccdee »

hollowcelery wrote: post #152
tombert wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that will be true with AI as well. No accounting for taste, but part of makes code hard for me to reason about is when it has lots of combinatorial complexity, where the amount of states that can happen makes it difficult to know all the possible good and bad states that your program can be in. Combinatorial complexity is something that objectively can be expensive for any form of computer, be it a hu…

There are a number of things that make code hard to reason about for humans, and combinatorial complexity is just one of them. Another one is, say, size of working memory, or having to navigate across a large number of files to understand a piece of logic. These two examples are not necessarily expensive for computers. I don't entirely disagree that there is code that's objectively difficult to work with, but I suspe…

I wouldn't expect so. These machines have been trained on natural language, after all. They see the world through an anthropomorphic lens. IME & from what I've heard, they struggle with inexpressive code in much the same way humans do.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#254

Post by VoidWarranty »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #205
tayo42 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those high end restaurants are more like art and exploration of food then something practical like code. The only similarity is maybe research in academia. There's not real industry uses of code that's like art.

I used the extreme of the spectrum, I can’t imagine you’re arguing that food is binary good / bad? There’s a litany of food options and quality, matching different business models of convenience and experience. Research in academia seems less appropriate because that’s famously not really a business model, except maybe in the extractive sense

Sometimes I think we're being argued against by LLMs. Critique of your example while missing the entire point of it.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#255

Post by rokob »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #141
andrenotgiant wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s also possible to sell chairs that are uncomfortable and food that tastes terrible. Yet somehow we still have carpenters and chefs; Herman Miller and The French Laundry. Some business models will require “good” code, and some won’t. That’s how it is right now as well. But pretending that all business models will no longer require “good” code is like pretending that Michelin should’ve retired its list after the mi…

Are you saying Herman Miller chairs are uncomfortable?

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#256

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

It’s so strange. I think there’s a few different groups:

- Shills or people with a financial incentive

- Software devs that either never really liked the craft to begin with or who have become jaded over time and are kind of sick of it.

- New people that are actually experiencing real, maybe over-excitement about being able to build stuff for the first time.

Forgetting the first group as that one is obvious.

I’ve encountered a heap of group 2. They’re the ones sick of learning new things, for whatever reason. Software work has become a grind for them and vibe coding is actually a relief.

Group 3 I think are mostly the non-coders who are genuinely feeling that rush of being able to will their ideas into existence on a computer. I think AI-assisted coding could actually be a great on-ramp here and we should be careful not to shit on them for it.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#257

Post by ontouchstart »

Vibe coding is like building castles in a sandbox, it is fun but nobody would live in them.

Once you have learned enough from playing with sand castles, you can start over to build real castles with real bricks (and steel if you want to build skyscraper). Then it is your responsibility to make sure that they would not collapse when people move it.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#258

Post by xienze »

tombert wrote: post #88
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.

I suspect if people saw the handwritten code of many, many, many products that they used every day they would be shocked. I've worked at BigCos and startups, and a lot of the terrible code that makes it to production was shocking when I first started. This isn't a dig at anyone, I've certainly shipped my share of bad code as well. Deadlines, despite my wishes sometimes, continue to exist. Sometimes you have to ship a…

> I suspect if people saw the handwritten code of many, many, many products that they used every day they would be shocked.

Absolutely. The difference is that the amount of bad code that could be generated had an upper limit on it — how fast a human can type it out. With LLMs bad code can be shat out at warp speed.

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#259

Post by simonw »

How credible are the claims that the Claude Code source code is bad?

AI naysayers are heavily incentivized to find fault with it, but in my experience it's pretty rare to see a codebase of that size where it's not easy to pick out "bad code" examples.

Are there any relatively neutral parties who've evaluated the code and found it to be obviously junk?

Re: The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok

#260

Post by larodi »

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 is amazing how much malice did author put into proving the world is stupid, and only few still stand guard of reason.
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