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Vibe coding kills open source

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Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#291

Post by em-bee »

ipaddr wrote: post #281
em-bee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly this. FOSS was always driven by those who could code and did so driven by their own intrinsic motivation. those people won't disappear. there may be less people because some are more driven by quick results and while in the past they had to code to get there, now they don't, which means they won't discover the joy of coding. but for others coding will become an art and craft like woodworking or other hobbies…

People wrote code in the hopes that others would read it think positive about them and maybe improve things. Those projects are going away

having been involved with FOSS for more than 30 years, i never came across that sentiment. not that it didn't exist, but i'd guess it is a small minority. people who write code to feel good about themselves likely don't make good project leaders anyways. they won't be missed.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#292

Post by dns_snek »

fragmede wrote: post #286
dns_snek wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long will this heavily subsidized price of $200/month last? Do you really think these companies are going to let you pocket all the surplus value forever? We all know that the music is going to stop eventually and that the landscape after that is going to look very different. Subsidies will stop and investors will want their trillions in returns. Talking about "democratization" while everyone is just using other…

So as soon as all software has been written that can be written, they'll jack up the prices? After that comes to pass, I'm willing to pay them a premium on having AI write additional software.

> So as soon as all software has been written that can be written,

I'm not sure where you got this from. They'll jack up the prices at some undetermined time in the future once the weight of reality overpowers the manic hype we've been experiencing for the past few years.

My expectation is that this will start unfolding within the next 5 years and people will start looking back to today as the golden age of AI where everything was cheap, exciting, and ad-free.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#293

Post by generallyjosh »

Bishonen88 wrote: post #179
anticorporate wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the enormous value in apps being standardized and opinionated. Standardized means that in addition to documentation, the whole internet is available to help you. Opinionated means as a user of an app in a new domain, you don't have to make a million decisions about how something should work to just get started. Sure, there will be more personalized apps for those who have a lot of expertise in…

Expertise won't be needed (it already isn't). One can create copies of apps with vague descriptions referencing those big apps: "Create a copy of xyz. It needs to look and behave similarly. I want these features ... And on top of that ...". Millions decisions not needed. A handful of vague descriptions of what one wants is all it takes today. I think claude and co. can even take in screenshots. Documentation won't be…

IMO, documentation becomes much more important if we're planning to hand off coding to the LLMs

You can ask it about the code, sure, and it'll try to tell you how it works. But, what if there's a bug in the code? Maybe the LLM will guess at how it was supposed to work, or maybe it'll start making stuff up to justify the bug's existence (it's actually a hidden feature!)

The docs say how the code should work. For an LLM that has to go relearn everything about your code base every time you invoke it, that's vitally important

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#294

Post by positron26 »

mr_spothawk wrote: post #77
positron26 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without real finance model innovation, what returns?

I upvoted your comment. Also, it's a scarcity mindset. I don't agree that sibling to my comment: "make money by getting papers cited". it is not a long-term solution, much as Ad revenue is broken model for free software, also. I'm hopeful that we see some vibe-coders get some products out that make money, and then pay to support the system they rely on for creating/maintaining their code. Not sure what else to hope f…

Any "exposure" economy has real money somewhere else turning the wheel. If that money isn't sensitive to healthy signal, neither is the downstream. Well-wishers are just alternative perpetual motion machine enthusiasts.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#295

Post by LtWorf »

jayd16 wrote: post #177
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?

Why use a battle tested, secure, library that you know solves your problem when you can burden your project with custom code you need to maintain?

Nah the AI will maintain it!

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#296

Post by ipaddr »

em-bee wrote: post #291
ipaddr wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People wrote code in the hopes that others would read it think positive about them and maybe improve things. Those projects are going away

having been involved with FOSS for more than 30 years, i never came across that sentiment. not that it didn't exist, but i'd guess it is a small minority. people who write code to feel good about themselves likely don't make good project leaders anyways. they won't be missed.

People write code for a variety of reasons but the ones who stop coding and spend time trying to publicize their project generally want people's attention. They find pleasure in sharing.

People will still write code for a variety of reasons but why bother sharing if no one is listening.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#297

Post by phendrenad2 »

"kills" is a strong word. The phenomenon of single-purpose self-service apps is not to be ignored, and we'll likely see people not only do that, but create apps for friends and family, leading to everyone having an "app guy" who makes apps for them, the same way many people have a "car guy" who can diagnose car problems before they need to take it to the shop,.. but open-source still has a place in high-complexity products where a very small number of people have the requisite knowledge to vibe-code it. E.G. don't expect people to be vibe-coding their own Unix kernels any time soon!

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#298

Post by theshrike79 »

anticorporate wrote: post #66
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?

I think you're missing the enormous value in apps being standardized and opinionated. Standardized means that in addition to documentation, the whole internet is available to help you. Opinionated means as a user of an app in a new domain, you don't have to make a million decisions about how something should work to just get started. Sure, there will be more personalized apps for those who have a lot of expertise in…

SAP is THE MOST standardised "app" in the world.

It's so standard that the usual paradigm is that your company will adapt itself to the way SAP works, not the other way around. Massive gigantic corporations have tried to adapt SAP and failed. IIRC Lidl had a very expensive high-profile failure in this.

Being standardised isn't always a good thing.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#299

Post by theshrike79 »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #277
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?

You could already pay Indians to make you software if you wanted poorly made software. Poorly making it with AI isn’t that big an improvement. You go to the shed because you know the hammer has undergone extensive testing and won’t immediately be hacked, costing you hundreds of millions.

It is.

Getting poor software made by Indians is a cycle that takes months.

With AI you get the first poor version within hours. Then you can iterate. In a week of hourly iteration you'll most likely have something usable.

The Indians are still having meetings about when to have meetings and you can see from the logs they haven't accessed any of the documentation you gave them for the issue. Billing is on point though.

Re: Vibe coding kills open source

#300

Post by theshrike79 »

tomaytotomato wrote: post #133
epolanski wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One major part of successful LLM-assisted coding is to not focus on code vomiting but scaffolding. Document, document, document: your architecture, best practices, preferences (both about code and how you want to work with the LLM and how do you expect it to behave it). It is time consuming, but it's the only way you can get it to assist you semi-successfully. Also try to understand that LLM's biggest power for a dev…

I agree to an extent My project is quite well documented and I created a Prompt a while back along with some mermaid diagrams https://github.com/tomaytotomato/location4j/tree/master/docs I can't remember the exact prompt I gave to the LLM but I gave it a Github issue ticket and description. After several iterations it fixed the issue, but my unit tests failed in other areas. I decided to abort it because I think my o…

Just looking at PROMPT.md:

The role thing doesn't work anymore ("You are a..."), it's just fanfiction.

Also adding MUST NOT just pollutes the context, it's the "don't think of a pink elephant" but for LLMs

It's enough to say "Use Java 21+", no need to add a negative of "don't use below 21"

And this is just weird: "MUST NOT Change the license from MIT" - did an agent change the license in your code or what prompted you to add this?

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