Will vibe coding end like the maker movement?

> This book was a big deal, promised it ("Makers, the next industrial revolution") https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/makers-chris-anderson/11109...

Interestingly, I am not aware that this book was really popular or well-known in Germany (I honestly hear about this specific book for the first time, though I am aware that some marketers (who in my opinion did not really understand the Maker scene or 3D printing) made such claims).

Instead, at that time, in Germany nerds were getting excited about understanding how to build 3D printers (in particular partially self-replicating ones (RepRap)) and how 3D printing

- could be used to make yourself much more independent of the discretion of part manufacturers (i.e. some part is broken? Use a CAD system to re-design it and 3D-print your re-design),

- makes you capable of building stuff in small scale "that should exist", but no manufacturer is producing,

- enables part designs that are (nearly) impossible to manufacture using any other existing technology, and thus basically enables you to completely reimagine and improve how nearly every produced part that you see around you is designed,

- ...

I would say that the mentioned nerd visions of this time have at least partially been implemented and/or are on a good way towards this goal. It's just that the practical implementations did not come with a spectacular change in the overarching mindet of society, but rather are highly important, but not (necessarily) revolutionary changes in the lifes of people who want these changes to be part of their life.

I'm a member of a local maker space that has been around a while and it has changed so much over the years in response to what people are asking for and what gets used.

I don't know if it's a local trend or what but the last 5-7 years the most in demand thing by far are sewing machines, knitting machines, and sergers. They ended up completely scrapping the woodworking area to fit a digital jacquard loom and that thing is booked around the clock, you have to plan 4-5 weeks in advance to get a session. Jeweler's bench is similarly busy.

In contrast the soldering and electronics workstations get regular use but I can usually just walk in and get a spot without scheduling or waiting much, which is almost never the case with the fabric stuff.

> No, a non-engineer can't just spin up the next great app. Even with the newest models and a great prompting/testing system, I don't think you can just spit out high quality, maintainable, reliable code

I think most engineers vastly overestimate how important high quality, maintainable, reliable code is to product success. Yes, you need an experienced engineer to steer Claude into making good high-quality code. But your customer doesn't see your code, they don't see how many servers you need or how often an on-call engineer is woken up. They just see how well the app meets their needs

I predict we will see a lot of domain experts without engineering background spin up incredibly successful apps. Just like the Tea app many of them will crash and burn from poor engineering. But there will also be enough people who've grown wise to this and after reaching some success with their app spend the resources to have others mitigate all the unknown-to-them issues

The Maker Movement didn’t die, it evolved. Look at STEAM and assistive technology for examples. The failure in monetization of Tech Shops were heartbreaking, but next-generation manufacturing techniques have changed the concept of a mass-produced “one size fits all” product.

I disagree with your framing cynicism as an "agenda". For the record, I agree that the maker movement hasn't actually ended, and most of your points are correct; however, the idea of LLMs teaching Electronics worries me about as much as people using LLMs to learn Chemistry.

A little while ago I had to dissuade someone from learning Chemistry via an LLM, because the advice that they had been given by the LLM would have very literally either blown up the glassware, throwing molten chemicals all over their clothing, or killed them when they tried to taste whatever they were trying to synthesize. There was no consideration of safety protocol, PPE, proper glassware, or correctly dealing with chemical reactions, and nary a mention of a fucking fume hood. NileRed and a few other chemistry youtubers have utterly woeful approaches to laboratory safety (NileRed specifically I have a chip on my shoulder about — I've seen him practice bad lab work on a number of occasions and violate many of the common safety practices from e.g. Vogel's), but even then they do still take precautions! Let it not be forgotten that safety practices are born through bloodshed. Now we have a whole new wave of people who are excited to learn, and that's great, but one stray hallucination will kill them. I'm sure that the LLM will be more than happy to write an "Oh I'm sorry, it's my bad that I forgot to tell you to double glove when handling organic mercury!" but by then it is too late.

The idea of someone learning, say, House DIY from an LLM and then sawing through the joists or rewiring their electronics is utterly terrifying to me, quite frankly. Likewise, the idea of someone following an LLM's instructions and then blowing themselves up in a shower of capacitors or chemical glassware is also utterly terrifying to me.

Yes, you could do all these things before. But at least the most commonly available learning materials to you were trustworthy and written by experts!