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Vibe code is legacy code

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Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#421

Post by gowld »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #67

A story about a non-technical friend: friend vibe coded a SaaS last year and started generating revenue with almost no marketing; all word of mouth and inbound in a niche industry. Used Replit and Supabase to build the thing; I am still really impressed by what he was able to do given how complex the app ended up becoming as he interacted with customers. What I think happened: there are two incumbents in this space t…

Seems fair. If the vendor doesn't want to pay for quality software, the customers shouldn't have to pay for bad software.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#422

Post by gowld »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #389
doesnt_know wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact your friend is suffering no consequences and is able to just carry on is exactly what is wrong with this industry. In a perfect world the creation of software would have been locked down like other engineering fields, with developers and companies suffering legal consequences for exposing customer information.

In our imperfect world, by the time the government could get together a reasonable certification process the content you're tested on would be out of date. Maybe when the industry is older it'll change slow enough to do that, but I don't think that'll happen so long as there's so much money aimed at disrupting everything and monetising the disruption. Were going in circles far too fast to have licensure that hinges o…

That's what tort law is for. It leaves the details to the experts, and judges based on general notions of intent, negligence, and harm caused. The threat of financial ruin should incentivize against selling malware.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#423

Post by gowld »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #344
rainonmoon wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not a viable business, it’s a walking liability. Besides which, why would anyone trust your friend (as an investor or customer) ever again when they’ve shown such profound disregard for user data and their IP? If your metric of success is “I have no idea what I’m doing and still made money from it” your friend would have a better time starting a podcast.

On the contrary, he's solving a real business need for these small businesses at a fraction of the cost with a product that's easier to use and with better features. The customers know there was a hack because the hacker emailed them (I had a test account and received the same email). Yet he's had no churn because there's so much value being delivered. I think there's something to be said for that.

In a few months, his customers will be vibe-coding that app for themselves.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#424

Post by sysmax »

stevage wrote: post #256
sysmax wrote: post #241

There's a pretty good sweet spot in between vibe coding and manual coding. You still think out all the classes, algorithms, complexities in your head, but then instead of writing code by hand, use short prompts like "encapsulate X and Y in a nested class + create a dictionary where key is A+B". This saves a ton of repetitive manual work, while the results are pretty indistinguishable from doing all the legwork yourse…

Do you do anything special to get it follow your preferred style?

I use hierarchical trees of guidelines (just markdown sections) that are attached to every prompt. It's somewhat wasteful in terms of token, but works well. If AI is not creating a new wrapper, it will just ignore the "instructions for creating new wrappers" section.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#425

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

doesnt_know wrote: post #119
CharlieDigital wrote: post #67

A story about a non-technical friend: friend vibe coded a SaaS last year and started generating revenue with almost no marketing; all word of mouth and inbound in a niche industry. Used Replit and Supabase to build the thing; I am still really impressed by what he was able to do given how complex the app ended up becoming as he interacted with customers. What I think happened: there are two incumbents in this space t…

The fact your friend is suffering no consequences and is able to just carry on is exactly what is wrong with this industry. In a perfect world the creation of software would have been locked down like other engineering fields, with developers and companies suffering legal consequences for exposing customer information.

GDPR fines can accomplish this.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#426

Post by GreenWatermelon »

the_af wrote: post #150
CharlieDigital wrote: post #67

A story about a non-technical friend: friend vibe coded a SaaS last year and started generating revenue with almost no marketing; all word of mouth and inbound in a niche industry. Used Replit and Supabase to build the thing; I am still really impressed by what he was able to do given how complex the app ended up becoming as he interacted with customers. What I think happened: there are two incumbents in this space t…

What he built was, almost by definition, a prototype. The problem is that, as it often happens, the prototype was then deployed to production. In this case, it was partly the fault of your non-technical friend who didn't know better, but software engineering history shows us this sometimes happens because of customer/boss pressure. So it's often the case prototypes designed to prove feasibility or to demo to customer…

Forever, until our cursed profession gets an official licensing body like other real Engineering professions. A Civil Enginnee can't sign on a prototype bridge design that then gets built and opened to the public, because any problem means potential jail time and possibly loss of licence.

There should be legal consequences for treating people's data with reckless abandon. It's normal for restaurants to be inspected. Commercial apps should also be inspected by independent bodies and fines must be paid if serious negligence is found. Imagine finding out that your favorite restaurant had a rat infestation on their storage room for a year.

And of someone gets food poisoning because the restaurant used expired ingredients, it gets heavily fined and possibly shuttered. This should also happen with software. If your root AWS user key is leaked in your frontend, your service deserves to be shuttered.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#427

Post by CharlieDigital »

gowld wrote: post #423
CharlieDigital wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, he's solving a real business need for these small businesses at a fraction of the cost with a product that's easier to use and with better features. The customers know there was a hack because the hacker emailed them (I had a test account and received the same email). Yet he's had no churn because there's so much value being delivered. I think there's something to be said for that.

In a few months, his customers will be vibe-coding that app for themselves.

His early assessment when I talked to him abut this was "it's the end of SaaS".

But the reality is that the users are first and foremost concerned with their day-to-day business. Just because you can do X doesn't mean you will do it.

It's also true that there still remains some foundational knowledge required like knowing what a database is, what React is, how to prompt. There's a big generational divide on this so I do not think we are the point (yet) where "anyone" can do it. There is still a need to have some background knowledge and some technical friends that can guide you.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#428

Post by CharlieDigital »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #94
starkparker wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Was it worth it? Yes, it is terrible, shoddy, insecure code, but he proved out a viable business with just a few hundred dollars of investment. How much is it costing him to hire someone to reimplement his idea correctly?

If he manages to do it, he'll know it's a business with legs and how much people will pay which is pretty invaluable knowledge

Lots of people on HN seem to have a very broken idea of how startups and entrepreneurship works.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#429

Post by parliament32 »

pydry wrote: post #381
bartread wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 100% this. Anyone who's run a website or web app for any length of time in recent years and makes a habit of inspecting their logs will quickly realise that they're being scanned by bots looking for vulnerabilities multiple, or even many, times per day. The search for vulnerabilities is entirely automated and will pick up any domain that has a website or web app attached to it. One those vulnerabilities are foun…

>One those vulnerabilities are found, the hackers will pounce ...and work to exploit your code to their own benefit. They don't do this just so that they can refund your customers.

Often it's just done for reputation. "We got ahold of their stripe key and refunded everything lol" is hilarious and absolutely on-brand.

Re: Vibe code is legacy code

#430

Post by CharlieDigital »

NoGravitas wrote: post #418
CharlieDigital wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The customers know he was hacked because the hacker sent an email to everyone on the customer list. Yet none of the customers left and he's only grown the customer base since then. I think that tells you something: they have a real, painful, and costly problem to solve that he solves for them to a T. > ...normie-coded startups Having been in the startup space for the last 20 years spanning bootstrapped companies to s…

> I've learned that there's only one thing that matters: solving valuable problems and getting that in front of customers. To quote another recent article: That is to say, it turns out that the core competency of smiling and promising people things that you can't actually deliver is highly transferable.

He's already delivery it and they already see the value in it though?
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