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Ask HN: Client took over development by vibe coding. What to do?

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Re: Ask HN: Client took over development by vibe coding. What to do?

#52

I enjoyed reading this post, because it's a great little case study. A Large complicated project, a senior dev, and a nieve client. It's their project so they can push all the code they want, but they're responsible for it too. I'd be curious to learn of any updates.

Great to hear this, it is reassuring I am not the only one currently with a similar case, and I will try to give an update when there are significant developments.

Re: Ask HN: Client took over development by vibe coding. What to do?

#53

Prepare to make absolute bank on maintenance charges when they can't debug what they built? That's what I'd be thinking! That aside, there's an awful lot of unprofessional comments in this thread. Guys, this is just business: people are paying you money for your talent. Sometimes you just have to wallow in the muck, but at least you're paid to do it.

They will definitely not be able to debug what they built at a certain point. I think their strategy will be to delete parts of the application, and rebuild them, but this will not be sustainable. This comment (and similar ones) helped me to detach from the project's quality and code, and see the business opportunities that may arise in the near future. I think there will be a lot of maintenance, and someone has to make sure the infrastructure and integrations with other systems and platforms won't collapse.

Re: Ask HN: Client took over development by vibe coding. What to do?

#54
post #16

Here's one way to approach this: Imagine you work for a giant company where humans would push 10k lines of code per week. In a codebase like that there's no expectation that you'd understand everything. However, there is an expectation that teams contributing code will "own" it. So if the client is contributing you should ask them if they are okay for long term maintenance and fixes of new code they are adding. If no…

This is likely the best answer so far. It would be the same as if they had subcontracted some software factory where many junior devs produced and shipped low quality code that “works”.
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