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An AI Vibe Coding Horror Story

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Re: An AI Vibe Coding Horror Story

#51

Post by consumer451 »

sigseg1v wrote: post #43
consumer451 wrote: post #13

What would a responsible on-boarding flow for all of these tools look like? > Welcome to VibeToolX. > By pressing Confirm you accept all responsibility for user data stewardship as regulated in every country where your users reside. Would that be scary enough to nudge some risk analysis on the user's part? I am sure that would drop adoption by a lot, so I don't see it happening voluntarily.

We require someone with a professional engineering designation from an accredited engineering body to sign off and approve before a building can be built. If it is found to have structural issues later, that person can be directly liable and can lose their license to operate. Why this is not the case with health software I cannot explain. Every time I propose this the only argument I recieve against it is people who…

Oh man, I have gone off on rants about software "engineering" here in the past.

My first office job was as an AutoCAD/network admin at a large Civil and Structural engineering firm. I saw how seriously real engineering is taken.

When I brought up your argument to my FAANG employed sibling, he said "well, what would it take to be a real software engineer in your mind!??"

My response was, and always will be: "When there is a path to a software Professional Engineer stamp, with the engineer's name on it, which carries legal liability for gross negligence, then I will call them Software Engineers."

Re: An AI Vibe Coding Horror Story

#52

Post by rubzah »

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #28

Software engineering is looking more and more like it needs a professional body in each country, and accreditation and standards. Ie it needs to grow up and become like every other strand of engineering. Gone should be the days of “I taught myself so now I can [design software in a professional setting / design a bridge in a professional setting].” I’m not advocating gatekeeping - if you want to build a small bridge…

As the sibling pointed out, there are already plenty of laws about, for example, handling of personally identifiable data. Somehow there is a lack of awareness, perhaps what is needed is a couple of high-profile convictions (which can't be too far off).

Re: An AI Vibe Coding Horror Story

#53

Post by funkyfourier »

delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #4

Meanwhile on Linkedin… Every sales bozo with zero technical understanding is screaming top of their virtual lungs that evrything must be done with AI and it is solution to every layoff, economic problem, everything. It is just a matter of time when something really really bad happens.

The Hindenburg of coding.

Re: An AI Vibe Coding Horror Story

#55

Post by fainpul »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #7

I did something similar to a local company here in Spain. Not medical, but a small insurance company. Believe it or not, yes, they vibecoded their CRM. I sent them an email and they threatened to sue me. I was a bit in shock from such dumb response, but I guess some people only learn the hard way, so I filed a report to the AEPD (Data protection agency in Spain) for starters, known to be brutal. I've also sent them a…

> AEPD […] known to be brutal.

Nice. I wish more countries had something like that. Many of these organizations are lethargic and have to be forced into action by civilian efforts or the press.

Re: An AI Vibe Coding Horror Story

#57

Post by freakynit »

I think vibe-coding is cool, but it runs into limits pretty fast (at least right now).

It kinda falls apart once you get past a few thousand lines of code... and real systems aren't just big, they're actually messy...shit loads of components, services, edge cases, things breaking in weird ways. Getting all of that to work together reliably is a different game altogether.

And you still need solid software engineering fundamentals. Without understanding architecture, debugging, tradeoffs, and failure modes, it's hard to guide or even evaluate what's being generated.

Vibe-coding feels great for prototypes, hobby projects, or just messing around, or even some internal tools in a handful of cases. But for actual production systems, you still need real engineering behind it.

As of now, I'm 100% hesitant to pay for, or put my data on systems that are vibe-coded without the knowledge of what's been built and how it's been built.

Re: An AI Vibe Coding Horror Story

#58

Post by BitsAndObjects »

cik wrote: post #42
BitsAndObjects wrote: post #28

Software engineering is looking more and more like it needs a professional body in each country, and accreditation and standards. Ie it needs to grow up and become like every other strand of engineering. Gone should be the days of “I taught myself so now I can [design software in a professional setting / design a bridge in a professional setting].” I’m not advocating gatekeeping - if you want to build a small bridge…

Professional bodies act as nothing more then gatekeepers and rent seekers for things of this nature. Anyone can write software, but not everyone writes security minded software. We already have laws in place, and certifications that help someone understand if a given organization adheres to given standards. We can argue over their validity, efficacy, or value. The infrastructure, laws, and framework exist for this. M…

There’s a reason why many professions have professional bodies and consolidated standards - from medicine to accountancy, actuarial work, civil engineering, aerospace, electronic and electrical engineering, law, surveying, and so many more.

In most of those professions, it is a crime or a civil violation to offer services without the proper qualifications, experience and accreditation from one of the appropriate professional bodies.

We DO NOT have this in software engineering. At all. Anyone can teach themselves a bit of coding and start using it in their professional life.

Analogous to law, you can draft a contract by yourself, but if it goes wrong you have a major headache. You cannot, however, offer services as a solicitor without proper qualifications and accreditation (at least in the UK). Yet in software engineering, not only can we teach ourselves and then write small bits of software for ourselves, we can then offer professional services with no further barriers or steps.

The mishmash of laws we have around data and privacy are not professional standards, nor are they accreditation. We don’t have the framework or laws around this. And I am not aware of the USA (federal level) or Europe (or member states) or China or Russia or India or etc having this.

For example, the BCS in the UK is so weak that although it exists, exceedingly few professional software engineers are even registered with them. They have no teeth. There’s no laws covering any of this stuff. Just good-ol’ GDPR and some sector-specific laws here and there trying to keep people mildly safe.

Re: An AI Vibe Coding Horror Story

#59

Post by darkwater »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #7

I did something similar to a local company here in Spain. Not medical, but a small insurance company. Believe it or not, yes, they vibecoded their CRM. I sent them an email and they threatened to sue me. I was a bit in shock from such dumb response, but I guess some people only learn the hard way, so I filed a report to the AEPD (Data protection agency in Spain) for starters, known to be brutal. I've also sent them a…

Can you keep us updated in this thread how it evolved?

Re: An AI Vibe Coding Horror Story

#60

Post by fzzzy »

sixhobbits wrote: post #48
BrissyCoder wrote: post #15

This reads like internet fiction to me. Very vague and short.

yeah keeping it vague makes sense to protect the place if it's still online but the whole thing doesn't really make sense? The timelines mentioned are weird - he spoke to them before they built it? Or after? It's not that clear, he mentions they mentioned watching a video. > The entire application was a single HTML file with all JavaScript, CSS, and structure written inline. This is not my experience of how agents te…

The single file thing makes perfect sense if it was built as an artifact in one of the big provider's webui.
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