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Vibe coding is mad depressing

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Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#91

Post by kkarpkkarp »

I am freelancer as well and in the last month I got two new clients who asked me to fix the vibe-coded projects.

And I am now thinking to specialize in the field: they already know how f*d they are and they are going to pay a lot (or: they have no other opportunity). Something what looked like million-dollar idea created for pennies 3 months later is unbearable, already rotting pale of insanity which no junior human developer or even AI code assistant is able to extend. But they already have investors or clients who use it.

And for me, with >20 years of coding experience, this is a lot of fun cleaning it to the state when it is manageable.

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#93

Post by fragmede »

112233 wrote: post #87
WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's terrible at the niches I actually have expertise in, which are in mathematics. I'd guess an expert is going to find the flaws in anything it's doing in their field. That being said, if you're just trying to e.g. see what some GUI library can do then it's pretty useful to get something going. I personally would prefer not using it in anything that's not very much a throwaway test project though, but that is my lu…

But doesn't your argument actually mean it is terrible at absolutely everything in a very subtle, convincing way, so that it takes an actual expert in the field to tell that the generated text is not a profound revelation but a bag of nonsense? Meaning, is the answer in the field I'm not an expert of good, or am I simply being fooled by emoji and nice grammar?

Gell-Mann amnesia, but for LLMs.

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#94

Post by bheadmaster »

DonHopkins wrote: post #89
satvikpendem wrote: post #6

This article is not about vibe coding per se, it's about not having strong boundaries between you as the developer, and your client. You should not be allowing the client to dictate how you work, much less them having the permissions to merge in code. This was true before AI too, where clients might say, do X this way, and you should simply say no, because they are paying for your expertise*. It's like hiring a plumb…

>It's like hiring a plumber then trying to tell them how to fix the toilet. And continuing to shit and piss and puke in the toilet while they are trying to fix it.

A disgusting analogy, but hilariously accurate.

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#95

Post by smolder »

satvikpendem wrote: post #6

This article is not about vibe coding per se, it's about not having strong boundaries between you as the developer, and your client. You should not be allowing the client to dictate how you work, much less them having the permissions to merge in code. This was true before AI too, where clients might say, do X this way, and you should simply say no, because they are paying for your expertise*. It's like hiring a plumb…

The classic version is not a developer, it's a mechanic or some other blue collar job. I've seen it on a sign in a machine shop 20 years ago.

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#96

Post by globular-toast »

112233 wrote: post #33
WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #18

For me vibecoding has a similar feeling to a big bag of Doritos. It's really fun at first to slap down 10k lines of code in an afternoon knowing this is just an indulgence. I think AI is actually really useful for getting a quick view of some library or feature. Also, you can learn a lot if you approach it the right way. However, every time I do any amount of vibecoding eventually it just transitions into pure lethar…

I have yet to find the niche where it is "good at the beginning". So far I've mostly tried asking to build C tools that use advanced linux API. Me: hey make this, detailed-spec.txt AI: okidoki (barfs 9k lines in 15 minutes) all done and tested! Me looks at the code, that has feature-sounding names, but all features are stubs, all tests are stubs, and it does not compile. Me: it does not compile. AI: Yes, but the code…

> I have yet to find the niche where it is "good at the beginning".

The niche is "the same boring CRUD web app someone made in 2003 but with Tailwind CSS".

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#97

Post by iberator »

WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #18

For me vibecoding has a similar feeling to a big bag of Doritos. It's really fun at first to slap down 10k lines of code in an afternoon knowing this is just an indulgence. I think AI is actually really useful for getting a quick view of some library or feature. Also, you can learn a lot if you approach it the right way. However, every time I do any amount of vibecoding eventually it just transitions into pure lethar…

Whay do you mean? I love Doritos!

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#98

Post by throwdbaaway »

wvenable wrote: post #48
112233 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to find the niche where it is "good at the beginning". So far I've mostly tried asking to build C tools that use advanced linux API. Me: hey make this, detailed-spec.txt AI: okidoki (barfs 9k lines in 15 minutes) all done and tested! Me looks at the code, that has feature-sounding names, but all features are stubs, all tests are stubs, and it does not compile. Me: it does not compile. AI: Yes, but the code…

I'm not sure what you're using. I've used Claude in agent mode to port a very complex and spaghetti coded C application to nicely structured C++. The original code was so intertwined that I didn't want to figure out so I had shelved the project until AI came along. It wasn't super bad at converting the code but even it struggled with some of the logic. Luckily, I had it design a test suite to compare the outputs of t…

At the high level, you asked LLM to translate N lines of code to maybe 2N lines of code, while GP asked LLM to translate N lines of English to possibly 10N lines of code. Very different scenarios.

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#99

Post by hiq »

112233 wrote: post #33
WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #18

For me vibecoding has a similar feeling to a big bag of Doritos. It's really fun at first to slap down 10k lines of code in an afternoon knowing this is just an indulgence. I think AI is actually really useful for getting a quick view of some library or feature. Also, you can learn a lot if you approach it the right way. However, every time I do any amount of vibecoding eventually it just transitions into pure lethar…

I have yet to find the niche where it is "good at the beginning". So far I've mostly tried asking to build C tools that use advanced linux API. Me: hey make this, detailed-spec.txt AI: okidoki (barfs 9k lines in 15 minutes) all done and tested! Me looks at the code, that has feature-sounding names, but all features are stubs, all tests are stubs, and it does not compile. Me: it does not compile. AI: Yes, but the code…

I don't ever look at LLM-generated code that either doesn't compile or doesn't pass existing tests. IMHO any proper setup should involve these checks, with the LLM either fixing itself or giving up.

If you have a CLI, you can even script this yourself, if you don't trust your tool to actually try to compile and run tests on its own.

It's a bit like a PR on github from someone I do not know: I'm not going to actually look at it until it passes the CI.

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#100

Post by Lapsa »

112233 wrote: post #86
throwaway2037 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy shit, I feel the same. I was arguing with an LLM one day about how to do Kerberos auth on incoming HTTP requests. It kept giving me bogus advice that I could disprove with a tiny snip of code. I would explain. It would react just like yours. After a few rounds, it would give the first answer again. Awful. So infuriating. I had a similar issue with GNU plot. The LLM-suggested scripts frequently had syntax errors.…

You can write any program you want, as long as it is flappy bird in reactjs.

heh
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