Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I don’t vibe code

jacobharr.is

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 119 posts

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#91

Post by jaredcwhite »

basch wrote: post #88
Aurornis wrote: post #3

I thought this was going to be an article about intelligent use of LLM tools without vibecoding, but it's actually entirely against LLMs altogether. The person who wrote it used a free trial of some tool (most likely not a frontier model) and then gave up forever when the trial ran out. > I then tried using one of the AI tools to analyze my code in a project and a few other small tasks before it all came to an awkwar…

People have a very strong tendency to go "current gen technology cant achieve x, therefore its impossible for this class of technology to ever achieve x" Many many many of the problems with current gen ai will go away.

Ah, the classic "But just you wait, the next version will be better!" fallacy.

It's a fallacy because the reality is often not that…in fact sometimes the reality ends up worse. (See "enshittification", a process whereby technology gets worse over time, not better.)

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#92

Post by stephenr »

leptons wrote: post #35
Aurornis wrote: post #3

I thought this was going to be an article about intelligent use of LLM tools without vibecoding, but it's actually entirely against LLMs altogether. The person who wrote it used a free trial of some tool (most likely not a frontier model) and then gave up forever when the trial ran out. > I then tried using one of the AI tools to analyze my code in a project and a few other small tasks before it all came to an awkwar…

I'm doing agentic coding with Claude Max, and it's like giving methamphetamine to a software developer. When I run out of tokens, I pay for extra. It doesn't feel good, but I do it because I didn't write the codebase - the drug dealer did. Just one more "fix" and the code should be good to ship. Oh no, out of tokens again? Just one more "fix", and another. And the code that the AI writes is sprawling and almost incom…

> I do it because I didn't write the codebase - the drug dealer did.

.... are you saying that you can't just open up a file "written" by spicy autocomplete and add/change parts of it?

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#93

Post by stephenr »

extr wrote: post #77
nix0n wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many trainfuls of people who still write code using traditional syntax-based IDE completion.

If they want to continue that practice that's fine but they will quickly find that it severely limits their options for participating in the software industry.

If you've all been reduced to vibe coding and hoping for the best I'd suggest that you aren't really participating in the software industry either mate.

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#94

Post by threethirtytwo »

leptons wrote: post #63
threethirtytwo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future is local LLMs. So still methamphetamines but open source, free and an unlimited supply.

That won't really change anything, and in fact make the problem worse. It would be like "getting high on your own supply". Or just making meth at home so you can do it all the time. There's still a "drug dealer" in between you and the code. And you're going to have to pay $$$$ for hardware good enough to not slow you down. I've tried local models on an nVidia 4060 and it's pretty slow.

Right my example was meant to illustrate this cost benefit issue.

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#95

Post by runarberg »

avgDev wrote: post #9
TheCleric wrote: post #2

This is so good and almost exactly expresses my own thoughts. There's a narrow window where it's capable and fits a need of tedious work (mostly around automating tasks it would take me a bit to remember all the arguments and commands I'd have to chain together to do it). But a lot of it is the stuff I actually WANT to be doing. And solving the hard problems makes me a better developer just as training in the gym mak…

I'm not paying someone to dig by hand if a machine makes the job quicker.

In this analogy most people are already using an excavator, however some people are using an expensive driverless excavator which sometimes digs the wrong hole, and your boss is wondering why they are paying you to prompt the excavator when they know just as well as you how to prompt the machine to dig big holes.

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#96

Post by satvikpendem »

meheleventyone wrote: post #83
runarberg wrote: post #17

> As someone who grew up in a city on the East Coast Since this blogsite has a .is domain I must assume they mean Egilsstaðir a lovely city with a population of around 2500 people.

I think that's just to have the domain complete their name.

The parent is joking, they know that, the joke is that a lot of domains "abuse" the TLD, as they're generally meant for countries, e.g. many Rust related sites use .rs which is Serbia.

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#97

Post by seba_dos1 »

Aurornis wrote: post #41
extr wrote: post #16

This is like reading an article "I Don't Drive Cars" that goes on like - They're too expensive - My buddy's 1995 Accord breaks down a lot - Walking is healthier, plus you can stop and smell the roses - I enjoy caring for my horse - Sometimes you can get stuck in traffic Fine if that's the way you want and can afford to live your life. But it is an exotic luxury belief. For those of us who are participating in the eco…

You're going to get picked apart by people who live within walking distance or public transport distance of their office and don't understand why everyone else uses cars. If you can walk to your office and the temperature is always between 50 and 70 degrees F you would probably think cars are crazy, too. Which, funnily enough, proves the point even further. Some people get so comfortable in their bubble that they bec…

> by people who live within walking distance or public transport distance of their office

So, the vast majority of people living in cities?

> the temperature is always between 50 and 70 degrees F

More like between -15°C and 35°C (though the upper range does depend on humidity).

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#98

Post by bigstrat2003 »

Aurornis wrote: post #39
wvenable wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Github copilot and I ran out of requests before the end of the month; this happens from time to time. But last month was the first time I decided to try the cheap models that were still accessible to me just to see what they were capable of. They're dumb as rocks. I just don't know how many people have an overly negative opinion on AI assisted coding because they've just used the poor versions of these prod…

This article comes from a niche of people who read a lot of news articles about LLMs (links scattered throughout) but have also avoided learning about the tools directly. Like you said, the models available on free trials are usually toys compared to what developers use. Even Opus and GPT-5.5 are available on $20/month plans and you can buy a single month to try it out. The way they write about paying for a tool seem…

So the free trial, designed to convince you that it's worth paying, doesn't well? That isn't the users' fault, that is the companies' fault. If a free trial sucks it's perfectly rational to not pay just in case the paid version doesn't suck.

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#99

Post by leptons »

stephenr wrote: post #92
leptons wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doing agentic coding with Claude Max, and it's like giving methamphetamine to a software developer. When I run out of tokens, I pay for extra. It doesn't feel good, but I do it because I didn't write the codebase - the drug dealer did. Just one more "fix" and the code should be good to ship. Oh no, out of tokens again? Just one more "fix", and another. And the code that the AI writes is sprawling and almost incom…

> I do it because I didn't write the codebase - the drug dealer did. .... are you saying that you can't just open up a file "written" by spicy autocomplete and add/change parts of it?

If I wanted to spend a lot of time reading the code and figuring out what part actually needs changing, sure... but in this case it's faster to pay for more tokens and get the AI to do it.

For code I wrote, it's typically faster for me to modify it than to get the AI to do it.

Re: Why I don’t vibe code

#100

Post by stephenr »

leptons wrote: post #99
stephenr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do it because I didn't write the codebase - the drug dealer did. .... are you saying that you can't just open up a file "written" by spicy autocomplete and add/change parts of it?

If I wanted to spend a lot of time reading the code and figuring out what part actually needs changing, sure... but in this case it's faster to pay for more tokens and get the AI to do it. For code I wrote, it's typically faster for me to modify it than to get the AI to do it.

So what you're saying is, you don't really know what spicy autocomplete is generating because you aren't reading it.

Great stuff champ. Really dispelling the idea that vibe coders have no idea what slop is being churned out. Top marks.

Post reply on HN