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This guy is the Jim Cramer of tech CEO's. Vibe coding is more like the Visual Basic of this generation. It makes it much easier for less technical people to cr

by jm4 11mo ago

This guy is the Jim Cramer of tech CEO's. Vibe coding is more like the Visual Basic of this generation. It makes it much easier for less technical people to create software or for hackers to be much more productive, but there's still going to be a huge need for professional software development. It's not like everybody is going to become a vibe coder and there won't be a need for SaaS or low code solutions. I think tech people overestimate the capability and willingness for the average Joe to vibe code or engage with technology beyond the minimum required.

sixtyj 11mo ago
People vibe code, for sure. But what are the results? Vibe coded apps without maintenance that nobody can repair as the code is such a nice mess…
- rsynnott 11mo ago
  That happened with VB (and particularly with VBA), too.
- kamaal 11mo ago
  >>apps without maintenance This is perhaps what most non-dev people don't get. Maintenance is a far more harder thing than building something. So you want to go slow when building things, not fast. Either way building things fast has been a solved problem for a while, people don't go fast not because we don't have tools, but there are other fairly valid reasons to go slow. This is true with so many other things outside of software. I guess its called 'haste'. This is true for most things. Especially where money and life are at stake. But Im guessing you could extend this to anything where reputation is at stake. Im guessing it doesn't apply to some start ups, but other wise every one is subject to this.
palmotea 11mo ago
> Vibe coding is more like the Visual Basic of this generation. It makes it much easier for less technical people to create software or for hackers to be much more productive, but there's still going to be a huge need for professional software development [emphasis mine]. Visual Basic has never been well-regarded as a platform for "professional software development," so the analogy doesn't fit in that aspect.
- drcongo 11mo ago
  I think that's the point they were making.
  - palmotea 11mo ago
    The point I was making was VB was never considered a tool "for hackers to be much more productive," only a tool "for less technical people to create software."
    - jm4 11mo ago
      I knew some hackers who used it back in the day. They were the types who were good with computers and could write shell scripts, but they were not professional programmers. They knew how to do what they needed done. The people I know today who are into vibe coding kind of fit that same mold. They want something done and they do it themselves, but they aren't necessarily good at coding or enjoy doing it.
    - keeda 11mo ago
      Ehh, I dunno, it was really, really popular back then. I would bet that a non-trivial number of apps were built using VB by actual software engineers. Couldn't find concrete numbers but this article claims at its peak, 2/3rds of all business apps on Windows PCs were in VB: https://retool.com/visual-basic https://retool.com/visual-basic I recall seeing inventory management systems, airline booking apps for travel agents, custom CRMs, internal LoB apps, check-in kiosks, vending machines, etc. with the tell-tale VB UI, especially the typical VB error dialog after a crash! I messed around with several other UI toolkits of that era -- AWT, Swing, Qt, Flex/ActionScript -- and none was as productive as VB for simple apps. It was just the right amount of simplicity and development velocity for the myriad simple use-cases that were perfectly happy with rigid layouts.

by jm4 11mo ago

sixtyj 11mo ago

People vibe code, for sure. But what are the results? Vibe coded apps without maintenance that nobody can repair as the code is such a nice mess…

rsynnott 11mo ago
That happened with VB (and particularly with VBA), too.
kamaal 11mo ago
>>apps without maintenance This is perhaps what most non-dev people don't get. Maintenance is a far more harder thing than building something. So you want to go slow when building things, not fast. Either way building things fast has been a solved problem for a while, people don't go fast not because we don't have tools, but there are other fairly valid reasons to go slow. This is true with so many other things outside of software. I guess its called 'haste'. This is true for most things. Especially where money and life are at stake. But Im guessing you could extend this to anything where reputation is at stake. Im guessing it doesn't apply to some start ups, but other wise every one is subject to this.

palmotea 11mo ago

> Vibe coding is more like the Visual Basic of this generation. It makes it much easier for less technical people to create software or for hackers to be much more productive, but there's still going to be a huge need for professional software development [emphasis mine]. Visual Basic has never been well-regarded as a platform for "professional software development," so the analogy doesn't fit in that aspect.

drcongo 11mo ago
I think that's the point they were making.
- palmotea 11mo ago
  The point I was making was VB was never considered a tool "for hackers to be much more productive," only a tool "for less technical people to create software."
  - jm4 11mo ago
    I knew some hackers who used it back in the day. They were the types who were good with computers and could write shell scripts, but they were not professional programmers. They knew how to do what they needed done. The people I know today who are into vibe coding kind of fit that same mold. They want something done and they do it themselves, but they aren't necessarily good at coding or enjoy doing it.
  - keeda 11mo ago
    Ehh, I dunno, it was really, really popular back then. I would bet that a non-trivial number of apps were built using VB by actual software engineers. Couldn't find concrete numbers but this article claims at its peak, 2/3rds of all business apps on Windows PCs were in VB: https://retool.com/visual-basic https://retool.com/visual-basic I recall seeing inventory management systems, airline booking apps for travel agents, custom CRMs, internal LoB apps, check-in kiosks, vending machines, etc. with the tell-tale VB UI, especially the typical VB error dialog after a crash! I messed around with several other UI toolkits of that era -- AWT, Swing, Qt, Flex/ActionScript -- and none was as productive as VB for simple apps. It was just the right amount of simplicity and development velocity for the myriad simple use-cases that were perfectly happy with rigid layouts.