4 ms·

The future is perpetually dealing with the fallout from all the vibe coding as the pool of people who'd have a shot at fixing it gets smaller and smaller. Shitt

The future is perpetually dealing with the fallout from all the vibe coding as the pool of people who'd have a shot at fixing it gets smaller and smaller. Shitty will be the new normal.

ElFitz 5mo ago
> Shitty will be the new normal. I’ve heard the same from the best devs, and some who thought themselves to be the best, I’ve known long before LLMs were ever a thing. I’m sure others heard the same when JavaScript and Python became near ubiquitous. When PHP emerged. When C supplanted Fortran and COBOL. When these two took over from Assembly. When punch cards went the way of the dodo. There’s always someone for whom shitty is becoming the new normal. If that makes it a rule, what do we make of that rule?
- freetanga 5mo ago
  Maybe it’s a process. Many of the transitions you mentioned did bring shitty apps (not all of them, the ones replacing tech for tech were mostly ok, the ones democratizing dev did come with a quality drop), but eventually Darwinism will take effect and trim the long tail. Coding per se is not hard. Proper engineering is. I do hope this change brings a change in focus (people train in algorithms, efficiency, solid development patterns) but I am afraid it won’t be the case.
  - ElFitz 5mo ago
    The risk is people who incidentally get into software engineering through using agents probably won’t be aware of any of that. And probably wouldn’t care even if they did. And for most software they’ll create, single user, perhaps even single use, it’ll be fine. And for those who might care about these things, they’ll probably just be facing constant pressure to deliver more, faster, perhaps with less. One of the issue about literacy in algorithms, data modeling, efficiency, development patterns, systems designs… is that people either aren’t aware of them (and in the best case scenario reinvent the wheel), don’t care about them, or feel they aren’t given the time to invest in learning them (or worse, might be penalized for it).
- Saline9515 5mo ago
  "With a punchcard at least, I can verify what the input is! Unlike those new 'transistors' that are so unreliable!"
  - dfedbeef 5mo ago
    What do you think a transistor is
    - ElFitz 5mo ago
      A punchcard with extra steps? Enlighten us.
- sersi 5mo ago
  To be fair with how powerful our computers are, it's a pity that electron apps like bitwarden, spotify are so slow and consume so much resources. I do miss the time when a lot of apps were snappy
  - nicce 5mo ago
    I am just going to justify in the future that because of LLMs, there is no reason to use JavaScript, Java, Python etc anymore because of the available workforce. Only then when the technology itself is fit for the job.
    - ElFitz 5mo ago
      Instead we’ll all run LLMs that generate UI from scratch, at run time, using up gigabytes of RAM and who knows how much power on every request and response. Progress! (I’m half kidding)
- microtonal 5mo ago
  There are different magnitudes of shitty. Also we went from compilers with an IDE that had a debugger, profiler, built-in help and would fit on a 3.5" disk and would load on machines with 640KiB RAM (Turbo Pascal) to chat apps or password managers that are hundreds of megabytes and regularly gobble up more than a gigabyte of memory because they ship with their own browser. Something is lost along the way.
  - ElFitz 5mo ago
    > Something is lost along the way. Definitely. My point is more that it seems to have been the way of the world for the past few decades. I’m arguing it’s nothing new, basically a trope at this point. And once that is said, if we care about it, what do we do about it? Besides just repeating it.
- StilesCrisis 5mo ago
  > I’m sure others heard the same when JavaScript and Python became near ubiquitous. When PHP emerged. You heard right! Most JavaScript and PHP in the world _is_ profoundly shitty. It's taken 20 years of intense research to make JavaScript compilers that are almost good enough to mostly optimize away the design foibles of the language.
- inanutshellus 5mo ago
  As you say - "good enough" is always the normal.
freetanga 5mo ago
I feel like it will be like going back to the 80s, when PCs became a norm and most programmers and hobbyists could code without the need of a University or a Corporation. Thousands of shareware apps you had to navigate, everyone trying to solve the same problems from different angles.. I do agree quality will be missed, and shadow IT will be again a big issue like at the end of the 80s and early 90s.
- xienze 5mo ago
  > most programmers and hobbyists could code without the need of a University or a Corporation. I don't think so. Back then, the pool of people doing such a thing basically self-selected for intelligent, motivated types who were capable of learning on their own. The new "programmers" "programming" via Claude Code are going to be very different from those hobbyists you're talking about.
  - elliotbnvl 5mo ago
    This is a comically self-absorbed perspective. Why are people making things with Claude Code if not because they’re motivated?
    - jmaw 5mo ago
      Because it's "easy" (until they hit a wall) Once they hit a wall, that is where you find out whether they are motivated or not
      - abalashov 5mo ago
        > Once they hit a wall, that is where you find out whether they are motivated or not Yep. That has to happen first.
    - abalashov 5mo ago
      Because it's "easy"?
    - dperks 5mo ago
parpfish 5mo ago
Eventually there will be an incident with bad software at a hospital or bank that leaves some people dead or broke. Then regulators will take things seriously.
- crumpled 5mo ago
  What regulators?
  - lioeters 5mo ago
    Captured by revolving doors.
  - parpfish 5mo ago
    i could see this being the thing that pushes the US toward licensing softeware developers like other engineering disciplines. gotta get a PE to stamp your LLM-generated code in sensitive environments.
- wing-_-nuts 5mo ago
  Which is why the medical device software industry is so heavily regulated after the Therac-25 incident. Oh, wait, it's not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
  - HeyLaughingBoy 5mo ago
    Wait, what? Then why did I just spend the last few days releasing a slew of documents for a handful of trivial changes to an ancient medical device? Someone should have told me that I could just ignore regulations!
- purerandomness 5mo ago
  This is exactly what Uncle Bob predicted in his talk "The Future Of Programming" [0] 10 years ago, way before LLMs. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc
gavinh 5mo ago
I'm working on a possibly-quixotic tool to mitigate the "cognitive debt" from AI-assisted development. Not everybody agrees that this is a problem. Maybe some teams that are only writing specs and reviewing plans still understand their products adequately. If you have an opinion either way, I'd appreciate hearing from you.
matheusmoreira 5mo ago
> as the pool of people who'd have a shot at fixing it gets smaller and smaller Sounds like job prospects to me.

The future is perpetually dealing with the fallout from all the vibe coding as the pool of people who'd have a shot at fixing it gets smaller and smaller. Shitty will be the new normal.

ElFitz 5mo ago

> Shitty will be the new normal. I’ve heard the same from the best devs, and some who thought themselves to be the best, I’ve known long before LLMs were ever a thing. I’m sure others heard the same when JavaScript and Python became near ubiquitous. When PHP emerged. When C supplanted Fortran and COBOL. When these two took over from Assembly. When punch cards went the way of the dodo. There’s always someone for whom shitty is becoming the new normal. If that makes it a rule, what do we make of that rule?

freetanga 5mo ago
Maybe it’s a process. Many of the transitions you mentioned did bring shitty apps (not all of them, the ones replacing tech for tech were mostly ok, the ones democratizing dev did come with a quality drop), but eventually Darwinism will take effect and trim the long tail. Coding per se is not hard. Proper engineering is. I do hope this change brings a change in focus (people train in algorithms, efficiency, solid development patterns) but I am afraid it won’t be the case.
- ElFitz 5mo ago
  The risk is people who incidentally get into software engineering through using agents probably won’t be aware of any of that. And probably wouldn’t care even if they did. And for most software they’ll create, single user, perhaps even single use, it’ll be fine. And for those who might care about these things, they’ll probably just be facing constant pressure to deliver more, faster, perhaps with less. One of the issue about literacy in algorithms, data modeling, efficiency, development patterns, systems designs… is that people either aren’t aware of them (and in the best case scenario reinvent the wheel), don’t care about them, or feel they aren’t given the time to invest in learning them (or worse, might be penalized for it).
Saline9515 5mo ago
"With a punchcard at least, I can verify what the input is! Unlike those new 'transistors' that are so unreliable!"
- dfedbeef 5mo ago
  What do you think a transistor is
  - ElFitz 5mo ago
    A punchcard with extra steps? Enlighten us.
sersi 5mo ago
To be fair with how powerful our computers are, it's a pity that electron apps like bitwarden, spotify are so slow and consume so much resources. I do miss the time when a lot of apps were snappy
- nicce 5mo ago
  I am just going to justify in the future that because of LLMs, there is no reason to use JavaScript, Java, Python etc anymore because of the available workforce. Only then when the technology itself is fit for the job.
  - ElFitz 5mo ago
    Instead we’ll all run LLMs that generate UI from scratch, at run time, using up gigabytes of RAM and who knows how much power on every request and response. Progress! (I’m half kidding)
microtonal 5mo ago
There are different magnitudes of shitty. Also we went from compilers with an IDE that had a debugger, profiler, built-in help and would fit on a 3.5" disk and would load on machines with 640KiB RAM (Turbo Pascal) to chat apps or password managers that are hundreds of megabytes and regularly gobble up more than a gigabyte of memory because they ship with their own browser. Something is lost along the way.
- ElFitz 5mo ago
  > Something is lost along the way. Definitely. My point is more that it seems to have been the way of the world for the past few decades. I’m arguing it’s nothing new, basically a trope at this point. And once that is said, if we care about it, what do we do about it? Besides just repeating it.
StilesCrisis 5mo ago
> I’m sure others heard the same when JavaScript and Python became near ubiquitous. When PHP emerged. You heard right! Most JavaScript and PHP in the world _is_ profoundly shitty. It's taken 20 years of intense research to make JavaScript compilers that are almost good enough to mostly optimize away the design foibles of the language.
inanutshellus 5mo ago
As you say - "good enough" is always the normal.

freetanga 5mo ago

I feel like it will be like going back to the 80s, when PCs became a norm and most programmers and hobbyists could code without the need of a University or a Corporation. Thousands of shareware apps you had to navigate, everyone trying to solve the same problems from different angles.. I do agree quality will be missed, and shadow IT will be again a big issue like at the end of the 80s and early 90s.

xienze 5mo ago
> most programmers and hobbyists could code without the need of a University or a Corporation. I don't think so. Back then, the pool of people doing such a thing basically self-selected for intelligent, motivated types who were capable of learning on their own. The new "programmers" "programming" via Claude Code are going to be very different from those hobbyists you're talking about.
- elliotbnvl 5mo ago
  This is a comically self-absorbed perspective. Why are people making things with Claude Code if not because they’re motivated?
  - jmaw 5mo ago
    Because it's "easy" (until they hit a wall) Once they hit a wall, that is where you find out whether they are motivated or not
    - abalashov 5mo ago
      > Once they hit a wall, that is where you find out whether they are motivated or not Yep. That has to happen first.
  - abalashov 5mo ago
    Because it's "easy"?
  - dperks 5mo ago

parpfish 5mo ago

Eventually there will be an incident with bad software at a hospital or bank that leaves some people dead or broke. Then regulators will take things seriously.

crumpled 5mo ago
What regulators?
- lioeters 5mo ago
  Captured by revolving doors.
- parpfish 5mo ago
  i could see this being the thing that pushes the US toward licensing softeware developers like other engineering disciplines. gotta get a PE to stamp your LLM-generated code in sensitive environments.
wing-_-nuts 5mo ago
Which is why the medical device software industry is so heavily regulated after the Therac-25 incident. Oh, wait, it's not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
- HeyLaughingBoy 5mo ago
  Wait, what? Then why did I just spend the last few days releasing a slew of documents for a handful of trivial changes to an ancient medical device? Someone should have told me that I could just ignore regulations!
purerandomness 5mo ago
This is exactly what Uncle Bob predicted in his talk "The Future Of Programming" [0] 10 years ago, way before LLMs. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc

gavinh 5mo ago

I'm working on a possibly-quixotic tool to mitigate the "cognitive debt" from AI-assisted development. Not everybody agrees that this is a problem. Maybe some teams that are only writing specs and reviewing plans still understand their products adequately. If you have an opinion either way, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

matheusmoreira 5mo ago

> as the pool of people who'd have a shot at fixing it gets smaller and smaller Sounds like job prospects to me.