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I have seen this already. Vibecoded top to bottom. The downside is that the business people don't understand why you can't just put their app in production as

by gwerbin 4mo ago

I have seen this already. Vibecoded top to bottom. The downside is that the business people don't understand why you can't just put their app in production as is. And then there's a lot of pressure to make it happen quickly "because we can use AI to move fast". This is going to come down to healthy organization dynamics, and hopefully represents a learning opportunity for leadership. The upside is that the idea has already been proven out much more thoroughly than a sketch on a napkin. Claude has already prompted them about edge cases and design decisions. It's very likely that at some point they had to explicitly tell Claude "don't worry about that and just make an assumption", or "I actually don't like that interaction after trying it a few times, can you do a differently". They had to write out much of their idea in clear and direct language in order to prompt the AI. They've probably been playing with their own toy because it's fun to play with toys you summoned from thin air, so they've had a chance to discover the experience and refine their own preferences. It's probably a net negative right now because the "ship it what's the problem team" pressure is intense and stupid and demoralizing and miserable to work under. But I think it will stabilize and it might be a net positive in future projects.

iamjs 4mo ago
> It's very likely that at some point they had to explicitly tell Claude "don't worry about that and just make an assumption", Non technical folks vibe coding aren't explicitly telling Claude anything other than "Accept"
slyzmud 4mo ago
I've working on a small side project with a non technical friend for a couple months. It's really small but we are selling it to some clients. The other day my friend discovered lovable and vibe coded an entire app and he started feeling like I was scamming him. Why would I take weeks or months in building our app if he could do it on hours? He might be stubborn but ended up blindly believing me, but I couldn't find a good way of explaining that a prototype wasn't a final product. It has lots of errors, doesn't consider edge cases and it's impossible to fix if something breaks. Of course what I said didn't mean much because he didn't understand what I was talking about. How do you communicate this problem? That there's much more than what you see in a frontend? Seems really hard to explain to non technical people.
- gwerbin 4mo ago
  It's the same problem we've had all along though, right? Maybe it's magnified now but the essence of the confusion is the same.
- 9rx 4mo ago
  Show it. Pick a missed edge case or breaking point in his app and demonstrate the pain the customer is going to encounter. You don't have to live in the realm of hypotheticals. He has given you a concrete, but flawed, implementation that offers proof of your message.
  - slyzmud 4mo ago
    I did it and he "fixed" it with AI, making him even more convinced of it. I'm pretty sure something else must have broken but didn't see it immediately. I guess eventually it will fall from its own weight but I'm surprised how far he was able to get.
    - 9rx 4mo ago
      You are convincing me of it too. It is clear that your friend still needs your system thinking to point out edge cases and whatnot, but if you applied that by spending a couple of days adding a test suite to provide the missing validation, it seems like together you could have a pretty robust product built in less than a week. What justifies a couple of months?
- throwaway98797 4mo ago
  let them launch and fail it’s the only way they learn
  - Lalabadie 4mo ago
    "Prompt more" is my default answer now. Your 80% of the way there? Keep going! If they're satisfied with the result, I save myself a reluctant client. If they realize the difference, I save myself an explanation and we can start talking about good foundations.
chatmasta 4mo ago
> business people don't understand why you can't just put their app in production I’d flip that around and say that engineers don’t understand that sometimes you _can_ just put their app into production. It might take some cleanup, and some clever ways of deploying it in isolation, but some of these “vibe coded prototypes” — many made by technical business people (they do exist) – are much closer to production-ready than you might initially assume. I’d encourage you to challenge your assumptions before dismissing the possibility. I’ve personally seen this workflow produce real production code, used by customers, in an extremely rapid feedback loop. Now is the time to adapt, not push back. Keep an open mind or you’ll be left behind.
- preg_match 4mo ago
  [dead]
- gwerbin 4mo ago
  I actually agree with you, although I don't agree with the "open your mind or be left behind" sentiment. I left it implicit in my example, but in my actual experience they actually can't put it in production as it is because there are genuine broken things or features they can't add without rewriting big chunks of the system. The worst are the ones that are not obviously broken but are just wrong, like incorrect numbers in a financial report. But yes, I do agree that some engineers and some engineering teams are slow and cautious where it's not needed, to the point of obstructing rapid prototyping and iteration. And yes I agree that AI will be good to help push them to overcome it.
  - 8note 4mo ago
    > rewriting big chunks of the system the costs of doing this is much lower than it has been testing to make sure thats safe to do maybe hasnt caught up, but its no longer an unreasonable task
    - gwerbin 4mo ago
      It's not about turning out the necessary lines of code. It's about doing the critical thinking, validating of assumptions, etc. which was not done the first time around. Yes, AI can assist with the brute force of broad scale factoring. But without the humans and domain experts involved, you are going to either keep flailing around at the cost of millions of tokens, or something actually really bad in production that you don't even understand and won't work for your business. The lines of code have never been a bottleneck for the actual engineering team. That's why AI is so good for expediting the prototype cycle and allowing stakeholders to develop their own prototypes, but why you still need someone who actually knows what they're doing to finish the project, whether they are manually typing the lines of code or letting Claude do it.
8note 4mo ago
it would be fun to get access to those chat logs, to pull out detailed requirements decisions and get some more structure together
bluefirebrand 4mo ago
> This is going to come down to healthy organization dynamics, and hopefully represents a learning opportunity for leadership What is it like working for organizations with healthy dynamics and leadership that is capable of learning? I don't think I've ever encountered it in my professional career.
almostdeadguy 4mo ago
If you can vibe code it, you can vibe deploy it, and deal with the consequences.
nitwit005 4mo ago
That will never get fixed. Early in my career I demoed a Java Swing UI, emphasized it didn't actually do anything repeatedly. A manager declared it done. They'd "seen it working".

by gwerbin 4mo ago

iamjs 4mo ago

> It's very likely that at some point they had to explicitly tell Claude "don't worry about that and just make an assumption", Non technical folks vibe coding aren't explicitly telling Claude anything other than "Accept"

slyzmud 4mo ago

I've working on a small side project with a non technical friend for a couple months. It's really small but we are selling it to some clients. The other day my friend discovered lovable and vibe coded an entire app and he started feeling like I was scamming him. Why would I take weeks or months in building our app if he could do it on hours? He might be stubborn but ended up blindly believing me, but I couldn't find a good way of explaining that a prototype wasn't a final product. It has lots of errors, doesn't consider edge cases and it's impossible to fix if something breaks. Of course what I said didn't mean much because he didn't understand what I was talking about. How do you communicate this problem? That there's much more than what you see in a frontend? Seems really hard to explain to non technical people.

gwerbin 4mo ago
It's the same problem we've had all along though, right? Maybe it's magnified now but the essence of the confusion is the same.
9rx 4mo ago
Show it. Pick a missed edge case or breaking point in his app and demonstrate the pain the customer is going to encounter. You don't have to live in the realm of hypotheticals. He has given you a concrete, but flawed, implementation that offers proof of your message.
- slyzmud 4mo ago
  I did it and he "fixed" it with AI, making him even more convinced of it. I'm pretty sure something else must have broken but didn't see it immediately. I guess eventually it will fall from its own weight but I'm surprised how far he was able to get.
  - 9rx 4mo ago
    You are convincing me of it too. It is clear that your friend still needs your system thinking to point out edge cases and whatnot, but if you applied that by spending a couple of days adding a test suite to provide the missing validation, it seems like together you could have a pretty robust product built in less than a week. What justifies a couple of months?
throwaway98797 4mo ago
let them launch and fail it’s the only way they learn
- Lalabadie 4mo ago
  "Prompt more" is my default answer now. Your 80% of the way there? Keep going! If they're satisfied with the result, I save myself a reluctant client. If they realize the difference, I save myself an explanation and we can start talking about good foundations.

chatmasta 4mo ago

> business people don't understand why you can't just put their app in production I’d flip that around and say that engineers don’t understand that sometimes you _can_ just put their app into production. It might take some cleanup, and some clever ways of deploying it in isolation, but some of these “vibe coded prototypes” — many made by technical business people (they do exist) – are much closer to production-ready than you might initially assume. I’d encourage you to challenge your assumptions before dismissing the possibility. I’ve personally seen this workflow produce real production code, used by customers, in an extremely rapid feedback loop. Now is the time to adapt, not push back. Keep an open mind or you’ll be left behind.

preg_match 4mo ago
[dead]
gwerbin 4mo ago
I actually agree with you, although I don't agree with the "open your mind or be left behind" sentiment. I left it implicit in my example, but in my actual experience they actually can't put it in production as it is because there are genuine broken things or features they can't add without rewriting big chunks of the system. The worst are the ones that are not obviously broken but are just wrong, like incorrect numbers in a financial report. But yes, I do agree that some engineers and some engineering teams are slow and cautious where it's not needed, to the point of obstructing rapid prototyping and iteration. And yes I agree that AI will be good to help push them to overcome it.
- 8note 4mo ago
  > rewriting big chunks of the system the costs of doing this is much lower than it has been testing to make sure thats safe to do maybe hasnt caught up, but its no longer an unreasonable task
  - gwerbin 4mo ago
    It's not about turning out the necessary lines of code. It's about doing the critical thinking, validating of assumptions, etc. which was not done the first time around. Yes, AI can assist with the brute force of broad scale factoring. But without the humans and domain experts involved, you are going to either keep flailing around at the cost of millions of tokens, or something actually really bad in production that you don't even understand and won't work for your business. The lines of code have never been a bottleneck for the actual engineering team. That's why AI is so good for expediting the prototype cycle and allowing stakeholders to develop their own prototypes, but why you still need someone who actually knows what they're doing to finish the project, whether they are manually typing the lines of code or letting Claude do it.

8note 4mo ago

it would be fun to get access to those chat logs, to pull out detailed requirements decisions and get some more structure together

bluefirebrand 4mo ago

> This is going to come down to healthy organization dynamics, and hopefully represents a learning opportunity for leadership What is it like working for organizations with healthy dynamics and leadership that is capable of learning? I don't think I've ever encountered it in my professional career.

almostdeadguy 4mo ago

If you can vibe code it, you can vibe deploy it, and deal with the consequences.

nitwit005 4mo ago

That will never get fixed. Early in my career I demoed a Java Swing UI, emphasized it didn't actually do anything repeatedly. A manager declared it done. They'd "seen it working".