6 ms·

My business partner sent a 5K vibe-coded PR that he didn't even test

52 points by yhcj 1mo ago

ckvibubueu 1mo ago
5k is rookie numbers. My PM sent me an 80k line PR and told me to yolo it into production last week.
- p2detar 1mo ago
  Man, I would straight up tell them I will use AI to review that crap and so be it. In fact this is what I tell to colleagues if they send my non-tested vibe-coded stuff or vibe-generated documentation. Everyone can generate shit today, but I believe testing, reviewing, writing docs, etc. must still go through humans.
  - ckvibubueu 1mo ago
    Code review? We have bots for that.
- yhcj 1mo ago
  haha seriously? Damn I really gotta buckle up
yhcj 1mo ago
OP and long time lurker here, I'm desperate and looking for honest-to-god advice on what to do. I am one of those neurodivergent people who loves programming because it gives me the right stimulation. I also enjoy drawing, gardening, and exercise. I don't own a car because I love walking, and such. So I'm wondering if it's time to call it quits with programming (for a living). Luckily I have some savings and I have other interests from years of doing random jobs and businesses, and as much as I love programming, especially with others, I think very few of us still want to program. I'm like the Last Samurai of programming while everyone is using AI-assisted gattling guns. Is it time to let go?
- aprilthird2021 1mo ago
  No it's absolutely not time to let go. You are one of a limited set of people with pre-AI taste and intuition for good software. They aren't making any more of them. And you'll be a super valuable asset anywhere you go. I mean, if you want to retire go ahead, but don't do it because of AI. AI is just a tool to generate code faster. It doesn't replace the work of actually making design decisions and knowing what will scale and what's better going forward vs what will work now but spiral into unmanageable spaghetti code soon (yes AIs also have a harder time managing messy code than neat code)
  - probably_wrong 1mo ago
    I often read here comments along the lines of "there will be plenty of jobs for AI-unfuckers" [1], but I fear the truth may be closer to "sometimes things are broken, are then fixed with a broken solution, and will remain broken till the end of time". In my last round of job search this year no one asked me questions about good software practices but they did ask me how proficient I was with AI agents. And let's not forget that we are part of an industry whose motto is "move fast and break things". Sure, NASA has a zero-bugs approach to software dev, but they don't have room for all of us. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44646820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44646820
    - kakacik 1mo ago
      SV echo chamber here it seems. No, most businesses globally don't work in idiotic and often amoral mode of 'move fast and break things' (and unlawful on top of that, but who has time for some boring stuff like that when greed fully takes over). Banks will not work like that for next 10 years at least. The tiny amount of money one could save on those big banking projects by using llms aggressively will bite back immediately when shit just doesn't work, clients leave for good and regulators will fine you to the ground (or remove your banking license). Many other businesses who are not race to the bottom and realize how crucial reliable IT is to their business also won't go that way anytime soon. World is not ending, there is some transformation and thats about it. Its true there will be much less jobs for devs but its mostly affecting newcomers. Statistical models are not making code better than experienced humans, and won't for some time if ever.
k310 1mo ago
> After this project, I'm done. I might turn into a yoga teacher. I gather that you don't have the "juice" to demand better. Even AI testing AI would be better (in some parallel universe?) than not testing at all. So become a consultant, preaching the simple gospel of "test this goddamn thing before unleashing it, or the tougher gospel of "Well if AI is doing all the work, then why don't you find a job that tolerates garbage?" I almost always had more responsibility than authority, except for a job where I actually had a field team. They were laid off by the "authorities" in order of greatest competence first and I ended up with one guy who made countless goofs, like creating overlapping disk partitions. I ended up redoing all his work, more than doubling my load. Does that sound familiar? In your case, it sounds like you will end up similarly, unless you find a way get your management to establish a "No broken shit" rule. I know that's daunting, and in many jobs, I could only finagle minor changes, usually by talking with other people more tenured, who had a piece of management's ear. If it amounts to "I must double my work or this all falls apart" while your partner pushes buttons (my charge was a "button-pusher"), then leave, and good luck. But do give it one college try to get some sanity into the system.
- yhcj 1mo ago
  Thanks for your reply. I did work as an Engineering Manager for a bit but honestly hated it with my guts. Promised myself I would never do that again. I have two young children so they're a bigger priority right now. Not to sound pretentious but I was top 10 in my country (for example, I read a 500-page book on Assembly language the night before and aced a test that 90% of people failed) so it's really hard for me to work with people who don't get things as fast as I do. Nothing to brag as it really isn't all hard work, I'm just quite neurodivergent compared to the average. It comes with A LOT of downsides (some nights I only sleep 2 hours because I came up with the solution to a hard problem while I was asleep and wake up to code it and it works) Now, all this is because I am now at a crossroad where I have enough money and life experience in other jobs (I stopped programming for 10 years in fact because I had a pretty successful business). The sad part is that I rekindled my love with programming in the last decade (I'm past 40), but it might be time to let it go and go back to doing business. EDIT: I did work as a consultant (reluctantly) and was charging $500/hr because I really didn't like it but the demand was there. With the economy not being what it was and all the "AI prompt vibe coders" etc blah blah out there I don't really know what's a good rate now.
mbrumlow 1mo ago
The problem is not vibe coding. The problem is the people doing this were never good software engineers before vibe coding. Simply put you still need good practices to produce working good code with AI. Oddly what I have found best is patterns that many would cringe and demeans unit test and integration test. Yes I still vibe unit test and integration test, but more than ever I have to put on my PM and QA hat, even more so with web dev. For me the only part of the process that has changed is I don’t write the code. I still setup environments to run the code, I still manually poke at things I suspect will be fragile. But most importantly I still always run the software before shipping it.
- Keyframe 1mo ago
  Couldn't have said it better myself. Issue at hand is if you're working in an environment that enables such people and even encourages that behaviour. Suddenly, their voice is the same where it was never even a whisper before, and you can't do anything about it. It is extremely demotivating and I would actually propose a more radical approach to it - either embrace the shit in full and commit to it as well or really do engage into another company where there's a better filter for hiring. The latter are usually smaller companies because they can't afford no to.
  - yhcj 1mo ago
    I actually quit bigger companies and SV contracts because the amount of hype was way overblown. Nothing could not be AI, really. Think about how crazy it is that Jensen Huang is saying "AGI is here", seriously. I first thought malice, now I think it's just plain religious Zeal. We're not a company, it's just me and my pal. I keep 50% of the product and profits and he pays me to do that (because I have way more expertise than him) curious question where you work, the AI craze is not happening?
    - Keyframe 1mo ago
      curious question where you work, the AI craze is not happening? of course it is. There's no escape IMO unless, as you've said, go solo or with a small team. I just don't know of any company of a notable size that's not into it full force. It's both disgusting and amazing to look at really. Give it a few years and if it fizzles out I'm curious what will happen. If it turns great, I'm even more curious what will happen. Weird times. Just "yesterday" we were all careful what and how we do stuff, you have now people who barely understand things slopping together OS and people use it blindly (Omarchy), and then shocked pikachu faces when giant gaping holes are noticed in it.. and people still do not care. Amazing trainwreck of a timeline, hah. I'm seriously considering pivoting myself to security.
Valodim 1mo ago
Doesn't sound like AI is necessarily the root the problem. If he's not the person to test, iterate, and deliver quality with AI, he probably wouldn't be without it. You just figured it out sooner. Or, if you have reason to believe he's got what it takes - treat it like an leaving opportunity, give him room to make mistakes. This is, ime, what a rookie AI user mistake looks like. It is easy to get carried away by the momentum. Many have fallen into that trap, not all are irredeemably bad software engineers.
- Valodim 1mo ago
  *learning opportunity. Damn autotype
  - the8472 1mo ago
    There is a certain irony blaming the autotype rather than the lack of review...
- greggoB 1mo ago
  > If he's not the person to test, iterate, and deliver quality with AI, he probably wouldn't be without it I see the take quite often on HN, and I have a major gripe with it. Yes, people were lazy and we had these problems before LLMs hit the scene, but clearly there has been a sea-change in both the frequency and degree of this behaviour since. A problem can both exist independent of a catalyst and be exacerbated by it. Arguments that try to window-dress this away are not particularly productive.
  - p2detar 1mo ago
    I think the argument is quite valid. OP writes "business partner". It begs the question - would their business partner get on board if they didn't have a AI subscription by their side? How about instead of 5K PR, OP got the same half-baked buggy crap or absolutely nothing instead? We don't know the business partner, but we are ready to throw the problem at AI agents right away. Well, I find this not particularly productive.
onesandofgrain 1mo ago
This is enforced in my company so buckle up
- yhcj 1mo ago
  I literally was earning 5x times more working for contracts and companies but got super sick of it, I was happy to work with one single guy (who PROMISED to keep AI at bay, it was our original part of the deal) for a huge paycut Well that didn't last long. The temptation was too big for him too
haukebri 1mo ago
[dead]
GJR 1mo ago
Classic Dunning-Kruger, do they show respect for your skills?
- yhcj 1mo ago
  used to respect my skills, since we started this project before AI, but as I told him in the beginning, the more he asks a sycophantic AI stuff, while asking me less, the less he will respect my opinion. It's just the nature of things. You like those who agree with you more than those who disagree, but real-life learning doesn't come from everyone telling you you are correct all the time. I believe we're at the point of no return where he didn't ask me a single question before sending a 5K LOC PR
misiek08 1mo ago
"no worries man I know what I'm doing" it’s first sentence in AI-using human mouth that tells me to turn around and run. I’m using models, I’ve built two whole projects without looking at more than 1% of code, but I’ve tested the interface and went through data on disk to verify the assumptions. Sad to see you have a FRIEND who behaved this way.
- dist-epoch 1mo ago
  > I’m using models, I’ve built two whole projects without looking at more than 1% of code, but I’ve tested the interface and went through data on disk to verify the assumptions. so, would you say "no worries man I know what I'm doing" about how you use AI?
- yhcj 1mo ago
  what does "verify the data on disk" even mean? I guess without knowing what the project is it's weird to think testing it + checking some files is enough, at least for me
dreieinsvier 1mo ago
In my opinion, software engineering was never mainly about programming. Programming is a rather small part of the software engineering cycle. Programming by hand is one way (it also works with AI), to make decisions. Decisions about scalability, maintainability and sanity of your software. And still this will pay off! To me it sounds as if he is a very bad software engineer.
crnkofe 1mo ago
Software engineers are splitting into two camps either by choice or by being forced to by management. Those who have the self-discipline to use LLMs responsibly and those that are going all-in on AI. Imo there's a place for both camps but I don't think they can coexist in the same team.
socketcluster 1mo ago
This is literally the recipe for the coming software apocalypse. Just watch the software engineers who say "Let's be careful" lose their jobs and get replaced by non-technical vibe-coders churning out 10K lines of dirty insecure, unmaintainable code per day... Ticking time bomb. I swear, good engineers are going to move to North Korea to monetize because of the amount and size of 'opportunities' this will create. It seems so far-fetched but that's the direction it seems to be heading.
- yhcj 1mo ago
  exactly how I feel. I mean let's face it, we were overpaid and underworked because we were considered magicians, but the magic is gone. What I fear is that it's impossible for the untrained to see the difference between a highly-technical developer and the vibe-coder. Software is so buggy nowadays (just look at Facebook, or Facebook Ads. Crazy) I wonder what's going to happen in the long run. I was banking on the opportunities it will create but nah, have you tried debugging AI-generated codes of thousands of lines where the original dev doesn't exist? It's a mess I don't wanna clean up.
  - socketcluster 1mo ago
    >> I was banking on the opportunities it will create but nah Seems we're on the same wavelength because I had the exact same thought about this. But actually, I'm probably not so fussy. I wouldn't mind cleaning up the mess if I'm paid hourly... But now my concern is: What if they want me to clean up the mess but demand that I do it in a particular way which makes it impossible? I'm already seeing signs of this. This was already kind of the case in my last job; I had to fix things and implement new features but we had to keep the same clunky, over-engineered architecture. My current job doesn't have the same degree of architectural legacy baggage but there is a lot of bureaucracy to deal with instead, which is itself restrictive.
cladopa 1mo ago
AI is not the problem here, but the difference in deep beliefs of the company founders. When I had partners in my business I studied them first deeply like I was going to marry them because I WAS going to marry them! You should agree on your values or else the company will go nowhere. One founder will raw one way and the other the opposite making the boat to stay in the same place. I have a software company and the opposite problem: I am obsessive about testing and meta programming. We write way more testing code than code, we automate everything with meta programming. It was clear several times that we tested and automated way more than necessary. We automated things that only used once for example(although we used later multiple times on other projects). So we had not the usual problems than companies have like bloat or security vulnerabilities but we had the problem of having software that was was super expensive because we did double or triple the code than the competition with tests that developers hated(they are boring to write). Our software took also way more time to market. Companies love to buy the cheapest they can today and tomorrow we will see, so that put us in a difficult position. It was specially hard at first, but then this principles gave us an edge(because most companies would compromise early and not reap the benefits later). Had I a business partner with a different mindset and beliefs, it would have been impossible to me not to change course of the boat in hard times. BTW we use LLMs with great success. It let's us test even more spending way less than before.
- yhcj 1mo ago
  Thanks for your input. I find testing (especially FE, where a single change can ripple through the whole chain) is actually a great way to use LLMs It's sad because I've known this guy for 20 years and since the beginning he had a tendency towards "work smarter, not harder", a good motto at the time you're 20 but I often saw it crippling him in the long run, while having short-term gains. Long-term, funny enough, he said he wanted back into this project because he was very unsatisfied with "easy money" (we both got into SEO at the right time and made a ton of easy money) and wants something stimulating for his brain. In the meantime I had kids, worked my ass off to get the health and fitness level I want (he also wants it... alas nothing changes). I'm kind of quite committed to this and we're maybe 30% away from finishing, but I almost debate sometimes if I should just do the FE vibe-coded and let him see that it won't be as good as I can manually do it (FE is hard in the end). Just get it out of the door, keep the customers that we have and let it kind of die down.
TacticalCoder 1mo ago
> Well, as much as people lose all their muscle by been bed-ridden, he's lost all his brain by being AI Assisted™. Wanna know the answer of those who lost all their brain cells to that? "If there are bugs, it's only because the prompt was off. I'm a better prompt-engineer than your business partner, so this could never ever happen to me." And off to the couch they go sit and shut their brains off.
- yhcj 1mo ago
  Haha this is such a funny argument really. My guy in fact started by blaming himself for prompting wrong, and yesterday he was "upset" that his friend Claudio missed some important documentation details (three API keys were needed and one I had no idea where to get, not mentioned once at all)
p2detar 1mo ago
> Well, as much as people lose all their muscle by been bed-ridden, he's lost all his brain by being AI Assisted™. > THIS is what I am so against when people use AI for everything. This sounds horrendous but can we please stop equating vibe-coding to AI-assisted coding? They are not the same thing. It's one thing to submit 5K vibe-coded untested PR and another thing to use AI to add functionality in a granular way that you can review, or generate boilerplate, or test your ideas and scrap them if they suck and so on.
- yhcj 1mo ago
  That's the thing, that's how he started, but knowing his personality, I knew the temptation would be too high. I warned him. Then yesterday when I started asking him questions about how certain stuff worked, he had absolutely no clue. He didn't even read the docs summarizing what the PR did. In his mind AI is just assisting him. It's just like the alcoholic saying "one more drink won't harm me, I can quit any time".
  - p2detar 1mo ago
    Thanks for expanding on this! I appreciate it and my sympathy to you. I do have a similar case at work, but it's my superior in that case - shipping large volumes of code with Claude, 100% vibed. It's slightly different in the sense of him having almost no clue about programming but having very well self-organization and discipline. Rigorously documents his work (with Claude of course) and commits his Claude sessions in the repo. Funny enough we got 2 paying customers for one the projects he vibed. It blew my mind. I don't know how this will play out, but it's been a bit scary and pushed a lot of us to do more with AI rather than manual coding. I still can't get myself to commit to 100% vibe-coded stuff though.
    - yhcj 1mo ago
      no worries, a lot of these assumptions exist mostly in my head as a frustrated dev. and yeah luckily I ended up quitting just right when coding was getting easy with LLMs and even back then (3 years ago) I remember our PMs and bosses saying "look why does it take you a week? I did in in two hours!" Got riddance to get out of those jobs, BUT I do agree that paying customers != shipping software. Getting paid customers is a great skill and it's the skill my friend has (he's an A class marketer, and not in a fishy or scammy way). The guy just understands marketting. That's why I'm working with him.
pentaphobe 1mo ago
I'm not sure we yet have the measure of how much agents/chatbots will alter our cultural norms, communication style, etc.. A lot of very quick "AI is not the problem" responses (and all in their own top threads. writing rather than conversing.. perhaps a pattern there? but I digress) Agree with the pretext that some problems may be due to bad habits being amplified But to me that default chorus of the "you're holding it wrong" thought-terminating cliche sounds no different to "social media is not an issue, people just need to use control" or "ads are not the issue here, just ignore them.." Or "hey, the button which randomly gives the pigeon seeds when pushed is not the issue here, pigeons just shouldn't be so needy" Also I've seen good engineers (and non-engineers) get swept up in the "magic" of genai progressively lose chunks of their formerly consistent, and long-standing good behaviours
- yhcj 1mo ago
  social media in an excellent example, alcohol, or even marihuana where it's pretty much legal to consume in my home country and a total pain in the ass for those of us who hate the smell. Sucks that my children have to smell it, really different from my chilhood. I don't know almost anyone who preferred having a childhood today (with so much social media and doomscrolling) as compared to the 80's and 90's, when it was just kids playing hide and seek outdoor, a few Michael Jackson home-recorded cassettes, and of course Sonic 2.
mcphage 1mo ago
The only proper response is a “LGTM” and merge it into main.
- yhcj 1mo ago
  problem is I can't, because the BE is not doing what the FE team needs it to do. The FE team consists of me btw.
josefritzishere 1mo ago
I am genuinely worried about skill-rot. My peers code and design skills are degrading so quickly. AI is making each feature harder to debug than the last. That's a skill problem, and if our skills weren't rotting we'd be able to fix it adeptly. But the process seems to ruin our cognitive tools.
- yhcj 1mo ago
  This is the thing that people just simply don't see. And for those who say "well why code and use your brain?", may I remind them that cities where people do a lot of walking are so much enjoyable, better for people mentally and physically than places where people use the "efficient and smart way" of transportation, that being a car. I remember my cousins in the States picking me up by car and walking their dog by car, inside a gated community that was very enjoyable to walk. Pathetic to see. (BTW both my cousins are severly overweight, 200+ pounds)
aogaili 1mo ago
It seems to me the author is gradually accepting the fact that business people (and their grandparents) can now produce thousands lines of code. This was not feasible a year ago. Now, regarding the quality of the code, the edge cases etc, surely someone familiar with the failure modes can review and prompt the AI better. But that doesn't negate the fact that these people are producing huge amount of code using natural language without any programming background. A skill that used to take many months (if not years to master) and require handcrafting the software line by line is now done in English with almost no understanding of programming primitives. And I'd argue that if the models, harnesses and IDEs keep getting better then a layman learning few software best practices would outperform a team of senior developers writing code manually. Therefore, the developers refusing to adapt and adjust will find themselves gradually in a position where a layman can easily outperform their economic output by a huge margins. And in my opinion, the author just found himself in this position, and still in denial of what is happening.
- potro 1mo ago
  > But that doesn't negate the fact that these people are producing huge amount of code using natural language without any programming background. Huge amount of *non-working* code, as illustrated by this article. Also author is not super clear on this point, but according to article the partner has programming background.
  - aogaili 1mo ago
    Yes - but also there are numerous examples of people generating highly functional code. And that fact that this code is at a none working state does not imply that the entire 5k LOC are be distracted, there is probably a lot of business logic coded in there. The issue here is that the author is now forced to use AI to review the 5k lines and he seems to opposed to the idea hence my point that these developers will eventually be forced to adapt.

52 points by yhcj 1mo ago

ckvibubueu 1mo ago

5k is rookie numbers. My PM sent me an 80k line PR and told me to yolo it into production last week.

p2detar 1mo ago
Man, I would straight up tell them I will use AI to review that crap and so be it. In fact this is what I tell to colleagues if they send my non-tested vibe-coded stuff or vibe-generated documentation. Everyone can generate shit today, but I believe testing, reviewing, writing docs, etc. must still go through humans.
- ckvibubueu 1mo ago
  Code review? We have bots for that.
yhcj 1mo ago
haha seriously? Damn I really gotta buckle up

yhcj 1mo ago

OP and long time lurker here, I'm desperate and looking for honest-to-god advice on what to do. I am one of those neurodivergent people who loves programming because it gives me the right stimulation. I also enjoy drawing, gardening, and exercise. I don't own a car because I love walking, and such. So I'm wondering if it's time to call it quits with programming (for a living). Luckily I have some savings and I have other interests from years of doing random jobs and businesses, and as much as I love programming, especially with others, I think very few of us still want to program. I'm like the Last Samurai of programming while everyone is using AI-assisted gattling guns. Is it time to let go?

aprilthird2021 1mo ago
No it's absolutely not time to let go. You are one of a limited set of people with pre-AI taste and intuition for good software. They aren't making any more of them. And you'll be a super valuable asset anywhere you go. I mean, if you want to retire go ahead, but don't do it because of AI. AI is just a tool to generate code faster. It doesn't replace the work of actually making design decisions and knowing what will scale and what's better going forward vs what will work now but spiral into unmanageable spaghetti code soon (yes AIs also have a harder time managing messy code than neat code)
- probably_wrong 1mo ago
  I often read here comments along the lines of "there will be plenty of jobs for AI-unfuckers" [1], but I fear the truth may be closer to "sometimes things are broken, are then fixed with a broken solution, and will remain broken till the end of time". In my last round of job search this year no one asked me questions about good software practices but they did ask me how proficient I was with AI agents. And let's not forget that we are part of an industry whose motto is "move fast and break things". Sure, NASA has a zero-bugs approach to software dev, but they don't have room for all of us. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44646820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44646820
  - kakacik 1mo ago
    SV echo chamber here it seems. No, most businesses globally don't work in idiotic and often amoral mode of 'move fast and break things' (and unlawful on top of that, but who has time for some boring stuff like that when greed fully takes over). Banks will not work like that for next 10 years at least. The tiny amount of money one could save on those big banking projects by using llms aggressively will bite back immediately when shit just doesn't work, clients leave for good and regulators will fine you to the ground (or remove your banking license). Many other businesses who are not race to the bottom and realize how crucial reliable IT is to their business also won't go that way anytime soon. World is not ending, there is some transformation and thats about it. Its true there will be much less jobs for devs but its mostly affecting newcomers. Statistical models are not making code better than experienced humans, and won't for some time if ever.

k310 1mo ago

> After this project, I'm done. I might turn into a yoga teacher. I gather that you don't have the "juice" to demand better. Even AI testing AI would be better (in some parallel universe?) than not testing at all. So become a consultant, preaching the simple gospel of "test this goddamn thing before unleashing it, or the tougher gospel of "Well if AI is doing all the work, then why don't you find a job that tolerates garbage?" I almost always had more responsibility than authority, except for a job where I actually had a field team. They were laid off by the "authorities" in order of greatest competence first and I ended up with one guy who made countless goofs, like creating overlapping disk partitions. I ended up redoing all his work, more than doubling my load. Does that sound familiar? In your case, it sounds like you will end up similarly, unless you find a way get your management to establish a "No broken shit" rule. I know that's daunting, and in many jobs, I could only finagle minor changes, usually by talking with other people more tenured, who had a piece of management's ear. If it amounts to "I must double my work or this all falls apart" while your partner pushes buttons (my charge was a "button-pusher"), then leave, and good luck. But do give it one college try to get some sanity into the system.

yhcj 1mo ago
Thanks for your reply. I did work as an Engineering Manager for a bit but honestly hated it with my guts. Promised myself I would never do that again. I have two young children so they're a bigger priority right now. Not to sound pretentious but I was top 10 in my country (for example, I read a 500-page book on Assembly language the night before and aced a test that 90% of people failed) so it's really hard for me to work with people who don't get things as fast as I do. Nothing to brag as it really isn't all hard work, I'm just quite neurodivergent compared to the average. It comes with A LOT of downsides (some nights I only sleep 2 hours because I came up with the solution to a hard problem while I was asleep and wake up to code it and it works) Now, all this is because I am now at a crossroad where I have enough money and life experience in other jobs (I stopped programming for 10 years in fact because I had a pretty successful business). The sad part is that I rekindled my love with programming in the last decade (I'm past 40), but it might be time to let it go and go back to doing business. EDIT: I did work as a consultant (reluctantly) and was charging $500/hr because I really didn't like it but the demand was there. With the economy not being what it was and all the "AI prompt vibe coders" etc blah blah out there I don't really know what's a good rate now.

mbrumlow 1mo ago

The problem is not vibe coding. The problem is the people doing this were never good software engineers before vibe coding. Simply put you still need good practices to produce working good code with AI. Oddly what I have found best is patterns that many would cringe and demeans unit test and integration test. Yes I still vibe unit test and integration test, but more than ever I have to put on my PM and QA hat, even more so with web dev. For me the only part of the process that has changed is I don’t write the code. I still setup environments to run the code, I still manually poke at things I suspect will be fragile. But most importantly I still always run the software before shipping it.

Keyframe 1mo ago
Couldn't have said it better myself. Issue at hand is if you're working in an environment that enables such people and even encourages that behaviour. Suddenly, their voice is the same where it was never even a whisper before, and you can't do anything about it. It is extremely demotivating and I would actually propose a more radical approach to it - either embrace the shit in full and commit to it as well or really do engage into another company where there's a better filter for hiring. The latter are usually smaller companies because they can't afford no to.
- yhcj 1mo ago
  I actually quit bigger companies and SV contracts because the amount of hype was way overblown. Nothing could not be AI, really. Think about how crazy it is that Jensen Huang is saying "AGI is here", seriously. I first thought malice, now I think it's just plain religious Zeal. We're not a company, it's just me and my pal. I keep 50% of the product and profits and he pays me to do that (because I have way more expertise than him) curious question where you work, the AI craze is not happening?
  - Keyframe 1mo ago
    curious question where you work, the AI craze is not happening? of course it is. There's no escape IMO unless, as you've said, go solo or with a small team. I just don't know of any company of a notable size that's not into it full force. It's both disgusting and amazing to look at really. Give it a few years and if it fizzles out I'm curious what will happen. If it turns great, I'm even more curious what will happen. Weird times. Just "yesterday" we were all careful what and how we do stuff, you have now people who barely understand things slopping together OS and people use it blindly (Omarchy), and then shocked pikachu faces when giant gaping holes are noticed in it.. and people still do not care. Amazing trainwreck of a timeline, hah. I'm seriously considering pivoting myself to security.

Valodim 1mo ago

Doesn't sound like AI is necessarily the root the problem. If he's not the person to test, iterate, and deliver quality with AI, he probably wouldn't be without it. You just figured it out sooner. Or, if you have reason to believe he's got what it takes - treat it like an leaving opportunity, give him room to make mistakes. This is, ime, what a rookie AI user mistake looks like. It is easy to get carried away by the momentum. Many have fallen into that trap, not all are irredeemably bad software engineers.

Valodim 1mo ago
*learning opportunity. Damn autotype
- the8472 1mo ago
  There is a certain irony blaming the autotype rather than the lack of review...
greggoB 1mo ago
> If he's not the person to test, iterate, and deliver quality with AI, he probably wouldn't be without it I see the take quite often on HN, and I have a major gripe with it. Yes, people were lazy and we had these problems before LLMs hit the scene, but clearly there has been a sea-change in both the frequency and degree of this behaviour since. A problem can both exist independent of a catalyst and be exacerbated by it. Arguments that try to window-dress this away are not particularly productive.
- p2detar 1mo ago
  I think the argument is quite valid. OP writes "business partner". It begs the question - would their business partner get on board if they didn't have a AI subscription by their side? How about instead of 5K PR, OP got the same half-baked buggy crap or absolutely nothing instead? We don't know the business partner, but we are ready to throw the problem at AI agents right away. Well, I find this not particularly productive.

onesandofgrain 1mo ago

This is enforced in my company so buckle up

yhcj 1mo ago
I literally was earning 5x times more working for contracts and companies but got super sick of it, I was happy to work with one single guy (who PROMISED to keep AI at bay, it was our original part of the deal) for a huge paycut Well that didn't last long. The temptation was too big for him too

haukebri 1mo ago

[dead]

GJR 1mo ago

Classic Dunning-Kruger, do they show respect for your skills?

yhcj 1mo ago
used to respect my skills, since we started this project before AI, but as I told him in the beginning, the more he asks a sycophantic AI stuff, while asking me less, the less he will respect my opinion. It's just the nature of things. You like those who agree with you more than those who disagree, but real-life learning doesn't come from everyone telling you you are correct all the time. I believe we're at the point of no return where he didn't ask me a single question before sending a 5K LOC PR

misiek08 1mo ago

"no worries man I know what I'm doing" it’s first sentence in AI-using human mouth that tells me to turn around and run. I’m using models, I’ve built two whole projects without looking at more than 1% of code, but I’ve tested the interface and went through data on disk to verify the assumptions. Sad to see you have a FRIEND who behaved this way.

dist-epoch 1mo ago
> I’m using models, I’ve built two whole projects without looking at more than 1% of code, but I’ve tested the interface and went through data on disk to verify the assumptions. so, would you say "no worries man I know what I'm doing" about how you use AI?
yhcj 1mo ago
what does "verify the data on disk" even mean? I guess without knowing what the project is it's weird to think testing it + checking some files is enough, at least for me

dreieinsvier 1mo ago

In my opinion, software engineering was never mainly about programming. Programming is a rather small part of the software engineering cycle. Programming by hand is one way (it also works with AI), to make decisions. Decisions about scalability, maintainability and sanity of your software. And still this will pay off! To me it sounds as if he is a very bad software engineer.

crnkofe 1mo ago

Software engineers are splitting into two camps either by choice or by being forced to by management. Those who have the self-discipline to use LLMs responsibly and those that are going all-in on AI. Imo there's a place for both camps but I don't think they can coexist in the same team.

socketcluster 1mo ago

This is literally the recipe for the coming software apocalypse. Just watch the software engineers who say "Let's be careful" lose their jobs and get replaced by non-technical vibe-coders churning out 10K lines of dirty insecure, unmaintainable code per day... Ticking time bomb. I swear, good engineers are going to move to North Korea to monetize because of the amount and size of 'opportunities' this will create. It seems so far-fetched but that's the direction it seems to be heading.

yhcj 1mo ago
exactly how I feel. I mean let's face it, we were overpaid and underworked because we were considered magicians, but the magic is gone. What I fear is that it's impossible for the untrained to see the difference between a highly-technical developer and the vibe-coder. Software is so buggy nowadays (just look at Facebook, or Facebook Ads. Crazy) I wonder what's going to happen in the long run. I was banking on the opportunities it will create but nah, have you tried debugging AI-generated codes of thousands of lines where the original dev doesn't exist? It's a mess I don't wanna clean up.
- socketcluster 1mo ago
  >> I was banking on the opportunities it will create but nah Seems we're on the same wavelength because I had the exact same thought about this. But actually, I'm probably not so fussy. I wouldn't mind cleaning up the mess if I'm paid hourly... But now my concern is: What if they want me to clean up the mess but demand that I do it in a particular way which makes it impossible? I'm already seeing signs of this. This was already kind of the case in my last job; I had to fix things and implement new features but we had to keep the same clunky, over-engineered architecture. My current job doesn't have the same degree of architectural legacy baggage but there is a lot of bureaucracy to deal with instead, which is itself restrictive.

cladopa 1mo ago

AI is not the problem here, but the difference in deep beliefs of the company founders. When I had partners in my business I studied them first deeply like I was going to marry them because I WAS going to marry them! You should agree on your values or else the company will go nowhere. One founder will raw one way and the other the opposite making the boat to stay in the same place. I have a software company and the opposite problem: I am obsessive about testing and meta programming. We write way more testing code than code, we automate everything with meta programming. It was clear several times that we tested and automated way more than necessary. We automated things that only used once for example(although we used later multiple times on other projects). So we had not the usual problems than companies have like bloat or security vulnerabilities but we had the problem of having software that was was super expensive because we did double or triple the code than the competition with tests that developers hated(they are boring to write). Our software took also way more time to market. Companies love to buy the cheapest they can today and tomorrow we will see, so that put us in a difficult position. It was specially hard at first, but then this principles gave us an edge(because most companies would compromise early and not reap the benefits later). Had I a business partner with a different mindset and beliefs, it would have been impossible to me not to change course of the boat in hard times. BTW we use LLMs with great success. It let's us test even more spending way less than before.

yhcj 1mo ago
Thanks for your input. I find testing (especially FE, where a single change can ripple through the whole chain) is actually a great way to use LLMs It's sad because I've known this guy for 20 years and since the beginning he had a tendency towards "work smarter, not harder", a good motto at the time you're 20 but I often saw it crippling him in the long run, while having short-term gains. Long-term, funny enough, he said he wanted back into this project because he was very unsatisfied with "easy money" (we both got into SEO at the right time and made a ton of easy money) and wants something stimulating for his brain. In the meantime I had kids, worked my ass off to get the health and fitness level I want (he also wants it... alas nothing changes). I'm kind of quite committed to this and we're maybe 30% away from finishing, but I almost debate sometimes if I should just do the FE vibe-coded and let him see that it won't be as good as I can manually do it (FE is hard in the end). Just get it out of the door, keep the customers that we have and let it kind of die down.

TacticalCoder 1mo ago

> Well, as much as people lose all their muscle by been bed-ridden, he's lost all his brain by being AI Assisted™. Wanna know the answer of those who lost all their brain cells to that? "If there are bugs, it's only because the prompt was off. I'm a better prompt-engineer than your business partner, so this could never ever happen to me." And off to the couch they go sit and shut their brains off.

yhcj 1mo ago
Haha this is such a funny argument really. My guy in fact started by blaming himself for prompting wrong, and yesterday he was "upset" that his friend Claudio missed some important documentation details (three API keys were needed and one I had no idea where to get, not mentioned once at all)

p2detar 1mo ago

> Well, as much as people lose all their muscle by been bed-ridden, he's lost all his brain by being AI Assisted™. > THIS is what I am so against when people use AI for everything. This sounds horrendous but can we please stop equating vibe-coding to AI-assisted coding? They are not the same thing. It's one thing to submit 5K vibe-coded untested PR and another thing to use AI to add functionality in a granular way that you can review, or generate boilerplate, or test your ideas and scrap them if they suck and so on.

yhcj 1mo ago
That's the thing, that's how he started, but knowing his personality, I knew the temptation would be too high. I warned him. Then yesterday when I started asking him questions about how certain stuff worked, he had absolutely no clue. He didn't even read the docs summarizing what the PR did. In his mind AI is just assisting him. It's just like the alcoholic saying "one more drink won't harm me, I can quit any time".
- p2detar 1mo ago
  Thanks for expanding on this! I appreciate it and my sympathy to you. I do have a similar case at work, but it's my superior in that case - shipping large volumes of code with Claude, 100% vibed. It's slightly different in the sense of him having almost no clue about programming but having very well self-organization and discipline. Rigorously documents his work (with Claude of course) and commits his Claude sessions in the repo. Funny enough we got 2 paying customers for one the projects he vibed. It blew my mind. I don't know how this will play out, but it's been a bit scary and pushed a lot of us to do more with AI rather than manual coding. I still can't get myself to commit to 100% vibe-coded stuff though.
  - yhcj 1mo ago
    no worries, a lot of these assumptions exist mostly in my head as a frustrated dev. and yeah luckily I ended up quitting just right when coding was getting easy with LLMs and even back then (3 years ago) I remember our PMs and bosses saying "look why does it take you a week? I did in in two hours!" Got riddance to get out of those jobs, BUT I do agree that paying customers != shipping software. Getting paid customers is a great skill and it's the skill my friend has (he's an A class marketer, and not in a fishy or scammy way). The guy just understands marketting. That's why I'm working with him.

pentaphobe 1mo ago

I'm not sure we yet have the measure of how much agents/chatbots will alter our cultural norms, communication style, etc.. A lot of very quick "AI is not the problem" responses (and all in their own top threads. writing rather than conversing.. perhaps a pattern there? but I digress) Agree with the pretext that some problems may be due to bad habits being amplified But to me that default chorus of the "you're holding it wrong" thought-terminating cliche sounds no different to "social media is not an issue, people just need to use control" or "ads are not the issue here, just ignore them.." Or "hey, the button which randomly gives the pigeon seeds when pushed is not the issue here, pigeons just shouldn't be so needy" Also I've seen good engineers (and non-engineers) get swept up in the "magic" of genai progressively lose chunks of their formerly consistent, and long-standing good behaviours

yhcj 1mo ago
social media in an excellent example, alcohol, or even marihuana where it's pretty much legal to consume in my home country and a total pain in the ass for those of us who hate the smell. Sucks that my children have to smell it, really different from my chilhood. I don't know almost anyone who preferred having a childhood today (with so much social media and doomscrolling) as compared to the 80's and 90's, when it was just kids playing hide and seek outdoor, a few Michael Jackson home-recorded cassettes, and of course Sonic 2.

mcphage 1mo ago

The only proper response is a “LGTM” and merge it into main.

yhcj 1mo ago
problem is I can't, because the BE is not doing what the FE team needs it to do. The FE team consists of me btw.

josefritzishere 1mo ago

I am genuinely worried about skill-rot. My peers code and design skills are degrading so quickly. AI is making each feature harder to debug than the last. That's a skill problem, and if our skills weren't rotting we'd be able to fix it adeptly. But the process seems to ruin our cognitive tools.

yhcj 1mo ago
This is the thing that people just simply don't see. And for those who say "well why code and use your brain?", may I remind them that cities where people do a lot of walking are so much enjoyable, better for people mentally and physically than places where people use the "efficient and smart way" of transportation, that being a car. I remember my cousins in the States picking me up by car and walking their dog by car, inside a gated community that was very enjoyable to walk. Pathetic to see. (BTW both my cousins are severly overweight, 200+ pounds)

aogaili 1mo ago

It seems to me the author is gradually accepting the fact that business people (and their grandparents) can now produce thousands lines of code. This was not feasible a year ago. Now, regarding the quality of the code, the edge cases etc, surely someone familiar with the failure modes can review and prompt the AI better. But that doesn't negate the fact that these people are producing huge amount of code using natural language without any programming background. A skill that used to take many months (if not years to master) and require handcrafting the software line by line is now done in English with almost no understanding of programming primitives. And I'd argue that if the models, harnesses and IDEs keep getting better then a layman learning few software best practices would outperform a team of senior developers writing code manually. Therefore, the developers refusing to adapt and adjust will find themselves gradually in a position where a layman can easily outperform their economic output by a huge margins. And in my opinion, the author just found himself in this position, and still in denial of what is happening.

potro 1mo ago
> But that doesn't negate the fact that these people are producing huge amount of code using natural language without any programming background. Huge amount of *non-working* code, as illustrated by this article. Also author is not super clear on this point, but according to article the partner has programming background.
- aogaili 1mo ago
  Yes - but also there are numerous examples of people generating highly functional code. And that fact that this code is at a none working state does not imply that the entire 5k LOC are be distracted, there is probably a lot of business logic coded in there. The issue here is that the author is now forced to use AI to review the 5k lines and he seems to opposed to the idea hence my point that these developers will eventually be forced to adapt.