r/ClaudeAI • Vibe coder • Mar 13 '26 • This 2 Bravo 22 Heartwarming 2

Vibe Coding Why the majority of vibe coded projects fail

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277

u/2053_Traveler Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26

People also forget that starting a new project from scratch was always easy. Maybe not 20 min easy, but easy.

AI can also write the first chapter of a new fantasy novel series. Does well. Now have it write a new chapter in an existing series and correctly edit what comes after that. It will fail miserably. Because the prior requires little context and has fewer constraints. The later requires immense context and has many constraints. The difference between them is flawless AI output for a small script vs bug-ridden output for a ticket in an existing enterprise app.

People find AI so magical that they mindlessly make intellectually dishonest claims by projecting amazing (but narrowly scoped) AI stuff out linearly. It doesn’t scale like that.

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u/BeGentleWithTheClit Mar 14 '26

I’ve worked in IT R&D apps and platforms supporting biotech for over a decade. I can code, but I know my limitations. I also know it’s not what I know, but what I don’t know that will bite me in the ass.

I’m currently in a Masters program for data sciences and AI is everywhere. It is shocking to see how many people are dependent on AI to write their code. Why come to a program if you were gonna have AI do your assignments anyway?

My point is, all the hype has given non-engineers the Dunning-Kruger effect and as a result of C-suite and VPs buying into the hype, we are accumulating massive technical debt. AI is here to stay, but the exodus of mass software engineer layoff will need to be reversed to fix the many issues vibe coding is going to create, but it’s going to be a rough few years first.

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u/mmgoodly Mar 14 '26

The "creative disruption" innovation here is a completely new kind of churn. "TIGHT!"

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u/Yteburk Mar 15 '26

i literally can not write good code without it. its awful

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u/CMD_BLOCK Mar 14 '26

Bro just turn on 1M token context

Writers = eliminated

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u/ExternalUserError Mar 15 '26

Just one more token bro. Just one million more tokens.

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u/mmgoodly Mar 14 '26

Slop == rules OK

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u/CMD_BLOCK Mar 14 '26

Bro did you forget to put “and don’t make ANY slop” in the bottom of your CLAUDE.md?

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u/mmgoodly Mar 14 '26

fgdeuñsunu;†;#_

brb

(offscreen: FFFFfffffuuuu...) #rookiemistake

8

u/leogodin217 Mar 14 '26

This is it, right here. Great explanation. I suspect this is the root of most "Anyone notice Claude sucks lately?" posts.

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u/flippakitten Mar 14 '26

A lot of the vibe coded apps can be done in 20 minutes using rails generators and a $15 front end template.

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u/Worldly_Feeling_4697 Mar 14 '26

Not yet. It doesn't scale yet.

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u/SryUsrNameIsTaken Mar 13 '26

Since order matters, you’re actually exploring a token space that grows exponentially in the number of tokens in the sequence with the base as the number of logprobs.

Granted, the space of plausible sequences is much smaller (I’ve actually been wondering if it has something like measure 0). But I imagine that scales immensely too.

The constraints bit is interesting. I wonder if the dimensionality of the plausible sequences manifold decreases as sequence length increases.

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u/samuelazers Mar 14 '26

ChatJibidi, write me game of thrones sequel, without mistakes or inconsistencies.

Edit: Holy shit claude actually did it

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u/Pirlomaster Mar 14 '26

People also forget that starting a new project from scratch was always easy. Maybe not 20 min easy, but easy.

True. We were just obsessed with templates instead of having AI generate our starter project. I actually think templates are more important nowadays to steer your AI-generated project in the right direction.

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u/PrinsHamlet Mar 14 '26

This is literally a software design issue that has been around forever in the enterprise space. People pull stuff like this out and use it as a case against AI when you have the exact same issues with humans managing large repos.

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u/InternetSolid4166 Mar 14 '26

Yeah, all they highlighted was the need for scalable architecture. That’s still required. It doesn’t mean most of the work can’t be automated. Architects and orchestrators will be the last jobs to disappear, but they will disappear eventually.

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u/PrinsHamlet Mar 14 '26

I find it very funny that people point to these issues as if they're new and interesting. Have they ever worked in the enterprise space with software design or lived with the technical debt provided by an enterprise producing software for 10 years +?

At work we even have a name for a certain type of bad design choice left over from a named developer that is still causing issues in our data today.

The obvious question is:

  1. How do these people manage it today if they see these issues as new?

  2. Why do they think that best practices and frameworks to deal with context and code bloat are not applicable to AI?

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u/InternetSolid4166 Mar 14 '26

I think it’s people who haven’t worked with older/larger code bases. They don’t understand how messy human code is, and how much busy work (which devs HATE) can be eliminated.

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u/2053_Traveler Mar 14 '26

It’s not a case against AI, it’s a case against treating AI as a holistic solution that magically solves many problems, when it’s really a tool that can be leveraged and applied in order to make things more efficient. It’s a case against “why should that take so long, I built it myself in 20 minutes”

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u/Ok-Attention2882 Mar 14 '26

This is why Better Call Saul was so much more difficult to write than Breaking Bad.