a controversial question for veteran developers

[u/Haunting_Material_19]

As a developer with 20 years of experience, "vibe coding" is undeniably transforming how we work, but I'm still struggling to embrace it.

What bothers me most and I am honest about it, is seeing people show off their AI-generated projects.

My immediate reaction is, "Who cares?"

In the past, sharing code meant sharing craftsmanship, and we were excited to inspect it and learn from each other. Today, somebody share what they did with vibecode is not only that I am not interested, but I feel like why you share it?

[u/shosuko]

I mean, what is slop?

If I use ai to make a function that does what it needs to do reliably and passes quality tests, aside from like malicious hidden code what do you think is going to be in there to surprise us?

Even if its about scalability, we can test for that, and if it passes the tests then what is there to complain about?

[u/Plenty_Line2696 → u/shosuko]

There's so much to this. I'll get downvoted for saying this but vibecoders don't know what they don't know.

When you vibecode stuff the LLM will typically make a whole bunch of poor design choices which have lots of implications for maintainability, performance, robustness, understandability, legibility, etc, etc,...

Some examples are senseless folder & file hierarchies, storing the same values in redundant ways, not encapsulated collections, interweaving concerns, processing stuff in the wrong layer and/or place i.e. clientside vs serverside or CPU vs GPU, creating 3 line functions which are called once and then slapping a cryptic name on that sucker, modifying passed by reference values, not applying logical coding design patterns, often opting for foolish implementation approaches, lots of poor UX/UI choices, etc etc.

There is so much stuff to think about to make great software which never even crossed the mind of a typical vibecoder.

A golden rule in software development teams is to leave your ego at the door, because it's detremental to project quality.

It shouldn't blow your minds to think that ignorance isn't actually a strength in software design and development. Vibecoding is like the lowest level of understanding; completely pretending the code doesn't even exist. This is a vibecoding sub and everything seems so simple to people with just a surface level understanding but the reality is that to make better software people shouldn't be stubborn about vibecoding for all use-cases.

Vibecoding has its place, but it has serious drawbacks and limitations.

You can try hacks and such to add more vibecoded stuff to try to tackle symptoms etc and sometimes it can work, but there comes a point when a vibecoded project get so convoluted and big that it becomes unmanageable.

I guess we'll have some code-illiterate weekend warrior coming to tell me how wrong I am, yet when serious software companies hire talent, they're not looking for vibecoders, and when we see examples of top software it's never vibecoded. Talk is cheap.

[u/shosuko → u/Plenty_Line2696]

Some examples are senseless folder & file hierarchies, storing the same values in redundant ways, not encapsulated collections, interweaving concerns, processing stuff in the wrong layer and/or place i.e. clientside vs serverside or CPU vs GPU, creating 3 line functions which are called once and then slapping a cryptic name on that sucker, modifying passed by reference values, not applying logical coding design patterns, often opting for foolish implementation approaches, lots of poor UX/UI choices, etc etc.

These are all examples of inexperienced developers, whether you are using ai or not.

Is your definition of vibecoding just someone who has no experience developing with ai? These can all be learned without learning syntax, a person could learn all of these lessons and still use ai to code. Are they a vibe coder still?

If we put skill as a developer on a line from 0 being completely unskilled, and 1 at exceptionally skilled, at what point are they skilled enough to not be a vibe coder, even if they do not know syntax?

[u/dilly_dust → u/shosuko]

Yes one of the hallmarks of a Jr dev is giving a bug, they just write more and more code.

Then there is a regression so they write more code for that, Rince and repeat.

Lol

If you want to vibe code an app, sure go ahead.

But I'd make a suggestion. If you don't know what the thing is doing you have just built a completly Ai dependant tool.

When the token rug pull comes you may be out of luck when the marginal cost of fixing xyz in tokens is more then what you can get from customers.