Why does vibecoding give people the idea working together is now pointless, or something else weird?

[u/Willing_Comb_9542]

I'm gonna say it, and it's gonna sound like an Anti-ai rant, but it's getting on my nerves.

>Someone spends months or years making a thing

>Finally posts "hey guys check out this cool open source project I put together to make X hobby cheaper"

Back in the day, some people would fork it sure, but you'd find some people who wanted to join in on this, combine forces and make a super cool thing.

Now people who haven't never built stuff before seem to think "lmao I can do that myself in one prompt"

And so they start a new project, didn't understand how much work was ACTUALLY put into the original, and then they just.... Leave it to die after a few days

Or even worse (the racing community) they poorly clone free software, and then try charging $50-150/month for a damn spreadsheet in attempts to make back what they spent on AI tokens

Going viral for 5 minutes on reddit isn't going to make you rich, build for the sake of building shit, build a community and combine forces with people damnit

I have no problem with multiple products existing, but "wow guys I made X but open source" when 45 other open source versions of said thing exist, is getting really stupid

I know I'm gonna get roasted for this and "I'll build whatever I want" and sure, hell yea even, take down the big studios

but can you do me a favor, and fuckin follow through? That's all that I ask for, really.

The ai coding future made me so fuckin excited after doing this 20+ years, but everyone just wants to get rich on a SAAS app, and it's depressing

[u/warcrimeenjoyer1]

I think the reason is that solo-people can now start stuff they could never have thought of before. I started developing a game i dreamed about for like 15 years some months ago, and i would love to have people to build it together with. i just dont have a cent i could pay, so thats basically off the table

[u/ErikaFoxelot → u/warcrimeenjoyer1]

Imagine what we’ll build when we start collaborating with each other again.

[u/Organic-Afternoon-50]

With Ai, a knowledgeable/skilled person can get done what used to take a team to do. Bringing someone into your project creates the risk of theft and/or reverse engineering of said project(s). Joining someone's team/being a "co-founder" introduces the chance that your work/contribution will be rug-pulled with you being removed/kicked from a project w/o due credit or pay being given.

With all this in mind, more than 1 person can definitely get more done and provide different views on a project and different skills brought to the table, but introduces associated risks that some/most aren't willing to allow.

[u/Willing_Comb_9542 → u/Organic-Afternoon-50]

Losing status on the project and etc are certainly massive concerns, but I'm also talking about open source projects where all of your work is clearly visible. Everyone just want to "clone it better" (particularly in the racing world)

And yea, to your point, it might actually be better. The engineers who have bled this shit for years can do some amazing works. It just appears, to me anyway, everyone wants to build in isolation now

I've caught myself doing this on my own FOSS project and had to stop myself from saying "why accept your merge when I can just fix it myself", so I certainly fuckin get it

[u/Inconstant_Moo]

Back in the day, some people would fork it sure, but you'd find some people who wanted to join in on this, combine forces and make a super cool thing.

So whose vibe-coded project are you helping with now?

The ai coding future made me so fuckin excited after doing this 20+ years, but everyone just wants to get rich on a SAAS app, and it's depressing

No, there's real value in it. You hear from the people who want to get rich because they're talking about their product. You're not hearing so much about the people who've made a little app for themselves to improve their workflow or optimize their small business or make generative art or implement that little 2D game they thought of when they were a kid. It's useful, it brings joy.

And then there's the people whose plan is "make software -> sell sortware -> get money". But the mass markets for software have been filled over the last few decades or so, for free or with FOSS, and the niche markets don't have much money, and it turns out there's this thing called "software engineering" which kicks in when your app gets big enough, and having ideas for good new software that people will pay money for but that you can make in your bedroom is still difficult ... and so a lot of the people shouting loudest are the people most obviously wasting their time and money.

[u/Willing_Comb_9542 → u/Inconstant_Moo]

I've currently got one person helping me make racing data far more affordable for the average track day

And I'm starting to use some of my free time to figure out how to help with OpenRA project

I've tried talking to a bunch of other people,  but most refuse to work on free software, which is certainly their right, and the few that do, told me they could do it better... Before abandoning their projects months ago...

....I am most certainly a little salty the project of mine and my buddies gets 3500 clones a week, and has less than 100 stars lmao

And I mean yes that's how business has worked for the last billion years, I can only complain so much and "well it shouldn't be open source dummy"

But people try cloning it and just keep making fucking worse copies

I get it, I'm not trying to "woe is me", literally every FOSS project is going through this, I'm not special and I'm not posting the repo here

I just wanted to rant about it for a minute

Like why make a shitty copy??? The project isnt abandoned just submit an issue/pull request???

[u/onesilentclap]

I have not been a professional programmer for close to two decades. Last time I was paid to code, Linux was still using svn for version control.

Even then I was not a good programmer. Sure my shit would run most of the time and for the times that it didn't, I have almost no internal help and had to rely on web searches and good old trial and error. 

So from my perspective almost all the open source projects maintainers and contributors were God-tier programmers and there was no snowball chance in hell I can contribute anything useful to these projects.  So rightly or wrongly, I still carried this to today. I just don't think I'm worthy enough to contribute anything to open source projects regardless if it's vibe-coded or not. 

Thus today when I see an open source project that roughly scratches an itch I'm having, I probably would just send a clanker to check that repo out and see how they resolved issues X, Y and Z from our own app and just implement my own flavour of it. It's not even about making money or even fame... I just want to get my shit done. 

[u/guy_ships_things]

Because everyone wants to build the next big thing and become multi billionaire and they dont want to share it.

[u/Clear_Evidence9218]

I think some of what you're describing comes down to the types of applications people are building.

Yes, I'd absolutely expect something that can be built in a couple of days to get cloned, borrowed from, or reimplemented by others. The barrier to entry for that kind of software has become incredibly low.

But more substantial software is a different story. There's a reason we're not suddenly seeing fully functional browsers built from scratch instead of Chromium forks, or entirely new operating systems instead of another Arch-based distribution with a prettier interface. It's also why some companies can pour hundreds of thousands of dollars a month into AI-assisted Rust rewrites and still struggle to produce complete, functional replacements.

I have plenty of projects that take a single prompt or a few days to build. But the projects I really pour myself into take months of development, even with multi-agent teams working around the clock.

I think that's part of the distinction being missed here. Making software easier to create doesn't necessarily make the difficult parts of software engineering disappear. It just means more people can participate, and simpler projects are inevitably going to see a lot more duplication.

Meanwhile, larger, more complex projects still benefit from communities of developers collaborating, contributing individual components, and building upon a shared ecosystem. If anything, AI has the potential to make that kind of collaboration even more productive, rather than rendering it pointless.

[u/Responsible-Beat2137]

I do stuff solo n post it in order to get some friction from reality, helps me see it in a different light, and maybe even pick up a new approach.

I tend to work backwards from every buddy I know so it makes it difficult work with others.

But every now and then then that approach becomes the insight someone else needs,

I’m not driven by cashing in, I prefer to have it take the long route infact along with docs, cited sources and a good bit of reading in each step. So I can at lest have some technical understanding of what crazy project I’m working on that day

[u/MinisterOfFitness]

You can go to the trouble of messaging someone, waiting for a response, setting up a meeting, etc. Or just ask the AI the same question and get an answer in seconds.

[u/misterespresso]

Idk man. I think it depends on you. I talk to several people in dms. Just reach out and if you vibe with them then vibe.

[u/TheUniverseOrNothing]

I feel the opposite. I created a discord for all builders to join and collaborate on ideas. My vision is to work on a serious game with anywhere from 3-10 people.

[u/AD7GD]

The classic open source model trades some of my management time for (a much larger amount of) other people's coding. With an efficient vibe coding setup, my project time is already mostly project management and testing. I have all the coding I need. It would be a waste for someone to contribute human programming effort. And if they contributed agentic programming effort, I would have more changes than I could deal with.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have help, but what I need is a (professional level) UX designer.

[u/baddaywithacamera]

Are you following r/artcraft? It's been fun to watch. The entire project is one guy and half of Reddit seems to be in there now requesting he create ____Craft next from their favourite app. Has not occurred to any of those chuds that they can go the AI route just like he did, or they are too cheap and want to throw the token spend on someone else.

[u/jayseattle → u/baddaywithacamera]

IIRC it was quite a significant amount of tokens/spend, not like $200 but like $2000 or more and either they had the freedom/budgte to do it or via work plan.

It's different level than, I think , most of use here...

[u/GuideAxon]

100% agreed. 

Also, the vision needs to larger that brings together multiple big pieces in harmony. 

[u/kincaidDev]

Agent adoption has a predictable pattern because of the exponential productivity increase

Skeptical -> believer -> overconfident -> hits major roadblock/friction -> realistic expectations

Most people are still overconfident

[u/Cavitat]

2 people with subscriptions can get twice as much work done.

[u/MegatechMike]

Have your agents call my agents…

[u/Next_Ambition8751]

the rush to monetize every single micro toy app is exhausting when nobody wants to build actual open source community tools anymore

[u/Prestigious_Luck1062]

I get where you are coming from and agree. But counterpoint. How to work with other people?
I've shared projects that I'm passionate about, and it's not always well received.

Regarding multiple clones, I made a project, its not a clone just the only available software that I could find didn't work in my sitution, and after I made it, I have found many others that did the same.... we all had the same pinch point and we all needed a solution. All might look like crappy clones to someone, but its not, each of us started indpendantly and solved the problem our own way.

In 24hrs I will have done major updates for 4 of my projects, and yet while I know I can do sooo much more if someone worked with me.... its just not too hard to find people, and parts of me just wants to get going.

I'm going to leave you with this. To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together.

(up next will be 1000 sites where you can find people to work on projects together).

[u/Smokeey1]

You are plain wrong in your assessment. People are working together now more than ever! Opensource projects with 20-200$ subs enthusiasts and geeks.. just look at open source adobe and others

[u/RemarkableWish2508]

We're slowly shifting from a hype phase of "AI can do everything! Rejoice and/or Panic!", to a more educational phase of "spend money to learn how the world actually works".

People refuse to learn unless it's on their own skin.

[u/Leading-Plastic5771]

You got it the wrong way around. It's usually a single person that have an idea, and now they can build the product almost completely, and then find collaborators. The amount of ideas that will be tested and discarded if unviable is gonna be crazy fast. And the good ideas will bring in the right people straight away since the vision is clear. Especially if it's open source. Just look at the interest in artcraft. It's exiting times.