This article is not about vibe coding per se, it's about not having strong boundaries between you as the developer, and your client. You should not be allowing the client to dictate how you work, much less them having the permissions to merge in code. This was true before AI too, where clients might say, do X this way, and you should simply say no, because they are paying for your expertise*. It's like hiring a plumber then trying to tell them how to fix the toilet.
*as an aside, this reminds me of the classic joke where the client asks for the price list for a developer's services:
I do it: $500
I do it, but you watch: $750
I do it, and you help: $1,000
You do it yourself: $5,000
You start it, and you want me to finish it: $10,000
Back when I saw doing freelance work, the worst type of client was the one who was semi-technical, meaning they were technical enough to write code that they wanted to contribute to the project or to have strong architectural opinions, but not technical enough to understand the nuances and the implications of their suggestions.
I guess that, with vibe coding, it is very easy for every client to become like this.
Video/audio production here and the exact same rules apply. You can’t let clients dictate your tools any more than you feel you should tell your plumber what they can use to fix your sink.
“We use Premiere.” Cool. I use Resolve. If we aren’t collaborating on the edit then this is an irrelevant conversation. You want a final product, that’s what you hired me for my dude. If you want me to slot into your existing editing pipeline that’s a totally different discussion.
“Last guy shot on a Red.” Cool. Hire them. Oh right you hired me this time. Interesting! Should we unpack that?
Freelancers: Stand your ground! Stand by your work! Tell clients to trust you!
This is exactly it. Some clients end up turning everything into a messy room and messy desk, decide to get help not to do it, see a clean space to create, and then start making a mess all over again.
Asking such clients why are we here? What have previous attempts (becuase they have been done) provided and not provided, and why do you think they did or didn't have long term viability so we didn't need to talk.
This is less about coding and helping people learn how to think about where and how things cna fit in.
It's great to go fast with vibe coding, especially if you like disposable code that you can iterate with. In the hands of an a developer they might be able to try more things or get more done in some way, but maybe not all the ways especially if the client isn't clear.
The ability of the client ot explain what they want well with good external signals and how well they know how to ask will often be a huge indicator long before they try to pull you into their web of creating spider diagrams like the spiders who have taken something.
For me vibecoding has a similar feeling to a big bag of Doritos. It's really fun at first to slap down 10k lines of code in an afternoon knowing this is just an indulgence. I think AI is actually really useful for getting a quick view of some library or feature. Also, you can learn a lot if you approach it the right way. However, every time I do any amount of vibecoding eventually it just transitions into pure lethargy mode; (apparently lethargia is not a word, by the way). Once you eat half a bag of Doritos, are you really not going to eat the second half... do you really want to eat the second half? I don't feel like I'm benefitting as a human just being a QA tester for the AI, constantly shouting that X thing didn't work and Y thing needs to be changed slightly. I think pure vibecode AI use has a difficult to understand efficiency curve, where it's obviously very efficient in the beginning, but over time hard things start to compound such that if you didn't actually form a good understanding of the project, you won't be able to make progress after a while. At that point you ate the whole bag of Doritos, you feel like shit, and you can't get off the couch.
This. First I try it just a little to do a boring part. It feels great. The boring part that was holding me is gone and all it took was a little instruction. The dopamine hit is real. So of course I will try it again. But not so fast. It needs to be corrected to make everything aligned with the architecture. And as my requests get bigger, it needs more and more corrections. Eventually correcting everything becomes too tedious, and accepting is just too easy, and so I lower my standards, and soon enough lose track of all the decisions. The branch is now useless as I don't want to debug or own this code I no longer understand hence I start over. I want work to felt like a training session where you get fairly rewarded for your efforts with better understanding, not like a slot machine where you passively hope it gets it right next time.
Great analogy. Instead of eating the whole bag of doritos in one sitting, do it in phases. So instead of being just a QA tester, you get to pause, reflect and try to make sure you and the AI are on the same page.
This is exactly what happened with my experience of vibe coding, you don't understand the code after a while and pushing the project from the 80 percent mark to the 100 percent mark is exponentially more difficult, and that's where the AI fails and you have to take over. Only, you don't know anything about the code and you give up.
I had to rewrite several vibe coded projects from scratch due to this effect. It's useful as a prototyping tool but not a complete productionizing tool.
I have yet to find the niche where it is "good at the beginning". So far I've mostly tried asking to build C tools that use advanced linux API.
Me: hey make this, detailed-spec.txt
AI: okidoki (barfs 9k lines in 15 minutes) all done and tested!
Me looks at the code, that has feature-sounding names, but all features are stubs, all tests are stubs, and it does not compile.
Me: it does not compile.
AI: Yes, but the code is correct. Now that the project is done, which of these features you want me to add (some crazy list)
Me: Please get it to compile.
AI: You are absolutely right! This is an excellent idea! (proceeds to stub and delete most of what it barfed). I feel really satisfied with the progress! It was a real challenge! The code you gave me was very poorly written!
The core issue is that AI is taking away, or will take away, or threatens to take away, experiences and activities that humans would WANT to do. Things that give them meaning and many of these are tied to earning money and producing value for doing just that thing. Software/coding is once of these activities. One can do coding for fun but doing the same coding where it provides value to others/society and financial upkeep for you and your family is far more meaningful.
For those who have swallowed the AI panacea hook line and sinker. Those that say it's made me more productive or that I no longer have to do the boring bits and can focus on the interesting parts of coding. I say follow your own line of reasoning through. It demonstrates that AI is not yet powerful enough to NOT need to empower you, to NOT need to make you more productive. You're only ALLOWED to do the 'interesting' parts presently because the AI is deficient. Ultimately AI aims to remove the need for any human intermediary altogether. Everything in between is just a stop along the way and so for those it empowers stop and think a little about the long term implications. It may be that for you right now it is comfortable position financially or socially but your future you in just a few short months from now may be dramatically impacted.
As someone said "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes".
I can well imagine the blood draining from peoples faces, the graduate coder who can no longer get on the job ladder. The law secretary whose dream job is being automated away, a dream dreamt from a young age. The journalist whose value has been substituted by a white text box connected to an AI model.
I don't have any ideas as to what should be done or more importantly what can be done. Pandora's box has been opened, Humpty Dumpty has fallen and he can't be put back together again. AI feels like it has crossed the rubicon. We must all collectively await to see where the dust settles.
> Those that say it's made me more productive or that I no longer have to do the boring bits and can focus on the interesting parts of coding.
I wonder about that bit, TBH.
If you're 10x more productive at generating lines of code because you're mostly just reviewing, just how carefully are you reviewing? If you're taking the time to spec out stuff in great detail, then iterate on the many different issues with the LLM code, then finally reviewing when it passes the tests ... how are you getting to 10x and not 2x?
TBH, for those people who really are able to create 10x as much code with the LLM, their employment is actually more precarious than those who aren't doing that - it means your problem domain is so shallow that an LLM can hold both it and the code in a single context window.
Programmers are the last people on earth who should complain about job loss due to automation. Our entire jobs since the beginning has been automating people out of jobs and we've done a wonderful job of that for decades. Entire classes of jobs no longer exist. Although I'm not personally responsible for anyone losing their job I'm certainly responsible for less people being hired.
AI is just the next step and not even a particularly large leap. We already needed less law secretaries due to advances of technology. We killed most journalism two decades ago. Art and Music had Photoshop and autotune. Now we've actually achieved something we've literally been striving for since the dawn of computing -- the ability to speak natural language to a computer and have it do what we ask. But it's just one more step.
We’re in the geocities phase of LLM, mostly trash, very basic, but eventually, people will either get bored and go back to whatever it is they were doing or actually use the tools for useful and productive work.
As for the feelings that using LLM has when it one shots your project start (and does a pretty good job), have a German word:
Automatisierungskummer
(automation sorrow)
• Kummer is emotional heaviness, a mild-to-deep sadness.
Some remember the Geocities era as one of the best phases of the internet.
Its hard to know what things will look like in 20 years but people may miss the time when AI cost nothing, or very little, and was less fettered. I think probably not- it would be like being nostalgic for really low-res, low frame youtube videos, but nostalgia is pretty unpredictable and some people love those old FMV games.
All the consulting practice arguments aside, this is fundamentally a gatekeeping argument about clients staying in their lane. I'm sure doctors feel the same way about patients with weirdly specific questions about HFpEF diagnoses. Doctors have always hated "Doctor Google", and now they have to contend with "Doctor GPT". It's up to you how much sympathy to have for them.
Not related to other types of clients, but for doctors and patients specifically, I have heard stories where doctors dismissed patients' concerns until the patients themselves googled and found out exactly what issue they had and then the doctors were much more amenable to solving it [0].
Indeed, [1]
> researchers found that searching symptoms online modestly boosted patients’ ability to accurately diagnose health issues without increasing their anxiety or misleading them to seek care inappropriately [...] the results of this survey study challenge the common belief among clinicians and policy-makers that using the Internet to search for health information is harmful.
I don't think the analogy holds up at all. A doctor usually has a very small time window to deal with your problem and then switches to the next patient.
If I'm working on your project I'm usually dedicated to it 8 hours a day for months.
I do agree this is not new, I had clients with some development experience come up with off the cuff suggestions that just waste everyone's time and are really disrespectful (like how bad at my job do you think I am if you think I didn't try the obvious approach you came up with while listening to the problem). But AI is going to make this much worse.
As someone who does consulting, it's more about the attitude than the tool itself. Clients trying to understand the problem by themselves with whatever tools they can use are generally well-disposed and easy to work with. Those who email you stuff like "Why don't you have chatgpt do this???" as if it's a revolutionary thought are mostly a PITA. I assume doctors feel largely the same.
My doctor actually appreciates that I go to primary and other reliable sources, read up on my conditions, and understand the standard of care and other appropriate courses of action. What he can't stand is people who "do their own research" on, like, InfoWars.
I treat my doctor as a subject matter expert/collaborator, which means that if I come to him with (for example) "what if it's lupus?" and he says "it's probably not lupus", I usually let the matter drop.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the analogy to Doctor GPT, but I think you missed it with gatekeeping. I don't think it's about gatekeeping at all.
A freelance developer (or a doctor) is familiar with working within a particular framework and process flow. For any new feature, you start by generating user stories, work out a high level architecure, think about about how to integrate that into your existing codebase, and then write the code. It's mostly a unidirectional flow.
When the client starts giving you code, it turns into a bidirectional flow. You can't just copy/paste the code and call it done. You have to go in the reverse direction: read the code to parse out what the high level architecture is, which user stories it implements and which it does not. After that you have to go back in the forward direction to actually adapt and integrate the code. The client thinks they've made the developer's job easier, but they've actually doubled the cognitive load. This is stressful and frustrating for the developer.
There is a big difference between a client that thinks for themself, researches and challenges a professionals assesment or a client that wants to dictate or participate in the implementation process. In case of medical services we would talk about a patient that wants to do the operation...
I think building apps and websites for other people is mad depressing. It went from "move this up there, and change that colour to pink" to a client ruining a beautiful site by using a nocode tool. Now they have superpowers to ruin it by adding AI generated code as well. AI can generate absolutely beautiful code if it is generated on the right architecture with the right patterns and rules. The problem isn't the AI it's the people telling AI and developers what to do.
> There is no best practices anymore, no proper process, no meaningful back and forth.
Reality check: none of that ever existed, unless either the client mandated it (as a way to tightly regulate output quality from cheaper developers) or the developer mandated it (justifying their much higher prices and value to the customer).
Other than that: average customer buying code from average developer means:
- git was never even considered
- if git was ever used, everything is merged into "master" in huge commits
- no scheduled reviews, they only saw each other when it's time for the next quarterly/monthly payment and the client was shown (but not able to use) some preview of what's done so far
Been writing software for like 20 years now and I love it. I am also a fan of AI-assisted coding, but I only just started using Cursor. Gosh I do not like it at all for a simple reason: since I didn't write the code, in order to understand it I have to read it. But gaining understanding that way takes longer than writing it myself does.
When you write the code, you understand it. When you read the code produced by an agent, you may eventually feel like you understand it, but it's not at the same deep level as if your own brain created it.
I'll keep using new tools, I'll keep writing my own code too. Just venting my frustrations with agentic coding because it's only going to get worse.
Yep. I had a few vibe coded projects that were fairly far along and then things broke. The code was so convoluted and it took me so long to understand that I just opted to rewrite everything from scratch without AI. Sure, it took longer but I understood all of it.
> since I didn't write the code, in order to understand it I have to read it. But gaining understanding that way takes longer than writing it myself does.
I remember reading Joel Spolsky's blog 25 years ago, and he wrote something like: "It is harder to read code than to write code." I was quite young at that stage in my programming journey, but I remember being simultaneously surprised and relieved -- to know that reading code was so damn hard! I kept thinking if I just worked harder at reading code that eventually it would be as easy as writing code.
I am freelancer as well and in the last month I got two new clients who asked me to fix the vibe-coded projects.
And I am now thinking to specialize in the field: they already know how f*d they are and they are going to pay a lot (or: they have no other opportunity). Something what looked like million-dollar idea created for pennies 3 months later is unbearable, already rotting pale of insanity which no junior human developer or even AI code assistant is able to extend. But they already have investors or clients who use it.
And for me, with >20 years of coding experience, this is a lot of fun cleaning it to the state when it is manageable.
Yeah, its bad out there. At my company, we have a team of security professionals that focus on keeping our systems (and others') secure. AI for them has gone from "using it for scripting together nmap" to "we really need the platform your team is working on to do X, Y, and Z, so we vibed up this PR". On the engineering side, I don't have the political power to tell them no, because we don't really have senior leadership and we're behind schedule on everything. Why? Well, I spent two hours today resolving dozens of vulnerabilities our code scanners found in some vibed security team PR. The scanners that they set up, and demanded we use. Half the stuff they vibe we literally have to feature flag off immediately after release, because they didn't QA it, but they rarely revisit the feature because to them its always either "on to the next big idea" or, more often, "we're just security, platform isn't our responsibility".
The thing is: I know you might read that and think I'm anti-AI. In this specific situation, at my company: We gave nuclear technology to a bunch of teenagers, then act surprised when they blow up the garage. This is a political/leadership problem; because everything, nine times out of ten, is a political/leadership problem. But the incentives just aren't there yet for generalized understanding of the responsibility it requires to leverage these tools in a product environment that's expected to last years-to-decades. I think it will get there, but along that road will be gallons of blood from products killed, ironically, by their inability to be dynamic and reliable under the weight of the additive-biased purple-tailwind-drenched world of LLM vibeput. But, there's probably an end to that road, and I hope when we get there I can still have an LLM, because its pretty nice to be able to be like "heyo, i copy pasted this JSON but it has javascript single quotes instead of double quotes so its not technically JSON, can you fix that thanks"
The people who think FizzBuzz is a leetcode programmer question are now vibecoding the same trash as always, except now they think they are smart x10 developers for forcing you to review and clean up their trash.
I feel like it allows me do more of the fun bits of coding and creating. It's not too different than giving the easy/basic/annoying stuff to consultants and less senior engineers. Do people get mad when the hire more devs? You still get to machinate over how to attack a problem in clever ways. Also, you can give 4 out of 5 tasks to the AI and leave the fun bits for yourself.
> Hey! I asked AI for this code, do you think this will work? I think you should use it.
unfortunately this problem preceeds AI, and has been worsened by it.
i've seen instances of one-file, in-memory hashmap proof-of-concept implementations been requested to be integrated in semi-large evolving codebases with "it took me 1 day to build this, how long will it take to integrate" questions
The author should really rethink the relations with clients and "freedom" they get in the process.
Back when I did websites for clients, often after carefully thinking a project through and getting to some final idea on how everything should look, feel, and operate, I presented this optimal concept to clients. Some would start recommending changes and adding their own ideas—which I most often already iterated through earlier during ideation and designing.
It rarely builds a good rapport with clients if you start explaining why their ideas on "improvements" are really not that good. Anyway, I would listen to them, nod, and do nothing as to their ideas. I would just stick to mine concept without wasting time for random client's "improvements"—leaving them to the last moment if a client would insist on them at the very end.
Funny thing is that clients usually, after more consideration and time would come on their own to the result I came to and presented to them—they just needed time to understand that their "improvements" aren't relevant.
Nevertheless, if they insisted on implementing their "improvements" (which almost never happened) I'd do it for additional price—most often for them to just see that it wasn't good idea to start with and get back to what I already did before.
So, sometimes, ignoring client's ideas really saves a lot of time.
> The first clues started when a client, who I thought was a software developer, starts merging his own code through the main branch, without warning. No pull request, just straight git push --force origin main ... Last time, I checked this Xcode project did not compiled. Or anything close to it.
This doesn't read like a vibe-coding problem, and more of a client boundaries problem. Surely you could point out they are paying you for your expertise, and to supersede your best practices with whatever AI churns out is making the job they are paying you to do even harder, and frankly a little disrespectful ("I know better").
I run a low code platform for building internal tools & software. One of my prospect about to sign a contract came back telling me that his CTO has asked him to check vibe code tools and build a few internal tools with them. They are a large series D/E company and have over 250 internal tools built on retool (a service that they are migrating from). CTO is puzzled & is thinking if does he even need a platform to build & manage internal tools.
On other hand -- another customer of mine built a few internal tools with vibe code (& yes he does have subscription to my low code service) but then when newer requests came for upgrade thats where his vibe coded app started acting up. His candid feedback was -- for internal tools vibe code doesnt work.
As a service provider for low code --> we are now providing full fledged vibe code tooling on top. While I dont know how customers who do not wish to code and just have the software will be able to upkeep these softwares without needing professionals.
For the longest of times contract (and perm) developers/project managers/agencies have taken a lot of liberties of time and money only to develop sub standard products and then charge more for change requests and bug fixes. The model was long due to be disrupted. This new way of vibe coding is not perfect yet but produces results and thats what the sponsors are looking at as a return on investment. As technologists we have to play a big role to find that right balance and educate everyone, not just the business folks about what could go wrong and where are the areas where it might be actually used.
> Okay, so this non-technical person is sending me codes now.
I started wondering if this person was actually a developer here. Maybe just a typo, or maybe a dialect thing, but does anyone actually use "codes" as a plural?
In other disciplines, yes. Very common to hear it in mechanical or aerospace engineering, for example. They'll say "codes" to refer to multiple programs or "a code" to refer to a single program. It's amusing, when I was in the field I just went with it.
I recently ported c-rrb to c#, and when the first port was done Unused ai to help me refine the code. It was a pleasant experience, apart from the AI every three or four prompts introduced subtle bugs. In the end, Claude and I managed to speed up the code by almost 2x.
The worst was pushing the tail into the tree. My original code was pretty slow, but every time AI changed more than 4 lines it introduced subtle bugs.
similar experience - i freelanced recently (embedded systems) where i was to interface to a "software engineer" doing the backend.
Every. single. time. we hit an interface problem he would say “if you don’t understand the error feel free to use ChatGPT”. Dude it’s bare metal embedded software I WROTE the error. Also, telling someone that was hired because of their expertise to chatgpt something is crazy insulting.
We are in an era of empowered idiots. People truly feel that access to this near infinite knowledge base means it is an extension of their capabilities.
I feel that agent coding is actually giving a second wind of life to solid principles, “proper” software architecture. Now you can nag the llm to follow them and A- it will actually apply them if well directed and does not mind the (small?) extra complexity upfront B- you pretty much immediately see the effects
https://www.uceprotect.net/en/index.php?m=7&s=8 -- "pay us to fix a problem that we've caused, and if you have the gall to call it what it is (extortion), then we'll publish your email and be massive dicks about it"
(To be clear, not all spam blacklists are scams - just UCEPROTECTL3 specifically)
I will just copy paste my comment from another thread but still very relevant>
Coding isn’t creative, it isn’t sexy, and almost nobody outside this bubble cares
Most of the world doesn’t care about “good code.”
They care about “does it work, is it fast enough, is it cheap enough, and can we ship it before the competitor does?”
Beautiful architecture, perfect tests, elegant abstractions — those things feel deeply rewarding to the person who wrote them, but they’re invisible to users, to executives, and, let’s be honest, to the dating market.
Being able to refactor a monolith into pristine microservices will not make you more attractive on a date. What might is the salary that comes with the title “Senior Engineer at FAANG.”
In that sense, many women (not all, but enough) relate to programmers the same way middle managers and VCs do: they’re perfectly happy to extract the economic value you produce while remaining indifferent to the craft itself. The code isn’t the turn-on; the direct deposit is.
That’s brutal to hear if you’ve spent years telling yourself that your intellectual passion is inherently admirable or sexy. It’s not. Outside our tribe it’s just a means to an end — same as accounting, law, or plumbing, just with worse dress code and better catering.
So when AI starts eating the parts of the job we insisted were “creative” and “irreplaceable,” the threat feels existential because the last remaining moat — the romantic story we told ourselves about why this profession is special — collapses. Turns out the scarcity was mostly the paycheck, not the poetry.
I’m not saying the work is meaningless or that system design and taste don’t matter. I’m saying we should stop pretending the act of writing software is inherently sexier or more artistically noble than any other high-paying skilled trade. It never was.
The only thing that matters anymore in corporate is: does the code solve the problem.
Also, is it just me or has the feeling of victory gone away completely 100% ever since AI became a thing? I used to sweat and struggle, and finally have my breakthrough, the "I'm invicible!" Boris moment before the next thing came into my task inbox.
I don't feel that high anymore. I only recently realized this.
This is all over linkedin now. Basically, idea bros manage to get their ideas seemingly working with vibe coding but the moment it breaks they expect they can just "pay to fix the small broken part" and get back to work quickly. Not realising the cost that the developer has to get up to date on the project, then probably fix a mountain of poorly done, insecure work to "quickly finish" the project. A lot of them are also scammers and try to get you to start work on it without even having an contract.
Ah yes a supabase backed, hallucinated data model with random shit, using deprecated methods, and a copy paste UI. Zero access control or privacy, 1% of features, no files uploading or playback or calling.
“Can you scale this to 1M users by end of the week? Something similar to WhatsApp or Telegram or Signal”
satvikpendem|2 months ago
*as an aside, this reminds me of the classic joke where the client asks for the price list for a developer's services:
I do it: $500
I do it, but you watch: $750
I do it, and you help: $1,000
You do it yourself: $5,000
You start it, and you want me to finish it: $10,000
andai|2 months ago
https://files.catbox.moe/1d87t7.jpg
irjustin|2 months ago
2009 anyone? https://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell
rcruzeiro|2 months ago
I guess that, with vibe coding, it is very easy for every client to become like this.
Forgeties79|2 months ago
“We use Premiere.” Cool. I use Resolve. If we aren’t collaborating on the edit then this is an irrelevant conversation. You want a final product, that’s what you hired me for my dude. If you want me to slot into your existing editing pipeline that’s a totally different discussion.
“Last guy shot on a Red.” Cool. Hire them. Oh right you hired me this time. Interesting! Should we unpack that?
Freelancers: Stand your ground! Stand by your work! Tell clients to trust you!
coffeefirst|2 months ago
At this point, the level of puffery is on par with claiming a new pair of shoes will turn you into an Olympic athlete.
People are doing this because they’re told it works, and showing up to run a marathon with zero training because they were told the shoes are enough.
Some people may need to figure out the problem here for themselves.
smolder|2 months ago
j45|2 months ago
Asking such clients why are we here? What have previous attempts (becuase they have been done) provided and not provided, and why do you think they did or didn't have long term viability so we didn't need to talk.
This is less about coding and helping people learn how to think about where and how things cna fit in.
It's great to go fast with vibe coding, especially if you like disposable code that you can iterate with. In the hands of an a developer they might be able to try more things or get more done in some way, but maybe not all the ways especially if the client isn't clear.
The ability of the client ot explain what they want well with good external signals and how well they know how to ask will often be a huge indicator long before they try to pull you into their web of creating spider diagrams like the spiders who have taken something.
DonHopkins|2 months ago
And continuing to shit and piss and puke in the toilet while they are trying to fix it.
unknown|2 months ago
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unknown|2 months ago
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begueradj|2 months ago
I never faced or witnessed that in software dev.
acosmism|2 months ago
WhyOhWhyQ|2 months ago
biql|2 months ago
tatenda-ron|2 months ago
satvikpendem|2 months ago
I had to rewrite several vibe coded projects from scratch due to this effect. It's useful as a prototyping tool but not a complete productionizing tool.
j45|2 months ago
Being effective with the code to get the same things done is. That requires a new kind of driving for a new kind of vehicle.
112233|2 months ago
Me: hey make this, detailed-spec.txt
AI: okidoki (barfs 9k lines in 15 minutes) all done and tested!
Me looks at the code, that has feature-sounding names, but all features are stubs, all tests are stubs, and it does not compile.
Me: it does not compile.
AI: Yes, but the code is correct. Now that the project is done, which of these features you want me to add (some crazy list)
Me: Please get it to compile.
AI: You are absolutely right! This is an excellent idea! (proceeds to stub and delete most of what it barfed). I feel really satisfied with the progress! It was a real challenge! The code you gave me was very poorly written!
... and so on.
iberator|2 months ago
encyclopedism|2 months ago
For those who have swallowed the AI panacea hook line and sinker. Those that say it's made me more productive or that I no longer have to do the boring bits and can focus on the interesting parts of coding. I say follow your own line of reasoning through. It demonstrates that AI is not yet powerful enough to NOT need to empower you, to NOT need to make you more productive. You're only ALLOWED to do the 'interesting' parts presently because the AI is deficient. Ultimately AI aims to remove the need for any human intermediary altogether. Everything in between is just a stop along the way and so for those it empowers stop and think a little about the long term implications. It may be that for you right now it is comfortable position financially or socially but your future you in just a few short months from now may be dramatically impacted.
As someone said "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes".
I can well imagine the blood draining from peoples faces, the graduate coder who can no longer get on the job ladder. The law secretary whose dream job is being automated away, a dream dreamt from a young age. The journalist whose value has been substituted by a white text box connected to an AI model.
I don't have any ideas as to what should be done or more importantly what can be done. Pandora's box has been opened, Humpty Dumpty has fallen and he can't be put back together again. AI feels like it has crossed the rubicon. We must all collectively await to see where the dust settles.
lelanthran|2 months ago
I wonder about that bit, TBH.
If you're 10x more productive at generating lines of code because you're mostly just reviewing, just how carefully are you reviewing? If you're taking the time to spec out stuff in great detail, then iterate on the many different issues with the LLM code, then finally reviewing when it passes the tests ... how are you getting to 10x and not 2x?
TBH, for those people who really are able to create 10x as much code with the LLM, their employment is actually more precarious than those who aren't doing that - it means your problem domain is so shallow that an LLM can hold both it and the code in a single context window.
wvenable|2 months ago
AI is just the next step and not even a particularly large leap. We already needed less law secretaries due to advances of technology. We killed most journalism two decades ago. Art and Music had Photoshop and autotune. Now we've actually achieved something we've literally been striving for since the dawn of computing -- the ability to speak natural language to a computer and have it do what we ask. But it's just one more step.
cindyllm|2 months ago
[deleted]
ctime|2 months ago
As for the feelings that using LLM has when it one shots your project start (and does a pretty good job), have a German word:
Automatisierungskummer
(automation sorrow) • Kummer is emotional heaviness, a mild-to-deep sadness.
Morromist|2 months ago
Its hard to know what things will look like in 20 years but people may miss the time when AI cost nothing, or very little, and was less fettered. I think probably not- it would be like being nostalgic for really low-res, low frame youtube videos, but nostalgia is pretty unpredictable and some people love those old FMV games.
tapete2|2 months ago
Put it into Google and you will see.
tptacek|2 months ago
satvikpendem|2 months ago
Indeed, [1]
> researchers found that searching symptoms online modestly boosted patients’ ability to accurately diagnose health issues without increasing their anxiety or misleading them to seek care inappropriately [...] the results of this survey study challenge the common belief among clinicians and policy-makers that using the Internet to search for health information is harmful.
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/man-googles-rash-discover...
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8084564/
rafaelmn|2 months ago
If I'm working on your project I'm usually dedicated to it 8 hours a day for months.
I do agree this is not new, I had clients with some development experience come up with off the cuff suggestions that just waste everyone's time and are really disrespectful (like how bad at my job do you think I am if you think I didn't try the obvious approach you came up with while listening to the problem). But AI is going to make this much worse.
qsort|2 months ago
bitwize|2 months ago
I treat my doctor as a subject matter expert/collaborator, which means that if I come to him with (for example) "what if it's lupus?" and he says "it's probably not lupus", I usually let the matter drop.
Calavar|2 months ago
A freelance developer (or a doctor) is familiar with working within a particular framework and process flow. For any new feature, you start by generating user stories, work out a high level architecure, think about about how to integrate that into your existing codebase, and then write the code. It's mostly a unidirectional flow.
When the client starts giving you code, it turns into a bidirectional flow. You can't just copy/paste the code and call it done. You have to go in the reverse direction: read the code to parse out what the high level architecture is, which user stories it implements and which it does not. After that you have to go back in the forward direction to actually adapt and integrate the code. The client thinks they've made the developer's job easier, but they've actually doubled the cognitive load. This is stressful and frustrating for the developer.
fetztfetzig|2 months ago
tonyoconnell|2 months ago
sebastiennight|2 months ago
Reality check: none of that ever existed, unless either the client mandated it (as a way to tightly regulate output quality from cheaper developers) or the developer mandated it (justifying their much higher prices and value to the customer).
Other than that: average customer buying code from average developer means:
- git was never even considered
- if git was ever used, everything is merged into "master" in huge commits
- no scheduled reviews, they only saw each other when it's time for the next quarterly/monthly payment and the client was shown (but not able to use) some preview of what's done so far
cryptoz|2 months ago
When you write the code, you understand it. When you read the code produced by an agent, you may eventually feel like you understand it, but it's not at the same deep level as if your own brain created it.
I'll keep using new tools, I'll keep writing my own code too. Just venting my frustrations with agentic coding because it's only going to get worse.
satvikpendem|2 months ago
throwaway2037|2 months ago
kkarpkkarp|2 months ago
And I am now thinking to specialize in the field: they already know how f*d they are and they are going to pay a lot (or: they have no other opportunity). Something what looked like million-dollar idea created for pennies 3 months later is unbearable, already rotting pale of insanity which no junior human developer or even AI code assistant is able to extend. But they already have investors or clients who use it.
And for me, with >20 years of coding experience, this is a lot of fun cleaning it to the state when it is manageable.
827a|2 months ago
The thing is: I know you might read that and think I'm anti-AI. In this specific situation, at my company: We gave nuclear technology to a bunch of teenagers, then act surprised when they blow up the garage. This is a political/leadership problem; because everything, nine times out of ten, is a political/leadership problem. But the incentives just aren't there yet for generalized understanding of the responsibility it requires to leverage these tools in a product environment that's expected to last years-to-decades. I think it will get there, but along that road will be gallons of blood from products killed, ironically, by their inability to be dynamic and reliable under the weight of the additive-biased purple-tailwind-drenched world of LLM vibeput. But, there's probably an end to that road, and I hope when we get there I can still have an LLM, because its pretty nice to be able to be like "heyo, i copy pasted this JSON but it has javascript single quotes instead of double quotes so its not technically JSON, can you fix that thanks"
otabdeveloper4|2 months ago
The people who think FizzBuzz is a leetcode programmer question are now vibecoding the same trash as always, except now they think they are smart x10 developers for forcing you to review and clean up their trash.
sshadmand|2 months ago
thewisenerd|2 months ago
unfortunately this problem preceeds AI, and has been worsened by it.
i've seen instances of one-file, in-memory hashmap proof-of-concept implementations been requested to be integrated in semi-large evolving codebases with "it took me 1 day to build this, how long will it take to integrate" questions
rglover|2 months ago
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect
Mikho|2 months ago
Back when I did websites for clients, often after carefully thinking a project through and getting to some final idea on how everything should look, feel, and operate, I presented this optimal concept to clients. Some would start recommending changes and adding their own ideas—which I most often already iterated through earlier during ideation and designing.
It rarely builds a good rapport with clients if you start explaining why their ideas on "improvements" are really not that good. Anyway, I would listen to them, nod, and do nothing as to their ideas. I would just stick to mine concept without wasting time for random client's "improvements"—leaving them to the last moment if a client would insist on them at the very end.
Funny thing is that clients usually, after more consideration and time would come on their own to the result I came to and presented to them—they just needed time to understand that their "improvements" aren't relevant.
Nevertheless, if they insisted on implementing their "improvements" (which almost never happened) I'd do it for additional price—most often for them to just see that it wasn't good idea to start with and get back to what I already did before.
So, sometimes, ignoring client's ideas really saves a lot of time.
1970-01-01|2 months ago
btheunissen|2 months ago
This doesn't read like a vibe-coding problem, and more of a client boundaries problem. Surely you could point out they are paying you for your expertise, and to supersede your best practices with whatever AI churns out is making the job they are paying you to do even harder, and frankly a little disrespectful ("I know better").
kinj28|2 months ago
On other hand -- another customer of mine built a few internal tools with vibe code (& yes he does have subscription to my low code service) but then when newer requests came for upgrade thats where his vibe coded app started acting up. His candid feedback was -- for internal tools vibe code doesnt work.
As a service provider for low code --> we are now providing full fledged vibe code tooling on top. While I dont know how customers who do not wish to code and just have the software will be able to upkeep these softwares without needing professionals.
supratims|2 months ago
randallsquared|2 months ago
I started wondering if this person was actually a developer here. Maybe just a typo, or maybe a dialect thing, but does anyone actually use "codes" as a plural?
kridsdale1|2 months ago
Scramblejams|2 months ago
jgilias|2 months ago
It’s somehow ironic though that his written output could’ve been improved by running it through an AI tool.
bjoli|2 months ago
The worst was pushing the tail into the tree. My original code was pretty slow, but every time AI changed more than 4 lines it introduced subtle bugs.
I did not actually think ai would be that useful.
polalavik|2 months ago
Every. single. time. we hit an interface problem he would say “if you don’t understand the error feel free to use ChatGPT”. Dude it’s bare metal embedded software I WROTE the error. Also, telling someone that was hired because of their expertise to chatgpt something is crazy insulting.
We are in an era of empowered idiots. People truly feel that access to this near infinite knowledge base means it is an extension of their capabilities.
bamboozled|2 months ago
There is no best practices anymore, no proper process, no meaningful back and forth.
There absolutely is and you need to work with the tools to make sure this happens. Else chaos will ensue.
Been working with these things heavily for development for 6-12 months. You absolutely must code with them.
satvikpendem|2 months ago
chairmansteve|2 months ago
Dansvidania|2 months ago
jrowen|2 months ago
I was almost expecting to hear that it made the job too easy. This kind of work is perfect for vibe coding. But you should be the one doing it.
d--b|2 months ago
geldedus|2 months ago
mrdosija|2 months ago
bentt|2 months ago
ekropotin|2 months ago
cweagans|2 months ago
https://www.uceprotect.net/en/index.php?m=7&s=8 -- "pay us to fix a problem that we've caused, and if you have the gall to call it what it is (extortion), then we'll publish your email and be massive dicks about it"
(To be clear, not all spam blacklists are scams - just UCEPROTECTL3 specifically)
thendrill|2 months ago
Coding isn’t creative, it isn’t sexy, and almost nobody outside this bubble cares
Most of the world doesn’t care about “good code.” They care about “does it work, is it fast enough, is it cheap enough, and can we ship it before the competitor does?”
Beautiful architecture, perfect tests, elegant abstractions — those things feel deeply rewarding to the person who wrote them, but they’re invisible to users, to executives, and, let’s be honest, to the dating market.
Being able to refactor a monolith into pristine microservices will not make you more attractive on a date. What might is the salary that comes with the title “Senior Engineer at FAANG.” In that sense, many women (not all, but enough) relate to programmers the same way middle managers and VCs do: they’re perfectly happy to extract the economic value you produce while remaining indifferent to the craft itself. The code isn’t the turn-on; the direct deposit is.
That’s brutal to hear if you’ve spent years telling yourself that your intellectual passion is inherently admirable or sexy. It’s not. Outside our tribe it’s just a means to an end — same as accounting, law, or plumbing, just with worse dress code and better catering.
So when AI starts eating the parts of the job we insisted were “creative” and “irreplaceable,” the threat feels existential because the last remaining moat — the romantic story we told ourselves about why this profession is special — collapses. Turns out the scarcity was mostly the paycheck, not the poetry.
I’m not saying the work is meaningless or that system design and taste don’t matter. I’m saying we should stop pretending the act of writing software is inherently sexier or more artistically noble than any other high-paying skilled trade. It never was.
salutis|2 months ago
Nonsense. Coding is creative the same way mathematics is.
> Beautiful architecture, perfect tests, elegant abstractions those things feel deeply rewarding to the person who wrote them [...]
Nonsense. Best practices exist to make the code perform well. As a result, every user cares about them, albeit indirectly.
> That’s brutal to hear if you’ve spent years telling yourself that your intellectual passion is inherently admirable or sexy. It’s not.
Nonsense. Intellectual passion is admirable and sexy for many. This is subjective.
sergiotapia|2 months ago
Also, is it just me or has the feeling of victory gone away completely 100% ever since AI became a thing? I used to sweat and struggle, and finally have my breakthrough, the "I'm invicible!" Boris moment before the next thing came into my task inbox.
I don't feel that high anymore. I only recently realized this.
Uptrenda|2 months ago
Not really worth working on any of these project.
uwagar|2 months ago
rtp4me|2 months ago
issafram|2 months ago
unknown|2 months ago
[deleted]
moomoo11|2 months ago
Ah yes a supabase backed, hallucinated data model with random shit, using deprecated methods, and a copy paste UI. Zero access control or privacy, 1% of features, no files uploading or playback or calling.
“Can you scale this to 1M users by end of the week? Something similar to WhatsApp or Telegram or Signal”
Sybau mf
zahlman|2 months ago
What does this mean?
ModernMech|2 months ago