I think many of us use LLMs for work. But I cannot help the instinctive distrust when I see a vibe-coded project. Especially if it is new and not by someone I already know and trust.
Before, a non-professional project was obvious. Now the more polished it looks the less I trust it. The practical version of the distrust is not "AI is bad." It is that you can no longer tell what was reviewed. No idea if the person who shipped it can even read the parts that handle money, keys, or data.
Do you think it will get better? will we just get used to it?
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I feel an instinctive distrust of people who make vibe-coded-looking projects ))
https://stasher.news/uploads/820
i know its a joke but its true. people blame the ai but behind every ai slop is a human who was already slop. the ones who were not, like @freQniK , just ship better and faster now. so distrust the human. ai just made the slop easier to spot.
lmao, this hurts too good.
Yes.
For most people, fascination with LLMs is inversely proportional with intelligence.
There is a small subset of the population that was already highly skilled and intelligent to begin with. They can make use of LLMs to enhance their abilities even further.
But, for the vast majority, LLMs are a net-negative. Instead of working on their shortcomings, they crutch on LLMs to produce slop. They don't know what they don't know, and cannot produce software where quality and correctness matter, no matter how much "smarter" the models get.
the small subset that was already good will still be good. everyone else was already producing human slop. the models just made the slop faster and shinier. soon there will be no human written code at all. better get used to it.
Yeah, because they often don't understand the underlying code and systems that the LLM is implementing. AI can be a useful tool for knowledgeable coders, but asking a LLM to spit out a piece of software is just lazy. Also, since there is so little effort involved the project is likely to be abandoned, leaving you with an outdated and insecure app.
I feel a strong distrust in people popping out from the woodwork with vibe-coded apps. To me it just screams, "I'm out to profit quickly".
My main project, Meile dVPN, is roughly 97% all handcoded and i cant help but feel disdain for these new dVPN apps that have launched an app in only a few weeks or months. I have been working on Meile for 5 years now and id hate to see all my hard work spoiled by a nobody with Claude. In fact, i just loaded Meile into VS Code for the first time last week to begin using automated coding. I was so weary of AI touching my code because i know every single line of it, which feels great, and I didnt want AI to change my coding fingerprint.
I'm using AI more aggressively to launch new projects and update old ones, but i think the difference is that i have mostly established myself pre-AI. I review every single line of AI code and even make changes, sometimes aesthtic, just to put my mark and know the logic behind my project.
People need to be very cautious of AI apps as many of them will be about making quick money instead of providing a valuable service.
Personally I'm distrustful. My main fear is security exploits - I think most coders these days are vibing - this is due to the lower standards of our 3rd level education system and the prevalence of Google.
I think of old school programmers who could squeeze every bit out of a byte. RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999) being an example.
Now most programs seem bloated and slow.
Programming is a language, if I have to Google 80% of the words when trying to speak French I'm not a French speaker lol
I'm sceptical of any programmer who says they can code in multiple languages. That's like meeting someone who can speak multiple languages fluently, usually those types are scholars or ambassadors and are worth their weight in gold.
The egalitarian culture that has permeated society has suggested that anyone can be anything. This is not the case, some are made and find their stride in different roles, this is the meaning of society. People with various strengths and weaknesses working together.
Not everyone is meant to code and the "learn to code" bubble is bursting because it was artificially inflated by big tech and bigger egos.
9/10 times, yes. Most of the time if I engage, sign up or test just for curiosity's sake, it is exactly what I knew before I engaged. Cheap, lacking thought, planning, and what feels like trying to bang out and ship with a one-liner prompt. Regardless if hours weren't spent, let me say... it isn't evident.
The last questions are great food for thought. I think we will get used to it, but it's like a mosquito in a room at night. We don't know where it is, too tired to look for it, try to hide under the blanket, eventually turn on the light and look, and potentially still can't find it. I think regardless, it is something we have to accept and learn to live with, but that does not mean deem it respectable or lower our standards. Continue to call out bullshit, regardless of AI or human slop. If people are building something truly, they will listen to feedback and try to iterate and improve. There's nothing wrong with not knowing, but there is something inherently wrong with outsourcing your entire mental capacity to AI alone. It should be used to leverage what drives you and an extension to support you, rather than driving you... or as the cool kids like to call it now, "cuck-coding".
For one thing, I am "used to AI art and posters > marketing materials" but it's just an eye sore and an internal hole in the soul.... especially for pixel art. "Look it looks so real", nah it really doesn't... at least yet. Like everything, this tech is a double-edged sword.
My real question is:
We know the technology will get better, but will humanity?
A year ago, yes. Today, human coders are just as likely (maybe more likely?) to write bad code compared to machine written code.
Look at all the exploits and vulnerabilities being discovered around us. All human code. Bugs that went undetected for years and in some cases, decades, was written by humans. AI slop is the product of inefficient human action/direction. AI just follows directions.
The perfect analogy is the game in which one must give exact instructions on how to do a simple task, like making a peanut butter sandwich original ↗. Your results are only as good as your instructions.
The optimal scenario today is machine written code planned/orchestrated by humans with several machine review passes and a final human reviewer.
Agreed. People talk like all the code written before AI was great, or like everyone was building valuable software. Most of it wasn’t. Anyone who has touched programming even a little knows syntax is torture, and even testing a tiny idea used to eat a lot of time and effort. Yet most people were googling their way through it anyway. People forget the “google how to center a div” jokes.
Who wrote the code doesn’t matter much. Software engineering is a measurable field, and a product has value for what it is, not for who made it. If you’re smart enough, lean toward engineering and know a bit about how software works, not using an LLM is a real waste of time.
You just have to know what you’re doing. That’s the real point, and it’s not that hard to learn. Most people who can’t build anything of real value, or who ship security problems, fail right here.
Even if the code came from divine revelation rather than an LLM; quality, security, performance, and a well-thought-out underlying architecture are what truly matter.
As Linus Torvalds said:
“Talk is cheap. Show me the code.”
We went from humans copying human code to machines copying human code. That's about it. 90% of coding would be eliminated if companies weren't fucking retarded IP (Intellectual Property not Internet Protocol) maxxers.
Yes, that’s exactly how it was, lol. When I was just trying things out with HTML and CSS, I’d open sites with good design, hit inspect, copy the parts I liked, fix them up and paste them into my own file. I’d take the layout of the homepage cards from the New York Times and a navbar from some other site.
I think vibe coding is fine except for certain sections. I think critical components still need to be done by hand. If those critical components are obviously done by an LLM I wouldn't trust it. It's the problem you already stated, you don't know if the person who threw it in there even knows enough to look at it and see if it works or has problems, etc.