Vibe coding is mad depressing

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

    > 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 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"

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 IKEA Effect [1] is a hell of a drug.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect

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.

Just fire your customer. You didn't know you could do that? When you freelance, you absolutely can.

> 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?

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.

I did not actually think ai would be that useful.

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.

You have to drive the LLM, you cannot let it drive. Therefore you still need to code.

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.

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

This sounds a lot more like a typical freelance client horror story than a problem with vibe coding.

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.

"There is no best practices anymore, no proper process, no meaningful back and forth." -- speak for yourself only, my friend.

I see it as a reason why we’re going to remain employable for a while.

Reading the post and some of the comments here, looks to me like people are having bigger problems with how other people use AI than with AI itself.

The protocol should be that they hand off the prompts/context and not the generated code.

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.

Just want to highlight that gmnz.xyz domain is on UCEPROTECTL3 blacklist.

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.

Not really worth working on any of these project.

u should abuse the non technical person sending you code. not say "thanks, though"

PRs and branch rules are a thing.

“I made a chat app using Claude in two hours”

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

Honestly the emoji thing I like, it helps me read log output.