Comment by ascendantlogic

Comment by ascendantlogic 2 days ago

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> Here’s the thing - we want to help. We want to build good things. Things that work well, that make people’s lives easier. We want to teach people how to do software engineering!

This is not what companies want. Companies want "value" that customers will pay for as quickly and cheaply as possible. As entities they don't care about craftsmanship or anything like that. Just deliver the value quickly and cheaply. Its this fundamental mismatch between what engineers want to do (build elegant, well functioning tools) and what businesses want to do (the bare minimum to get someone to give them as much money as possible) that is driving this sort of pulling-our-hair-out sentiment on the engineering side.

Lauris100 2 days ago

“The only way to go fast, is to go well.” Robert C. Martin

Maybe spaghetti code delivers value as quickly as possible in the short term, but there is a risk that it will catch up in the long term - hard to add features, slow iterations - ultimately losing customers, revenue and growth.

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  • ascendantlogic 2 days ago

    Anecdotally I'm already seeing this on a small scale. People who vibe coded a prototype to 1 mil ARR are realizing that the velocity came at the cost of immense technical debt. The code has reached a point where it is essentially unmaintainable and the interest payments on that technical debt are too expensive. I think there's going to be a lot of money to be made over the next few years un-fucking these sort of things so these new companies can continue to scale.

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    • _DeadFred_ 2 days ago

      So basically the new version of the 1990's people's projects that grew to high ARR based on their random Visual Basic codebase? That's how software companies have been starting for 30 years.

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    • busssard 2 days ago

      if i have 1mil ARR, i can hire some devs to remake my product from scratch. and use the Vibecoded Example as a design mockup.

      If i manage to vibecode something alone that takes off, even without technical expertise, then you validated the AI usecase...

      Before Claude i had to make a paper prototype or a figma, now i can make Slop that looks and somehow functions the way i want. i can make preliminary tests, and even get to some proof of concept. in some cases even 1million $ annual revenue...

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      • ascendantlogic 2 days ago

        Yes, this is exactly where AI shines: PoCs and validating ideas. The problems come when you're ready to scale. And the "I can hire some devs to remake my product from scratch" part is the exact money making scenario some of my consulting friends are starting to see take shape in the market.

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      • occz 2 days ago

        I guess that depends on how you get that ARR-figure. If more than all of it goes to paying your AI bills, then you can't really afford that much engineering investment.

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      • chasd00 2 days ago

        > hire some devs

        you're making an assumption these devs you hire actually know what they're doing and not just a proxy back to an LLM.

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      • mrkeen 2 days ago

        > if i have 1mil ARR, i can hire some devs to remake my product from scratch

        This assumes a pool of available devs who haven't already drunk the Koolaid.

        To put it another way: the 2nd wave of devs will also vibe code. Or 'focus on the happy path'. Or the 'MVP', whatever it's called these days.

        From their point of view, it will be faster and cheaper to get v2 out sooner, and 'polish' it later.

        Does anyone in charge actually know what 'building it right' actually means? Is it in their vocabulary to say those words?

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      • jcgrillo 2 days ago

        You would only be able to hire me to do that job if you gave me every last dollar of that ARR. And I still might turn you down tbh..

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  • Piskvorrr 2 days ago

    By then, the startup will have folded, and the C-levels will have moved on to the next Idée Du Jour.

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  • const_cast 2 days ago

    This is true, but what I've come to realize is companies only prioritize the short term, no matter what, no exceptions. They take everything on as debt.

    They don't care about losing customers 10 years later because they're optimizing for next quarter. But they do that every quarter.

    Does this eventually blow up? Uh, yeah, big time. Look at GE, Intel, Xerox, IBM, you name it.

    But you can get shockingly far only thinking about tomorrow over and over again. Sometimes, like, 100 years far. Well by then we're all dead anyway so who cares.

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  • gjsman-1000 2 days ago

    Or, you can be like many modern CTOs: AI will likely get better and eventually be capable of mostly cleaning up its own mess today. In which case, YOLO - your startup dies, or AI is sufficiently advanced enough by the time it succeeds. The objections about quality only matter if you think it’s going to plateau.

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    • Piskvorrr 2 days ago

      That is, literally, faith-based business management. "We suck, sure - but wait, a miracle will SURELY happen in version 5. Or 6. Or 789. It will happen eventually, have faith and shovel money our way."

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    • SoftTalker 2 days ago

      If the AI gets that good, what value does your startup add?

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    • godshatter 2 days ago

      I suspect it's going to tank instead of getting better, no matter what they try to do with attention or agents or whatever, especially if it's training on AI-written code of which there will be more and more of as time goes on. I'm not an AI expert by any means, so take that with a grain of salt.

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armada651 2 days ago

While this is true, the push-pull between sales and engineering resulted in software that is built well enough to last without being over-engineered. However if both sales and the engineers start chasing quick short term gains over long term viability that'll result in a new wave of shitty low-quality software being released.

AI isn't good enough yet to generate the same quality of software as human engineers. But since AI is cheaper we'll gladly lower the quality bar so long as the user is still willing to put up with it. Soon all our digital products will be cheap AI slop that's barely fit for purpose, it's a future I dread.

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  • Workaccount2 2 days ago

    >AI isn't good enough yet to generate the same quality of software as human engineers

    The software I have vibecoded for myself totally obliterates anything available on the market. Imagine a program that operates without any lag or hicupps. Opens and runs instantly. A program that can run without an internet connection, without making an account, without somehow being 12GB in size, without totally unintuitive UI, without having to pay $20/mo for static capabilities, without persistent bugs that are ignored for years, without any ability to customize anything.

    I know you are incredulous reading this is, but hear me out

    Bespoke narrow scope custom software is incredibly powerful, and well within the wheelhouse of LLMs. Modern software is written to be the 110-tool swiss army knife feature pack to capture as large of an audience as possible. But if I am just using 3 of those tools, an LLM can write a piece of software that is better for me in every single way. And that's exactly what my experience has been so far, and exactly the direction I see software moving in the future.

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    • DrillShopper 2 days ago

      I'll believe it when I see it with my own eyes, otherwise these words read more like sales copy than technological discovery.

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      • Workaccount2 2 days ago

        If you haven't seen an LLM output a functional 2K or even 5K LOC program at this point, you probably never will.

        The problem space of average people problems that can be addressed with <5K LOC is massive. The only real barrier is having to go through an IDE, but that will almost certainly be solved in the near future, it already sort of is with Canvas features.

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  • gjsman-1000 2 days ago

    Well, in such a future, when people have been burned by countless vibecoded projects, congratulations - FAANG wins again! Who is going to risk one penny on your rapidly assembled startup?

    Any startup that can come to the table saying “All human engineers; SOC 2 Type 2 certified; dedicated Q/A department” will inherit the earth.

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Quarrelsome 2 days ago

the fundamental issue remains that there is no objective and reliable measure of developer productivity. So those who experience it (developers) and the business who are isolated from it; end up with different perspectives. This IMHO is going to be the most important factor that fuels "AI first" stories like these, that could dominate our industry over the coming decade.

I don't think the chasm is unbridgable, because ultimately everybody wants the same thing (for the company to prosper) but they fail to entirely appreciate the perspective of the other. Its up to a healthy company organisation to productively address the conflict between the two perspectives. However, I have yet to encounter such a culture of mutal respect and resource allocation.

I fear that agentic AI could erase all the progress we've made on culture in the past 25 years (e.g. agile) and drag us back towards 80s tech culture.

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  • gjsman-1000 2 days ago

    Progress? Agile, and the aftermath (the MVP!), it’s how we got here in the first place!

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    • Quarrelsome 2 days ago

      Seems like you don't remember the 80s, 90s or even early 2000s. Agile was a movement specifically designed to help represent the interests of development in organisations. Obviously business corrupted it over time but the industry before it was considerably worse.

      MVPs exist to force business into better defining their requirements. Prior to Agile we'd spend years building something and then we'd deliver it, only for business to then "change their mind", because they've now just realised (now that they have it), that what they asked for was stupid.

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    • ascendantlogic a day ago

      Do me a favor and spend a few years in the early 2000's writing enterprise javabeans in a place doing waterfall. Then you'll understand how we ended up with agile.

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gjsman-1000 2 days ago

Right; I discovered at the new company I joined, they want velocity more than anything. The sloppy code, risk of mistakes, it’s all priced in to the risk assessment of not gaining ground first. So… I’m shooting out AI-written code left and right and that’s what they want. My performance? Excellent. Will it be a problem in the future? Well, either the startup fails, or AI might be able to rewrite it in the future.

It’s not what I want… but at the same time, how many of our jobs do what we want? I could easily end up being the garbage man. I’m doing what I’m paid to do and I’m paid well to do it.

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