[gngoo]

For me, vibe coding is the only logical way forward. I see that the term gets a lot of flak. But in almost 10 years of writing web-applications for a living, this feels even more exciting then when I finally "got it". And its measurable, I am sitting on 5 completed web-apps with traffic just this year, working with 3 clients, and due to my ability to be this productive, feel like I have a very stable future ahead. I even had my last client seek me out, for writing about coding like this, because he wants to replace his back-end and front-end coders with people who can "AI Code" the full-stack, but aren't new to this. Well, its sad, but I am likely replacing 3 people on their team. Only time will tell if that was their right decision, but I am not saying no to that.

But then again, I have been doing this for 10 years; that is my edge. Same exact stack (Django + boring frontend). I know the ins and out of my stack, quite obviously every single day, I see AI go into a direction that I know is going to produce a huge footgun along the way. I can just see that up ahead, suggest a different approach, and continue. IF I was entirely new to this, I would end up building stuff that breaks down after weeks or months or investments, not knowing when things went wrong, or how to go forward. Regardless, I feel like my time has come, and I am definitely spending 95% of my time just prompting the AI versus writing actual code. Even for the most minor changes, like changing a CharField to a TextField, I don't even want to open the models.py myself. In Cursor, I am averaging 5000-7000 fast requests per month, because in terms of ROI it pays off. I am looking forward to this getting better.

[namaria]

> Well, its sad, but I am likely replacing 3 people on their team.

Are you capturing this value? Are you getting paid 4x as much as before? If you are not capturing this increase in the value of your work, who is? If you're not getting paid 4x as much as before, which I doubt you are, why are you doing this?

[gngoo]

I am getting paid significantly more than a year ago, but definitely not 4x as much. However, I have a lot more free time than I did before. And this while working on my own side projects as well; which are slowly growing into ramen-profitability. There are also other things to factor in, like living in South East Asia at a low cost of living and billing US and EU standard rates.

> why are you doing this?

Because I love doing this? Both web and software development are passions, AI feels like a lever; and making my money with this is nothing short of a dream come true.

[namaria]

Not why you build software man, why are you taking 3 jobs and foregoing receiving 3 salaries.

[gngoo]

Because they are willing to pay my asking rate. Maybe it’s 3 jobs, but for me it’s still one. I can’t help that their 3 other devs aren’t as productive. I’m not here to defend them either. Absolutely quite some companies are going this route, it’s not a unique situation either. What should I do? Not adapt and complain about the job market? Using AI -IDEs since day one, I also see the writings on the wall, so I’m also taking advantage of these things (like anyone should).

[namaria]

You're absolutely right. The rational thing for you to do is to enable further exploitation of your own class and hand over the extra profit on a silver plate to others.

[gngoo]

Either you adapt, or you don't. But this is what's coming for all software/web & IT jobs. I am not making up the rules of the game; neither am I sitting here and be bitter about it.

[weakfish]

I think the main difference here is that you _know_ your stack and can foresee the issues if the AI goes that direction. The vibes based coder in the article seems to be incapable of seeing those problems, and solves them by just spamming the prompts harder.

[digdugdirk]

... The current global system just isn't going to make it, is it?

[gngoo]

I am not the judge of that, but I always felt like I freelanced/contracted out in the fringes. So I am definitely not the average of the industry here.