[clvx]

> “Soon, everyone will be a developer”

This is the wrong view. It's more like "Soon, everyone will be able to go from idea to a prototype". IMO, there's a different value perception when people can use concrete things even if they are not perfect. This is what I like about end-to-end vibe coding tools. I don't see a non developer using Claude Code but I can totally see them using Github Spark or any similar tool. After that, the question is how can I ensure this person can keep moving forward with the idea.

[silversmith]

I had an epiphany about this couple days ago.

You know how the average dev will roll their eyes at taking over a maintenance of a "legacy" project. Where "legacy" means anything not written by themselves. Well, there will be a lot more of these maintenance takeovers soon. But instead of taking over the product of another dev agency that got fired / bankrupt / ..., you will take over projects from your marketing department. Apps implemented by the designers. Projects "kickstarted" by the project manager. Codebases at the point antropic / google / openai / ... tool became untenable. Most likely labelled as "just needs a little bit more work".

These LLM tools are amazing for prototypes. Amazing. I could not be anywhere near as productive for churning out prototypes as claude code is, even if I really tried. And these prototypes are great tools for arriving at the true (or at least slightly better) requirements.

Prototypes should get burned when "real" development starts. But they usually are not. And we're going to do much, much more prototyping in very near future.

[mjr00]

> Apps implemented by the designers. Projects "kickstarted" by the project manager. Codebases at the point antropic / google / openai / ... tool became untenable. Most likely labelled as "just needs a little bit more work".

True, but not a new thing! You've never known true development pain until you're told something from another department "needs some help to get productionized", only to find out that it's a 300 tab Excel file with nightmarish cross-tab interdependencies and VBA macros.

Genuinely not sure if vibe coded Python would be an improvement for these type of "prototype" projects. They'll definitely continue to exist, though.

[mandevil]

A friend got hired by a defense contractor to be the first developer on a new project! Greenfield developing! It turned out the project was here are 30,000 lines of Fortran77 written by two scientists who got Ph.Ds in Geology in ~1985, please make this do X, Y, and Z.

He left that job a week later. It never went on his resume or LinkedIn.

[everforward]

The prompts used to generate it might serve as a list of requirements, which would be helpful. If the codebase is an utter mess, rebuilding the app from prompts would be an option.

I have no idea whether these sorts of projects would be a rewrite or just tidying up, though. I haven't seen what happens when people with no coding experience prompt these. The code I've seen devs get LLMs to generate is usually okay enough to maintain. Not ideal, but workable.

[pbronez]

Well… at least the vibe coded python codebase has better tooling. There are probably some cool tools for fixing rats nests of Macro’d Excel, but I’ve never found them.

[florianherrengt]

> Prototypes should get burned [...] But they usually are not.

"There's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution that works"

I loved reading this blog post[0]. Everything starts with a spreadsheet and then instead of replacing it, people just keep building on top of it forever.

While I found the post funny to read, honestly I'm fine with all the mess. I'm happy to embrace it instead of forever polishing something that I will never ship.

Vibe coded apps are next level of mess though and people don't seem to recognise that while betting on 'AI will fix it later'.

[0] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-dropkick-you-...

[ubercore]

What bums me out is the creativity of coming up with the idea and seeing it through. If the rest of my career involves cleaning up prototypes from PMs, designers and marketing, I will be a little sad.

[Palomides]

if development cost trends to zero but maintenance requires expertise, there will be no maintenance, all code will be thrown out ASAP

[caseyohara]

How will this work for users that depend on the software, and businesses that depend on the revenue from those users?

[soco]

You vibe code a new release with all the previous context plus "fix also this bug".

[Palomides]

a mixture of ossification if something mostly works, and a constantly shifting morass for the rest

so somewhat worse than what we have now

[CollinEMac]

This sounds like an absolute nightmare

[esafak]

Wouldn't it be better if it did work and they did not need programmers? Oh wait...

[silversmith]

It would. And some projects will manage to stay within the bounds of what AI tools can do, and require precisely no programmers.

Who knows, maybe couple years down the line the bounds expand, and "some" transforms into "many", maybe even "most" way, way later.

[cjcenizal]

Absolutely! AI coding is a communication lubricant. It enables non-technical people to express complex software ideas without the friction of asking a developer for help or even working with a no-code tool.

Software development doesn't occur in a vacuum -- it's part of a broader ecosystem consisting of tech writers, product managers, sales engineers, support engineers, evangelists, and others. AI coding enables each person in the org to participate more efficiently in the scoping, design, and planning phases of software development.

[bluefirebrand]

Instead of expecting anyone to raise their standards and learn the bare minimum about software development to have a conversation about it, we're lowering the bar

Again and again and again

[clvx]

who says it's about lowering the bar. If someone can build a more concrete view of their ideas which in most cases are requirements, then the conversation can be about nuances and not trying to figure it out what this person wants. I would say, It makes the conversation of the software development process easier because now you can discuss exactly why or why not it cannot be possible or the challenges you'll have to implement it.

[unshavedyak]

I do fear this framing though. It's going to be annoying with someone in a meeting using GPT on the side saying "No, it's totally possible to scale this way. Make it happen" because they're feeding what you say to a GPT to counter you with nonsense.

I'm using LLM a fair bit so i'm not doom and gloom entirely on it, but i do think our adjustment period is going to be rough. Especially if we can't find a way to make the LLMs actually reliable.

[florianherrengt]

If you can prompt AI that well, couldn't you just explain it to another human? Or is it the faster prototyping iterations that help them refine their ideas? As in, I'm not sure what I want so I'll use AI to build a few prototypes and clarify my ideas?

[cjcenizal]

I’m a visual person so having something I can see and experience typically helps me understand someone’s idea better than if they’re describing something and I’m trying to imagine it. It also helps to have a concrete artifact because we can methodically catalogue its characteristics and define which ones are exactly what the person means, kind of what they mean but they still need help refining it, or completely up for grabs. This is why I find prototypes, wireframes, and sketches to be useful tools for defining the solution space.

[florianherrengt]

It's great that more non developers can create their own software now and I made it clear that I'm in full agreement with this. What I'd argue is that people who build software professionally and got really good at it (or want to) focus on completely different types of projects where vide coding is irrelevant.

[pier25]

Everyone who can afford it once AI companies actually start selling at a price that can generate profits.

If people have to pay eg $100 for every of those prototypes I doubt they’ll be very popular. Sure it’s still cheaper than paying a dev but it will be expensive to iterate and experiment.

[NitpickLawyer]

Open models are ~6mo behind current closed SotA, and are hosted by many parties that have no incentive to subsidise the cost, so they're making some profit already. The biggest thing in our favor is that there isn't just oAI. There are 3 main closed providers, and plenty of open models released every cycle. Even if they're gonna raise the prices, there's enough competition so that eventually it levels off at a point. I think that point will still be "affordable". Certainly cheaper than a full time dev, even outsourced.

[guluarte]

the new wordpress/shopify blogs/sites/stores

[someothherguyy]

Yeah, like soon everyone will be a poet, or a multi-linguist, or a song writer, academic, copywriter, artist, counselor, etc.

I think overzealous LLM hype is a sort of Gell-Man amnesia.

[joshdavham]

That’s a good way to think about it. AI can help me translate languages, but I’m definitely not a translator.

[fragmede]

Depends how critical computers are to one's life, I think. I wouldn't call myself a cook, but I need to eat, so I can make a mean bowl of pasta when it comes down to it. Given another five-ten years of development, I expect tooling to develop that lets everyone automate computers to a degree previously reserved for professional programmers, akin to what the microwave oven did for cooking. The ability to microwave a hot pocket doesn't remotely make me a cook, but I won't starve, either.

[6510]

Reading that I thought everyone could be a series of APIs. We are all experts at something. Something like: when was building X at the end of Y street demolished?