[sarchertech]

I’ve predicted the future and I’ve figured out where vibe coding is going to go based on this article.

1. People are going to come in and vibe code a replacement for some shitty component in a morning. They aren’t going to take time to verify and understand the code.

2. The new code will fix most of the problems with the original component, but it will have a whole new set of issues.

3. People will use AI to fix the bugs, but they won’t take the time to understand the fixes or the regression tests that they tell AI to add.

4. The new system will get so complicated that it’s hard for even AI to work on it. The “test suite” will be so full of tests that are redundant, and nonsensical that the run time will be too high to meaningfully guide AI. And even in the cases where AI does use it, many of the tests are just reimplementing the code under test in the test (Claude does this about 25% of the time based on what I’ve seen if you don’t catch it).

5. Goto 1

This is the same cycle I’ve seen in 90% of companies I’ve worked at, it will just be on a faster cadence.

And that is how we’ll get to a place where we output 100x lines of code, and spend 2x developers salaries on tokens, with little meaningful impact on the outside world.

[spiderfarmer]

> The new system will get so complicated that it’s hard for even AI to work on it.

I used AI to refactor several of my own "move fast and break things" projects and it worked absolutely GREAT. So if that's what you're concerned about, you're not seeing where the puck is going.

[sarchertech]

Did you take the time to review the code?

[spiderfarmer]

Yes, it's for a Laravel project and Laravel Boost + Pint makes both Claude and Codex write great code.

The trick is to make a good plan first. And to not rewrite your entire codebase all at once. But that advice is older than my all of my kids combined.

[sarchertech]

If you’re taking the time to review the code, none of the the above applies to you.

[spiderfarmer]

Yeah, but I'm still using AI to do the things you seem to think it's not able to do.

[sarchertech]

Your human crafted go fast and break things code is not equivalent to what I was talking about.

Look at OpenClaw for an example of what I’m talking about. That’s what happens when you let AI go wild without review or understanding. It’s half a million lines of code and it’s 2 months old. When AI adds a new feature it has no choice but to add and change tens of thousands of lines of code because it’s a spaghetti nightmare.

AI cannot refactor OpenClaw without making massive functionality changes. It might be possible for a human to spend a very significant amount of time guiding it to clean it up. But if you aren’t reading the code in the first place you ain’t gonna do that.

Without human guidance and review AI will absolutely create mountains of slop that are beyond its ability to maintain.