[paulhebert]

The big change I've seen is that before if you knew what you were doing you had two options:

- Make something crappy fairly quickly

- Make something good a little slower

AI has introduced a third option:

- Make something really crappy at light speed

A lot of companies are very excited about this and it makes it hard to advocate for "make something good a little slower" (even though AI can help speed that up.)

It feels like a race to the bottom. Companies were already prioritizing speed over quality. With AI a lot of them are doubling down.

[ElProlactin]

Except that AI also allows people to make something half-decent at light speed.

Yes, the average vibe coded app might not scale to millions of users, might not be perfectly secure, etc. but let's be honest: the freelance web developer you would have paid $25,000 to build your app a decade ago was in most cases not going to deliver a highly-scalable, highly-secure product either.

AI can allow companies to prioritize speed over quality, but it has also enabled lots of small businesses and entrepreneurs to actually build things that they wouldn't have if they had to pay a developer $xxx/hour.

[paulhebert]

Yeah that’s fair

It still makes it a tougher sell to deliver high quality more slowly

Side note: when it comes to front end I’m thinking less about scalability and security (though they apply) and more about performance, accessibility, reaponsiveness, quality UI, maintainability, basic design sense, etc.