[martin1975]

I guess it was only a matter of time before this niche of business developed.

AI is an imprecise "programming" language, full of ambiguity (English) trying to produce precise relationships between different concepts.

It certainly works great on small scale, building block type of things, but the more a project grows in complexity, components, interfacing with other heterogenous systems in other languages or APIs, understanding wtf is going on top to bottom.... it fails miserably.

Reminds me of how xUML was going to be the panacea to replace coding. AI is failing for the same reasons. At least with xUML you have a precise definition - with AI, you're vibing your way into one.

[llm_nerd]

> I guess it was only a matter of time before this niche of business developed.

This is a fun webpage, and it feeds a certain bias, but there really isn't a "niche" beyond getting people to upvote it for the lulz. I would be extremely surprised if they find a single paying customer. And to be fair, lots of grifters have done the fake it till you make it act on HN, so someone saying "Oh I'm totally going to give them my corps code" convince no one.

>It certainly works great on small scale .... it fails miserably.

If your large system isn't the interactions of a lot of "small scale" projects, you are doing it wrong.

No seriously, it's bizarre how people keep using this as their defence against AI, and at this point it's basically saying "Sure AI works on good projects, but it doesn't work on our giant spaghetti code monstrosity cludged together in a million terrible ways"

I've had tremendous productivity using AI on some enormous and extremely complex projects, courtesy of modularization, separation of concerns, explicit APIs, and so on.

[xmprt]

> I've had tremendous productivity using AI on some enormous and extremely complex projects, courtesy of modularization, separation of concerns, explicit APIs, and so on.

The problem I've had with AI systems is that they eventually realize it's possible to solve a problem by linking together two separate systems in subtle ways that result in spaghettification of good code. It takes active effort to get them to follow strict separation of concerns and modularization.

[llm_nerd]

> It takes active effort to get them to follow strict separation of concerns and modularization

100% agreed. AI tools are a multiplier for experienced, conscientious developers who pay attention. Bad developers can still make bad code with any tool, and AI allows them to make more bad code quicker.

[martin1975]

nailed it.

[singingtoday]

This is the gotcha here and the solution is to tell it how it should architect the software and what integration points it should use. But if you clearly define integration boundaries, the success condition, and a few other small details, it generally does a pretty good job.

[slopinthebag]

Ask almost any software developer in big tech about their software and I’m sure they’ll praise it. Using it is a completely different story. I’m sure you think you’re having success vibecoding enormous and extremely complex problems, but I’d bet their either not extremely complex or it’s not working as well as you think.

[strken]

This is misreading the original reply. An enormously complex problem is different from an enormously complex project. Complex projects can usually be decomposed into tasks of varying complexity, some of which I bet an LLM helps with.

[ncallaway]

> courtesy of modularization, separation of concerns, explicit APIs, and so on.

That's great, but a lot of that is knowledge you have to bring in. You need to be careful with the design of the API boundaries, the interfaces, etc.

Lots of people who are using AI to code projects... don't do that.

And once you get to the point that the AI is having trouble keeping up with the project... it's going to take a lot of work to discover what those module boundaries and interfaces should be.

[Salgat]

Lots of small moving parts that build up into a large architected platform, which requires careful design, otherwise you get a big ole ball of "it mostly works when we first created it but don't touch it". And yes, bad developers are susceptible to creating the same thing. That's the whole issue with vibe coding, it creates something that works, but is brittle, because there are no strict architecture requirements around the entire design besides vague suggestions like "follow best practices", and as it makes mistakes, it just patches whatever it can to make it work, instead of fixing the root problem with the design.

[LPisGood]

> it doesn't work on our giant spaghetti code monstrosity cludged together in a million terrible ways

That is so so so much software. Further, AI loves to make this kind of software.

[rustystump]

Ahh yes the “you’re holding it wrong defense”. Now i ask what enormous extremely complicated projects…excuse me by projects we mean real production software with real scale.

Sure, it can poke one system or another but even with opus and now fable, it very quickly hits the limit a limit that tracks very closely with context window.

This is to say that no amount of harness tool skill is going to cover that fundamental gap. If your change fits in context, good chance it will work.

[llm_nerd]

> Ahh yes the “you’re holding it wrong defense”

Tools have limitations and ideal uses. If you hammer a nail with a chisel, you're probably going to have a bad time. If you build a home and don't level the joists and studs, you're going to have a bad time. If you use an impact wrench on the wrong part you can cause enormous damage. And so on.

Yes, "holding it wrong" is a legitimate thing people can discuss. Similarly it's funny how often people want to talk about "vibe coding", when that is quite simply the opposite of what I am advocating, but it has become a fun slur.

> Now i ask what enormous extremely complicated projects…excuse me by projects we mean real production software with real scale

Every large project on the planet is using AI tooling now, so this sort of gatekeeping has gotten almost sad. Like there's another guy in here leaving some worthless troll comment and they literally created an account on here four months ago purely to run around shrieking and telling everyone that AI is useless and it's all a myth. The desperation is palpable.

Good large projects generally are the combination of hundreds to thousands of small, fairly defined and isolated sub-projects and modules and contained classes with well-defined entry-points, and so on. Using AI on projects like that, where the non-vibe developing, skilled developer is asking for concrete, audited changes on those modules, is hugely useful. It's far more of a crap shoot if you don't understand your own code base and broadly demand that it make cross-cutting changes.

[rustystump]

I never said ai was not useful nor that it cannot be used on small parts. The issue is size.

I think you are projecting other people on to me with is counter productive.

Slop and vibe coding are valid. It is specifically for describing crappy ai output.

You still did not give specifics which is usually the case when pushed on. I will give you some, when there are well over 20 languages that span multiple applications which all can depend on one another in same way, bazel builds from hell. Ya ai cant do it.

[bigstrat2003]

> And to be fair, lots of grifters have done the fake it till you make it act on HN...

Indeed. That is how the entire AI industry exists.

[alightsoul]

I can't agree with saying ai is failing, I mean if you work at a company with a lot of software engineers it can be true, but from what I see it's mostly non technical companies that adopt vibe coding to address technical problems. It's just another form of outsourcing

[martin1975]

i use it, but i could re-create everything the AI produced, it just takes me longer (I'm a dev). And yeah, that latter part of your sentence is what freaks me out - that someone thinks they can start thinking like a dev because they have an AI bot available to them. You know, "Become a super dev in 21 days" kind of book... Then you wonder why s*t breaks left and right.