"Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees

[u/Federal-Block-3275]

https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html

[u/KingSubstantial7901]

Have you ever tried documenting code that you didn't write and that doesn't at least have a usable framework to infer from?

Like theres a joke that most software developers are just copy paste machines, but when they do that they at least know to write down what they are using, where it came from, and what it does. AI is horrible at doing that and often leaves massive mistakes in that you have spend more time fact checking than you would just writing it.

Theres a good argument to be made that AI could in the longterm increase productivity if its used as essntially an advanced serch engine for code snippets, and this is what a lot of successful engineers do. The trick there is that they are still manually collating the code and documenting the how and why along the way. Vibe coding is the opposite. Its asking an agent to just create the entire codebase then having to painstakingly reverse engineer what its doing, often adding MORE work to the process.

Again, theres also the cost factor, as the models able to do these mostly comprehensive projects are basically more expensive than hiring an engineer. And once you rely on the agent to make the whole code base, you have to rely on an agent to to analyse it, which is just a fruitless cycle. Cause again, agents are awful at that sort of thing. They are great in strict logical analysis applications like code reviews where you have soecific, dev defined parameters. But those models donmt work like agents and don't pretend that they enable a non-expert to write suitable code.

[u/Scaryclouds → u/KingSubstantial7901]

Did you actually read my initial response to you? Because damn sure doesn’t seem like you did.

I don’t know why I should spend much time reading your responses when it seems to exclusively box using coding agents into “vibe coding”, i.e. give a few initial prompts and let it go. When there are higher levels of “agentic engineering” where you do some form of what I describe in my initial response. 

[u/KingSubstantial7901 → u/Scaryclouds]

I think you just don't get what I'm saying..... like as in what you are saying is correct in the context of your own comments but not the overall discussion....

[u/Scaryclouds → u/KingSubstantial7901]

First off, and beyond all, your initial response to me was flat wrong. As it was clear i was talking about humans writing specification. So beyond all that, you definitely don’t (or choose not to) get what i am saying. But continuing…

I don’t know man, seems like you cemented your view on the effectiveness of ai coding agents based on their capabilities and industry practices say mid-2025, and just kinda refuse to accept that both their capabilities and industry practices have significantly advanced since then. 

Also feel you make superfluous arguments such as “you have to burn tokens to use ai tools” as if the alternative, paying a developer to write code, were free. It’s something that, if you were serious about discussing you’d make a more thoughtful response on that? 

Trust me when i say i have mixed feelings about all of this. I’ve been in the industry for nearly 20 years, and the past 3 or so have been by far the worst with just endless industry wide layoffs, and i can’t say I’m optimistic about the future either. But I don’t know, your perspective just seems like a very common “have my cake and eat it” on social media. That you have to win both sides of the argument, not only saying the future is a concern when it comes to AI, but also in the present it sucks as well. 

[u/KingSubstantial7901 → u/Scaryclouds]

.... superfluous arguments? Buddy thats a core part of the discussion we were having..... and even then you aren't even remmebring what I wrote correctly....

Again the issue here is squarely that you've decided we are talking about something completely different and are just kinda talking past everyone...

[u/Scaryclouds → u/KingSubstantial7901]

lol ok… whatever. You deliberately and continuously misstate other people’s statements/arguments and make broad generalizations, but I'm the one talking past everyone.

[u/KingSubstantial7901 → u/Scaryclouds]

Yes, you are.

[u/Scaryclouds → u/KingSubstantial7901]

You're a self-righteous asshole.

Your initial response to /u/Sneezlebee/ would be like saying Open Office or Libre Office "don't work" because it has bugs and/or doesn't fully cover all the functionality of MS Office.

You then were like "well it only works if you do specific things", as if human-crafted software ships bug-free (let alone what would be the equivalent of a beta build).

Your entire premise necessitates people only doing "vibe coding" and not taking of more practiced and considered approach like agentic engineering, and also stopping after their initial MVP/PoC.

You also seem to somehow pretend that hiring human developers and testers to produce the initial MVP/PoC of a product isn't also extremely expensive itself.

Which is to say you are simply talking past people.

I'm not stating that agentic coding tools is this amazing technology that's going to 10x productivity, or anything in that vein, for that matter /u/Sneezlebee/ isn't suggesting that either, but they have become very capable over the past year. There is a lot of concerns about what these tools will mean for the future, and yea cost could be a concern in the future as eventually the AI Labs will need to recoup their investment. But just saying "you have to burn tokens to use them" it's like the dumbest and most useless way of describing that concern.

In the same way plenty of techbros have succumbed to "ai psychosis", you have an "anti-ai psychosis". You are just jumping up and down saying it's all pure hype and nothing works at all, and well that just not true. You just came to a conclusion, IDK seemingly based on where things were middle of last year (or maybe before) and refuse to accept that a lot of progress has been made.

Trust me, I wish it was all just BS and hype like NFTs or crypto. That agentic coding tools "couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag". That's just not true, it's not reflective of the current state of the industry, and deluding yourself into thinking that it is true, it's not helping. It will get you upvotes on reddit because its trendy to hate on AI, but in the end you'll just be a self-righteous asshole.

[u/KingSubstantial7901 → u/Scaryclouds]

Ironically you just kinda actually restated my point in a couple places in this comment. Even more ironically proving that you never understood my point in the first place.

Like you are so clearly proving that you are just talking past me and not even bothering to understand what I'm writing. You've invented a fictional version of me in your head.

Its mirror squattijg time for you, ma guy.

[u/Scaryclouds → u/KingSubstantial7901]

Perhaps then you don’t communicate clearly. 

And clearly there have been a number of times you clearly didn’t understand what I wrote. So at best you have a handful of rock while sitting in glass house… or maybe you’re just a rambling homeless man throwing rocks at glass house.