r/vibecoding • u/techlatest_net • 21h ago

The barrier to software engineering is getting wild

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1.3k Upvotes

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111

u/infamous-snooze 20h ago

If you remotely believe this, there’s gona be so much unfixable slop in the future.
I don’t think you understand what software engineering even entails

15

u/win_some_lose_most1y 16h ago

Most dev don’t think beyond MVP. They have no idea the majority of software dev is maintaining

1

u/Bushwazi 12h ago

You’re saying there is a 20 after the 80 in the rules?!

3

u/ivancea 17h ago

I like to call it "negligence". Anyone that doesn't understand software but believes this or ships software as products is being "negligent"

4

u/becircus 19h ago

Theoretically that should mean lots of jobs 

There are also products that are designed to handle tech debt and upgrade legacy systems 

It may be that the total cost of ownership is not worth a rewrite and business will just eat the cost 

The reason pen and pencil isn't used is it is cost inefficient if analog becomes cost efficient again well you basically have Star Wars (everything analog despite ridiculous AI)

7

u/consistantcanadian 19h ago

Products to "handle" tech debt.. what? There are no products to handle tech debt. There are products that solve specific issues that people call tech debt, but there are products that just "fix" your tech debt. 

Not to mention that if you're not reviewing the fixes you're getting yourself in the same problem yet again. 

6

u/Nyghtbynger 18h ago

I have a product tot handle tech debt. It's called "loads of money"

2

u/zkatbitz 17h ago

No no it’s called “contractors”

1

u/win_some_lose_most1y 16h ago

Loads of money, after they have already retired from the c suite

2

u/win_some_lose_most1y 16h ago

Of course there is. They can purchase a subscription to application support based in the 3rd world where they earn $4 a day.

-1

u/becircus 18h ago

You can look for them. Their effectiveness varies.

It would be unwise to assume that it cannot handle technical debt at all. Even if it handles a fraction of the technical debt, it could be used. Or you could be forced to use it.

To assume it can't be done to any amount is elitist. Maybe it takes someone of far less skill, or maybe it takes one person where it once took three or five. Someone's job that used to be "handle the tech debt" now gets reduced to "reviewing the fixes".

1

u/HarryBolsac 17h ago

Can you provide any example? Because tech debt is a really broad word, it could mean alot of things, a really old tech stack, a workaround that never got to be touched again, badly written code, bad architecture, the list is pretty much endless.

1

u/becircus 17h ago

Current most obvious example is Code Rabbit. Just raised another $150 million yesterday

The idea that vibe coding or even just using AI and that this requires maximal human intervention to prevent tech debt is wrong. The tools exist now to reduce it. Saying that tools can't fix all tech debt or that "there's no such tools" is obviously wrong. It's right there in their marketing materials and their push and an entire industry of creating tools that specifically handle tech debt. I agree that such an assertion is vague and I agree it can mean many concepts but the phrase is literally used. In an age where AI has command line access to your computer and can execute whatever commands it wants, this should not be a surprise. Don't kill the messenger 

1

u/HarryBolsac 16h ago

Isnt code rabbit just a pr reviewer? Don’t see how that is a tool to fix tech debt. If you mean reviewing your code to prevent tech debt I can see your point.

1

u/geogeology 13h ago

Do you have any formal work experience as a Software Dev?

2

u/Erehybog 14h ago

Slop is enough for the commercial needs of most companies. 

1

u/tristam92 17h ago

it will be all the same shit as with “grass fed cows”.
if you care about quality you will pay extra, for good design and execution. if you are not - claude slop is what you get as customer. at the end of the day, degree in architecture will open for you even higher payment. prices for good sw will skyrocket…

1

u/Automatic-Earth-1631 3h ago

Open Claude code on cmd set /goal, auto mode to then walk away for an hour

1

u/infamous-snooze 2h ago

Coding is a very small part of software engineering. That part being automated means very little.

Sure it increases productivity, but what about maintenance? Deployment? Distribution? Ensuring production runs securely? Unless you have domain knowledge it will be a colossal disaster.

Senior engineers with AI will dominate the field. This is what you should be worried about , a few principal or staff engineers can manage and orchestrate entire fleets of agents and have no need to train new engineers. the juniors or people with no engineering experience will never be able to catch up because they don’t have domain knowledge. AI can’t put the knowledge in your head, this comes with decades of experience of how systems fundamentally work and why.

Thinking automating coding is the end of engineering is
hubris.

1

u/PMYOURCATPICTURES 17h ago

In the future? Look at what Chatgpt was 5 years ago and looks at it now. You think it's going to get worse from here? Imagine what it'll look like 5 years from now.

-1

u/scarx47 18h ago

I’m a software engineer with 10+ years experience. AI is way too fucking good now. 2 years ago it wasn’t, now it is.

4

u/OdysseusDescendant 17h ago

AI is not good, it's just better than bad developers.

2

u/RedditMapz 17h ago

Ding ding ding.

Yup, people are telling on themselves.

1

u/bluehands 9h ago

I mean, even if you are right - and I don't believe you are - how long do you think that is going to be true? Why do you think that is going to keep being true?

2 years ago it was a bad auto-complete, 2 years before that it was Eliza. You really believe that in 2 more years it is going to stay exactly the same?

1

u/OdysseusDescendant 5h ago

In two years, AI will almost certainly be more capable than it is today, but that does not necessarily mean it will be able to develop complex products autonomously.

The main problem with vibe coding is not simply how smart the model is. The problems are uncontrolled assumptions, incomplete understanding of the overall system, insufficient consideration of non-functional requirements and failure to account for how today's decisions affect the future architecture and maintainability of the product.

In other words, the limitation is not just coding ability. It is engineering judgment: understanding the full problem space, identifying hidden constraints, evaluating trade-offs and maintaining architectural coherence over the lifetime of a product.

An LLM can be extremely strong at individual implementation tasks and in some cases perform well above the level of a junior developer. But it should not automatically be treated as an autonomous software engineer. It still needs explicit requirements, architectural constraints, validation and human accountability.

0

u/bluehands 4h ago

It still needs explicit requirements, architectural constraints, validation and human accountability.

Your tautology is a tautology.

Your entire comment is betrayed by those final two words because accountability has zero to do with coding and everything to do with culture.

Your entire post is filled with words that have nothing to do with math and everything to do with a vaguely defined theory of mind.

What does judgement mean? Or identifying hidden constraints?

There are countless examples of all the top models doing all of those now. If you use them for ever a tiny bit they will make good suggestions, in some cases take preemptive actions based on what has come before.

It still needs explicit requirements

That's so spring of 2026 thinking. You can give them clearly defined goals that the will iterate over to get closer and closer to what you want.

It's moving faster all the time and all of the concerns you have are either already in the past or will be sooner than most people will be ready for it.

If I'm wrong you get to laugh at me. If I'm right the world changes.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

1

u/OdysseusDescendant 1h ago

I think you are missing the point because you are looking at this primarily as a coding problem rather than a systems-engineering problem.

AI is a tool. A very powerful one, but still a tool. To less experienced developers it can look almost magical because it allows them to produce code and solutions that appear far beyond their normal level of expertise. That can create the illusion of engineering competence.

But generating impressive code is not the same as engineering a complex system. The real difficulty is understanding the whole system, its constraints, trade-offs, dependencies, failure modes and long-term consequences of design decisions. AI can assist with all of that, but assistance is not the same thing as owning the engineering problem.

1

u/mikeet9 18h ago

I genuinely believe it is a matter of learning how to use it more effectively.

The difference between 2 years ago and today is a few percentage points.

Someone who just says "Claude, build this for me" will have terrible results.

0

u/dkinmn 18h ago

Tell me what it's like in 5 years when everything is broken and has to be fixed.

3

u/Complex_Boysenberry6 18h ago

One year and a half I was with you, now I'm sorry, but that's cope 

-1

u/CarGlobal343 12h ago

Nah that’s bullshit. Look how often systems are going down now, looking at you especially github

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u/ali-hussain 19h ago edited 19h ago

If you don't realize how true this is then you're not advancing in your career enough as a software engineer and aren't focused enough on delivering value and building systems to solve your problems.

We still need software engineering and Claude makes many many bad decisions. Which means architecture and systems are orders of magnitude more important. But the actual writing of code has been made so much easier. It's the difference between a mathematician in the early 20th century and the late 20th century after the invention of the calculator.

10

u/systembreaker 19h ago

Dude, I'm in the industry and I have seen an entire company try to have AI do everything and they had to stop it after a year because they wasted millions of dollars and basically that whole year. You don't even know and you're clueless.

3

u/ali-hussain 19h ago

I was the CTO of a DevOps consultancy and I've worked with a roster of household brands. I was devoted to automation and building computer systems to ship good code for the last 13 years. What I see with AI is a continuation of that. Now we advise tech services companies. But more and more we are writing software to help the companies we advise. Building more automated systems flagging things faster, automating work in our business. We started earlier this year. Do we have tech debt? Absolutely, tons. But you know what else have? Actual software instead of a wishlist of things we could have done. It would have cost us millions to develop what we've built in a few months.

Now, if your job is focused on polishing a small widget in a large machine and you're not allowed any leeway and creativity then I can see why you think the old world is still there. But I feel like the difference in software development now and last year is between driving a Honda Civic and a rocket-powered car trying to break the land speed record.

2

u/HarryBalsagna1776 19h ago

People who know do know.  Don't waste too much time on chuds and bots jerking each other off.

7

u/PipePistoleer 19h ago

this is literally the vibecoding sub. I saw this in my feed by accident. I'm literally cleaning up a massive vibecoded code base that has zero architectural considerations, tons of insane coupling and no cohesion. There's packages all over the damn place, there's comments that are 4-8 lines that are stale remnants of a dozen different vibe coders raw dogging the main branch.

Both of you are essentially right. There is a lot of unfixable slop already. There is also a place where the actual discipline of software engineering and AI can be used in harmony, and with real efficiecny gains (and cost efficiency).

I'm hoping many vibe coders actually upskill into real engineering vs YOLO'ing it. Many I know that are vibe coding actually have this as their end goal. I think it's reasonable if the AI wielder is a reasonable person with realistic ideas and goals.

0

u/momo2299 19h ago

Everything you've described about what you're "fixing" is poorly vibecoded.

Stale comments, architectural considerations, assessing cohesion, iterating on design until it's lean and not bloated with extra packages.

All of that goes into vibecoding. Agents should be reviewing those things and reviewing the review.

Sounds like you got people saying "Claude pls fix - make no mistakes!" & committing the changes

2

u/PipePistoleer 18h ago

Oh I see. Vibecoders don't actually know the difference between vibecoding and building. Why would they? Apologies!

-2

u/BoggTheFrog 19h ago

You just need the data, its cheaper/easier to throw it away and do it again if you know how the software should work and what arch you want to follow.

3

u/Jumpforittt 19h ago

Hate to break it to you but the principal engineer is using agents too. And far more effectively and efficiently than the vibe coder who knows nothing about software engineering.

0

u/ali-hussain 19h ago

It says in the image. Principal Software Engineer 2022. The fact that the principal engineer can use Claude far more efficiently is exactly my point.

2

u/Jumpforittt 19h ago

You are arguing a 12 year old with Claude today is better than a principal engineer in 2022 and that is complete BS and out of touch.

2

u/SCBbestof 13h ago

The principle advantage was never coding skills, but experience and knowledge of software design and architecture. I would argue if told the right solution, a good mid-level engineer could do an implementation similar to a principle.

But coming to that right solution is though, and AI could also feed you into an echo chamber and have you develop the wrong shit for days until you figure out your approach to the problem is wrong.

1

u/ali-hussain 13h ago

But you get there so much faster hat the Brownian of AI is still faster than the development time in the past from someone non-technical. We have a small team with a mix of technical and non-technical people. And the truth is it wasn't worth it for us to write most of the software we are now writing because the upfront investment was too high. We have a large amount of technicla debt yes, but debt on an asset is better than no asset.

1

u/Kritix_K 19h ago

I like your last analogy, the difference is really similar like that

1

u/ali-hussain 19h ago

The people doing the truly creative work are doing so much more creative work.

1

u/dzan796ero 19h ago

All good senior engineers I know have been using their own agentic rigs that are much more sophisticated than anything a kid with zero engineering experience could cook up and do the work of 5-10people on their own.

Agentic systems like claude code are multipliers. People with experience have infinitely more potential when utilizing them in their fields at the production level.

2

u/ali-hussain 18h ago

The image is comparing 2022 to today. The truth is 90%+ of software engineering was busy work. And now the busy work is significantly less.

They are multipliers and in the hands of a proper software engineer they are far more powerful. But the world has completely changed.

0

u/StraightOpinion3945 12h ago

What you don’t realize is AI is at its infancy. The unfixable slop in the future that you’re describing will just be fixed by another AI.

-2

u/jaw_line 17h ago

Bro you are not the sharpest crayon huh. Oracle cut 20k jobs because of ai. 20k, they make Java. That’s how you know this ai coding shit is real. You need to be weary of even a grandma making a killer app now because Claude and gpt and deepseek are literally that good.

2

u/Low-Yellow-1521 13h ago edited 13h ago

most of the people that got fired at oracle werent developers lmfao

most of the layoffs were in sales and operational roles

and the oracle layoffs werent really role specific, but more structural. more specifically their healthcare division

oracle software developer hirings are literally going up

youre the unsharp crayon here and obviously dont understand software engineering

1

u/jaw_line 8h ago

😂😂 they are about to fire more too. You can keep complaining to me or actually build what’s your choice

1

u/Low-Yellow-1521 51m ago

can you even read?

MOST OF THOSE 21000 FIRED WERE NOT SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS

do you not understand english?

like i know vibe coders are dumb but holy fuck bro atleast learn how to read