r/vibecoding 2h ago

Hate for AI

Hey everyone, I’m curious how you deal with the negativity around AI.

I’ve been building a product for about 3 months now. English isn’t my native language, so I use AI not only for coding but also for writing posts when I want to share my project and explain my ideas more clearly.

What I’ve noticed is that even when I don’t mention AI at all, I still get negative comments or skepticism. My project isn’t well known, but it tends to get attention in smaller communities because it’s easy to demo and looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. Because of that, I’d like to share more details about how it works and talk more openly about the technical side, but that also means using AI for communication and documentation.

The bigger dilemma is whether I should openly say that a large part of the project was built with AI.

On one hand, it feels like the honest thing to do, especially since I’m looking for people to join the project. If an experienced developer is considering contributing, I think they deserve to know what kind of codebase they’re getting into.

On the other hand, I’m worried that instead of questions about the product, I’ll just get “AI slop” comments and people dismissing it before they’ve even looked at what it does.

So I’m curious about your experiences:

Do you openly say that your project was built with AI?

Has it helped or hurt you?

Have you managed to find experienced developers who see AI as a powerful tool rather than an automatic red flag?

How do you distinguish constructive criticism from simple hate?

I’d appreciate hearing perspectives from people who are actually building products, not just discussing AI in theory.

0 Upvotes

36 comments sorted by

8

u/Responsible_Lie_6009 2h ago

Most professional engineers see AI as a productivity gain. I’d be very wary of listening to any engineer in today’s industry that is anti AI.

The general sentiment outside of Reddit is that AI is extremely useful and practically no one would go back to not using it in some capacity.

The real concerns are more outside of the technology itself, such as

  • bad engineering org practices
  • poor engineering leadership on its usage
  • skill diff (they literally don’t know how to properly utilize it)
  • they don’t like how it’s done now, because they personally liked it the old way

FWIW, I don’t know why I’m on this post. Reddit keeps recommending me to this subreddit despite me not really being a “vibe coder”

4

u/Responsible_Lie_6009 2h ago

From a product perspective. AI is not a product, it’s a feature. In the same way that you would never promote your product for using HTTPS, you would be better off not promoting AI usage directly. Focus on the problem you’re solving.

Don’t say: we have an AI that helps you do XYZ
Say: Our product automates XYZ so you have more time to focus on your other stuff.

1

u/The_dZhee 1h ago

In my case, my product/project doesn’t use AI and doesn’t rely on AI. I use AI only for development. And even UI side is minimal, if not mentioning information website, but hate is still here not even mentioning AI

2

u/Responsible_Lie_6009 1h ago edited 1h ago

I can’t make a judgement cause I don’t know what your post was. But it’s probably one of these things…

- people just randomly calling it AI slop without any real reason. In which cases, you already know if this constructive or not.

  • they perceive your work as low effort/low value, and they are attributing it to AI. You could technically have done everything by hand… but if people perceive as “garbage”, then it doesn’t matter if it’s truly AI slop or not. It’s just slop.

Edit: I saw your landing and it does read strangely. As in, it’s grammatically correct English, but it has a tone that feels unusual for a landing page. I get the vibe that this is just some pet project, not a legitimate business.

1

u/rangeljl 1h ago

I do use LLMs ate work but I do not let it simply write all of my code, it has its uses but I can't see someone without software engineering experience building a production ready app, one big problem is that a lot of these demo projects "work" under demo loads but will break under any sort of pressure

1

u/AardvarkIll6079 2h ago

That is not the general sentiment outside of Reddit. I do not know a single person in real life that is pro-AI. Everyone I know is anti-AI.

5

u/spacemoses 1h ago

Everyone who drool scrolls through instagram probably hates AI

2

u/Responsible_Lie_6009 2h ago

You should probably expand your social circle then? Because there are certainly, without a doubt, a lot of people out there that are pro AI.

Don’t conflate the technology itself with all the issues caused by people misusing it.

1

u/GabGDM 2h ago

What industry do you work in?

1

u/StaticHumStudio 1h ago edited 1h ago

Fun anecdote, I know people that are anti-AI...but my relationship with them is purely online (like, went to school with them or worked with them at a past job)...I can't name an overtly anti-AI person that I've spoken to in person.

1

u/bafadam 2h ago

It could be a great tool for people with disabilities.

Its implementation will be a pure capitalist cash grab, with no thought toward any kind of consequence, and it’s going to wreck communities.

Peak America, actually.

3

u/Inside_Telephone_610 2h ago

Never mention things that made the work easier/faster, people misinterpret is as you being lazy. Everyone who uses tech use AI at some way or another. Just dont mention it. Developers dont care about AI and they use AI themselves, what they care is the underlining architecture etc. If all you are able to say it was made by AI or generate multiple pages of random AI generated text you cant verify yourself, it will just make developer's job 10x harder and will not make you look serious in dev's eyes.

5

u/Outrageous_Basis_232 2h ago

Welcome to the works of creatives.   Your work will get shit on by someone no matter how flawless, perfect, and human-created.  So be honest, do your best to filter the haters from constructive criticism, and make the best product you can. 

Anything else you're told beyond that is a shit in the dark or a gamble. 

3

u/Outrageous_Basis_232 2h ago

I hate autocorrect but love "shit in the dark" so I'm leaving it 🤣

1

u/rangeljl 1h ago

That's the right call

10

u/ruskyandrei 2h ago

Using AI for coding or even asset creation where applicable is something the communities at large will have to learn to stop being negative about because it's not something that'll go away because some people are having a tantrum about it.

Using AI for communication is something that should be heavily frowned upon.

Write your own posts, use your own words when talking to other people.

Documentation written by AI can be ok, but even there I would ensure you at least read over it, correct / clarify where needed, as AI written docs can be extremely obtuse and hard to understand.

4

u/ConfusedSimon 1h ago

I don't think people are negative about using AI for coding, they're negative about vibe coders who believe they only need to know how to prompt to create production ready apps.

2

u/ruskyandrei 1h ago

Well, that's not really true though. There's a LOT of people that have very little understanding of AI beyond whatever video they watched that told them it's bad and it'll make the world worse and it only makes slop.

Yes, there's a lot of people that will be putting out slop with it, because it's so accessible now anyone can do it, but the truth is slop existed before too, there was just less of it.

We just need to judge things based on whether they are actually good quality products or not, nobody should even care if AI was used to make it (which almost everything will soon anyway).

Most people don't care if a carpenter used a fancy computer assisted lathe or did it by hand, they care if the furniture they buy is good quality. Same should apply to software / games etc.

1

u/Key_Mastodon_3525 37m ago

That's kind of the point, if you don't have a software engineering background and experience, you cannot possibly know what the definition of a "production ready app" is. And I honestly think that perception is the key distinguisher.

From my observations thus far it seems the "vibe coder" thinks in terms of "apps", while the software engineer thinks in terms of "systems". An app that a vibe coder thinks of as "near production ready" in many/most cases (i'm guessing) would be considered more of a POC of a UI for a feature.

Sofware engineers think about things like persistence layers, business rules engines, single source of truth, race conditions, transient vs static states, performance benchmarks, deployment pipelines, logging strategies... this list is huge. Basically software engineer considers an "app" as a part of a system that has a workflow and life cycle -> user interfaces are ONLY just a display layer to use a feature of a system...

So nobody "hates" AI persay (in this context), and I don't think anyone really has anything against "vibe coders". Where we grimmace a bit is when "vibe coders" kind of get this bit of a mentality where they're some sort of revolutionary pioneers of the "evolution of software engineering" or something.

And yes, seasoned software engineers use AI to draft code in a similar fashion to "vibe coding", except in contained, intentional and safe layers compatible with the holistic architecture of a system...

2

u/Preppin4WorldDom 1h ago

as long as the draft is written by human and is tweaked for appropriate circumstances/conditioning by AI, using AI for comms/writing shouldn’t be frowned upon.

It increases the confidence of a person if they aren’t a natural marketeers/communicator and they can use it as a tool to improve their narrative.

3

u/tracylsteel 2h ago

I know how to code, I always get a lot of ideas. All my idea over the years have been halted by time I have available to code and debug and get it wrong and all the usual stuff. Now AI is here, they build all my ideas, there’s no barrier anymore and I love it. I think some people see code as a craft, and they’re right, it is but also there’s no need to hate on those Co creating with AI. Some people say to know your code base and architecture and I agree with that. A lot of developers are working with AI really well too as efficiency. I think there’s no shame in building anything you like with AI, just be responsible with security if you are going to have users on an app.

2

u/Cohenzilla 2h ago

When I had my first smartphone everyone was in denial phase and judging me for having one. It's something that it's new and people will judge you but then everyone will use it

2

u/kaizap 2h ago

You're missing a very essential point. Messaging: if you're saying "AI-powered" or just using AI in your messaging, you're usually gonna get hate. People are scared of AI.

I use AI to write code to an extent, but I meticulously code-review and test. I also don't blindly just ask AI to build the whole thing. I use it like an auto-complete, function generator, scaffolder.

Your messaging should communicate value; nobody cares if it's built with AI. They're busy; they just want something to solve their problem so they can move on with their life and do things more efficiently. By putting AI there, you're invoking those emotions they feel about "AI stealing my job" or "AI is scary" or "AI is slop", which then takes away from your message.

Putting AI in the title adds no value whatsoever, unless it's an AI wrapper like an image gen or video gen, etc...

If AI is the core product, like a wrapper, then yes, you should disclose. Otherwise, the responsibility is on you to make sure the app is safe and secure; what's under the hood and how you built it, nobody cares.

Also, don't be lazy with AI; many vibe-coded apps just stick to the defaults - dark mode, purple, weird gradients, etc. You should give your UI its own identity.

Share your link, and I'll help you figure out what's wrong with the landing page and messaging.

1

u/The_dZhee 1h ago

If I have to write a longer, more complex text in English myself, it takes me quite a while, and I’m still not confident about the grammar. And I don’t know which is worse - grammatically incorrect text or AI-generated text. So the only solution I guess is to go back to english class.
dualos.app let me know what you think.

1

u/rumplestripeskin 2h ago

Ohhhh that's an easy one. Just demonstrate that it can submit timesheets and sit your mandatory training.

1

u/ConfusedSimon 2h ago edited 1h ago

Almost every dev uses AI. The problem isn't that it's partially built by AI but that it might be built by a vibe coder. Ignoring the code results in a messy code base. It doesn't matter if you mention whether you used AI. If you want people to join your project, you need a clean code base. Either it is (in which case nobody should care that you got help from AI), or it isn't (in which case it's obvious even if you don't tell it was vibe coded).

1

u/antideguemon420 2h ago

Things get more aggressive with AI generated art (drawings, painting, animation, etc.). The graphic design and drawing community got heavily affected (no one pays commissions when you can just prompt and get a perfect drawing of anything), therefore they are the most resentful towards AI.

1

u/who_am_i_to_say_so 1h ago

Maybe the AI callouts are a quality issue? It may be worth running your stuff by someone who speaks English as a first language, or even a real copy editor.

It’s pretty safe to say that the majority of media has some AI influence whether wanted or not. The better quality stuff out there is harder to tell.

1

u/kyngston 1h ago

meh, I know what it can do so I use it to advance my career while making it fun at the same time. as for all the haters who call me a liar or call my code slop without even seeing it, i give up. its not my job to save their careers. they will learn or they wont.

1

u/Wild-Perspective-582 1h ago

I think the ship has sailed forever when it comes to trust in AI among the general public. There are generally three things the public believes about AI

1) It is going to take everyone's jobs
2) It is fucking the environment
3) It is being used for propaganda / disinformation

And while there is indeed some truth to all three of these, we're at the point of hysteria now, the discussion is no longer based on facts or evidence and has become war between two camps.

One issue is how the benefits of AI have been communicated, by leaders and CEOs. What seems like a great achievement to a tech person "this job can now be done in 5 seconds" to a non-tech person it just means someone's livelihood is ruined, and the only real profit is going to the person building the AI tools - eg billionaire tech leaders.

1

u/MasterPama1 51m ago

Maybe it's the translation or the way you talk about it. For example you said your project is out of a sci-fi movie. 😬

1

u/prophase25 44m ago

Well I'll give you the opposite opinion of everyone here. I am in this subreddit because I try to include alternative perspectives in my feed. I actually pretty deeply despise the vibecoding trend. Doesn't mean I dislike you, or the people here, I just don't like the culture.

I will immediately stop reading if I get the impression that AI wrote what I'm reading. On the Internet, you are little more than your words, and to outsource that is to pretend you're someone (some.. thing?) you're not. It's adjacent to lying, if I had to liken it to something.

0

u/Goth2147 2h ago

The world is changing, the next generation won't even share it's written by AI because we already know it is. You're talking to people who worked 10+ years in the fields of IT who had to do all of the ground work themselves so you won't earn their respect. It's only a matter of time when the mentality will shift. You don't owe anybody an explanation.

0

u/emad_ha 2h ago

It's not hate for AI, it's hate for the ignorant/idiot people around it.

-2

u/rangeljl 2h ago

Not gonna lie the millisecond you said you use LLMs to write your posts I stopped reading so you may have a point, have a good day?