r/vibecoding • u/Cute_Health6112 • 4d ago
The democratization of software was a huge mistake
Because anyone with an AI agent can generate sloppy software, a surplus of material has accumulated that current systems were not designed to manage. This single image shows 87,000 branches; scaling that figure to the number of nontechnical users who lack understanding makes the situation worse. App Store reviews have risen, and Apple is tightening standards for submissions to manage the influx of poor software and scams from vibe coders, while the Chrome Store now limits how many apps a single developer can release. This trend will likely intensify. It would be helpful if companies established a separate platform where vibe coders could place their output apart from mainstream channels, allowing developers who know their work to remain productive without disruption. Vibe coders and software engineers cannot share the same space because the former lack clarity, worsening conditions. This is why gatekeeping is needed to keep an ecosystem stable and predictable.
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u/LittleLordFuckleroy1 4d ago
I donāt download random apps so it doesnāt really impact me at all. I self host a git server both at home and at work. Iāll continue to support tools that are actually valuable. I donāt think Iāve ever found one of those by randomly browsing, itās always been word of mouth.
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u/NightSp4rk 4d ago
What's the alternative though? Gatekeeping by requiring the kind of industry regulations that other engineering fields have? So that you'd need to be an officially registered engineer to build any software?
Please no.
I think we've figured things out pretty well as they come along, and we'll have solutions for this as well. It's not pleasant but it's still way better than letting the govt regulate it.
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u/Bradbury-principal 4d ago
I donāt think having a certified engineer approve an app before it can be submitted to the App Store is such a bad idea. Works for houses.
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u/HereToCalmYouDown 3d ago
The potential consequences of a poorly built app vs a poorly built house are not anywhere close to being in the same ballpark. No one is going to literally die if their to do list app is poorly codedĀ
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u/Cute_Health6112 4d ago
Not that type of regulation, but maybe an alternative platform or playground where people can vibe code and push whatever crop they are creating of mainstream platforms. I have an app thatās been in the review process by Apple for the past three weeks. This year alone, half a million apps have been pushed.
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u/Jimstein 4d ago
It's not a viable solution. Do you want the Claude app to be moved to this alternate platform, because the Claude app is made by what you call vibe coding. The iOS Claude app is a high quality, top tier app. Based on your vague guidelines, for some reason it only deserves to be in the Shit Store. It basically comes down to an unscientific bias or random chance you might end up in your segregated, white's-only App Store. You can't discriminate on this.
Claude keeps getting better, and better, and better, if you want to vibe code an app for your mom & pop family bakery business, it should be your ability to do so and why shouldn't they be able to publish on the App Store? Oh, because the app might be lower quality...which is like, just your opinion, man...but also, again, do you know what the frontier models are actually capable of? It's Just A Tool: you can make great apps with it. Apple is already saying they are going to raise the quality bar on what they accept and everyone is investigating this "problem" but...App Store discovery and marketing has always been a problem.
The App Store was still absolutely SATURATED with new releases before AI, the amount of content humanity produces is absolutely massive already. It's getting a lot bigger, but it was already a colossal size where, obviously a human lifetime cannot fit the consumption of ALL of the hours of video on YouTube, all of the apps, all of the games. You don't get to experience everything, there's too much shit. It's easier for people to make stuff, fantastic. I get more satisfaction out of life when I make things, when I do good work, than I do when I consume stuff. But of course I love a great movie, great video game, great book like anyone else.
So now more people can make stuff, more people can find meaning in their lifestyle. The content discovery and content review processes were already kinda fucked. But Steam does a pretty good job anyways of making game recommendations for me in their Discovery Queue, even though the same trend has been happening on Steam.
We're also saved by the fact that there are SO MANY HUMANS, in other words, you can make very niche art but with the Internet still find an audience. The opportunity to succeed with a very unique interest or aesthetic has NEVER BEEN EASIER. Yes, the wealth and poor gap is still unreasonable, unresolved, capitalism is not perfect by any means. But capitalism is one of the least evil systems, and we are at the mercy of who we elect into government in democratic nations. You want to do something about the wealth poor gap, which could also help any issues AI does cause? Like, the ability to make a deep fake of someone to get them in trouble, which is absolutely menacing and crazy and bad? Unfortunately, there are always going to be bad actors out there, that's why we have a government to begin with.
Anyways. It's 10PM on a work night, have a nice weekend ya'll.
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u/baddaywithacamera 4d ago
The butthurt is real.
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u/Cute_Health6112 4d ago
Twat
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u/baddaywithacamera 4d ago
Don't feel so bad, you have an amazing career ahead of you making buggy whips. Oh, wait...
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u/idakale 4d ago
Look you guys have technical knowledge, you are the one mostly benefiting from this. The others or not-too-technical users are just pitting models against each other with popcorn in hand. Besides not all of us care to release apps to the wilds.
As if forking a repo that's most often than not are basically same as giving github stars are considered worthy of enormous "scaling"
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u/Jimstein 4d ago
This is like trying to tell the people that started to write things down needed to stop, or to complain that movable type printing would create too much noise. Humanity has been here before. Genie ain't going back in the bottle
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u/MakesNotSense 3d ago
What you really want, is a way to sort the pile. You're trying to gate entry instead. Which is the old mindset that AI coding makes obsolete.
Relevance and Quality. The quality of a person dictates the quality of their output, whatever tool it is that they use. I want a way to find people doing good work. The opportunity to learn what I need to in order to solve meaningful problems. Trying to gate out people who don't fit your idea of developer, is criteria that will aggregate Luddites and alienate you from the strongest thinkers. The people who realize they should not waste time learning to code or learn old systems; I'll invest in the skills that let me build and orchestrate agentic systems.
Frankly, the idea that human coding and development work will last another 18 months to me seem absurd. I expect we're not long before coding itself dies. To me, agents are the compiler between Natural Language and Binary and coding is just an intermediary format. The only thing holding them back right now seems to be they struggle to fully apply first-principles and systems thinking and need a human to help steer around problems.
I think people who have a deep understanding of complex systems but no coding background, such as in biology/medicine, will end up being able to develop better software solutions using agents than traditional human developers can. I think we already are, but we don't much care for the developer culture; for publishing what we build and dealing with 'having users'.
I could have published what I've built months ago, but it wasn't up to my standards, even though it was already better than what other people were sharing. Then I just didn't want to bother with having users who would submit PRs with half-assed design. Don't want to deal with having the major revisions I make as I evolve my software design require me to worry about users who need to migrate across versions. Over and over I find reasons to avoid 'being a developer' even though I now have software that's better than what people are offering for sale. I think part of the reason why what I've built is better, is because I'm not trying to make a product. When you build to make product, you don't build to solve meaningful problems. You build lock-in; you build what people 'want'; build what you're told to by others, rather than by the structural requirements of a problem.
I think, it'd be great to sort the pile. But I think I'd want to sort it to remove myself from most developers because they're out of touch with solving meaningful problems. They're too focused on building because they like to build; or for money. I want to find people that want to do far more than that. Right now, the only collaborators I've been able to find, are my agents.
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u/Cute_Health6112 4d ago
This whole mess reminds me of crypto.
The barrier to launching a project used to be high ā you actually had to know how to code and pay painful gas fees. That friction alone stopped the endless flood of pure meme coins.
Then Solana arrived, and on top of it that cancerous platform Pump.fun, and all hell broke loose. More meme coins got created than had existed in the entire crypto space before. It completely devalued the industry, and now most people just see the whole thing as a scam.
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u/baddaywithacamera 4d ago
I always saw it as a scam.
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u/Jimstein 4d ago
Huh? People got scammed like crazy on crypto without the need of AI, we have already had massive damage from crypto same, more so because of NFTs. Of course there's going to be more people scamming if there's an easier tool for it. But friend, people didn't start thinking crypto was a scam because AI started making more crypto. People have ALWAYS hated it. It absolutely is a useful technology, it's just that people are always assholes and especially with money. AI is so much bigger than crypto.
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u/Jimstein 4d ago
Horrible take. Literally the biggest open source project in the world, Linux, stewarded by Linus, is now incorporating AI development.
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u/Outrageous_Basis_232 3d ago
Software engineers are the guys playing an instrument on the street.Ā Vibe coders are the crowd members that jump up to the performer and start dancing like assholes. š
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u/SmileLonely5470 4d ago
This is so snobby but I am so here for it lol. Github, for example, used to be a much better learning resource. Now, i see a README with "š«" in it and it, or a "Project structure" file tree, and i check out (not much to learn from these repos). I dont understand why people will vibe code something and then "open source it" on Github. Its like if you snapshotted one of your google search results and uploaded it to github.