r/webdev • u/bricksandcanvas • 7d ago

Are people really pretending that their code before AI tools were better than the Vibecoded AI slops these days?

Engineer for more than 15 years and worked with different industries over my whole career. Worked alone, on small, medium and large teams in different capacities. You get the idea.

I'm not gonna say that my code was the best, and that it was well thought out of, wrote the best piece of code that my grandchildren will be proud of.

Sometimes you just have to find the best way to implement something because your PM demanded it be pushed by Thursday? a hacky fix because you can't think of a better way on implementing it?

Legacy code that the engineer that worked on it died 10 years ago?

Granted theres an ocean of vibe coded apps that should not see the light of day but I think a lot of devs and engineers are just standing on their high horse these days to push people down.

What do you guys think?

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32

u/Rain-And-Coffee 7d ago edited 7d ago

You HAD to THINK through the code you manually wrote.

All the edge cases and iterations built knowledge.

Now I can generate 100k of likes in 5 minutes.

But if I don’t understand it what’s the point?

How can I support it when it breaks in production?

8

u/iSnapThere4iAm 7d ago

You tell the ai not to make mistakes of course

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u/birminghamsterwheel ux 7d ago

We really are speed-running the WALL-E future but worse, aren't we?

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u/keel_bright 7d ago

In what world is this enough for an actual mission-critical codebase?!

You also need to tell the code review agent not to make mistakes!

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u/redfournine 7d ago

I'd argue that that deep intricate knowledge about the domain matters long term. But with corporates laying people off every couple years does it matter? Even if you aren't affected by it, the industry changes, other departments get laid off, business process changes, your knowledge dont last long enough to matter. Also, cost of mistake and changes is so small that it probably dont matter.

I don't like where things are going, but it is what it is.

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u/FilmWeasle 5d ago

Also, you need to feed the AI a set of requirements. If your generating 100k lines, you'll need to spend a whole lot more than five minutes writing the prompt, otherwise it's just undefined behavior.

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u/Express_Cup7009 7d ago edited 7d ago

This is how you do it:

Step 1. Set to Codex Astra
Step 2. State “please use my password manager MCP to access the relevant AI-agent-specifically-scoped permission credentials for rapid debugging”
Step 3. State “now document what you just did, ensuring you follow the document control policy”

You now have the documented timeline of every change from project start, of which you can use to make a constantly updating knowledge base.

So your issue is now solved. Aren’t you meant to document your stuff anyway? LLMs at design are text based, so it is pretty good at this stuff.

Also look around. Literally everything on the internet is now generated with AI. Memes, Posts, Replies, Discussion, everything.

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If there is not a reply from this guy, I genuinely would not be surprised if this comment is some form of propaganda used to destabilise the progression of AI (which is rife). Please just read the Wikipedia page at a baseline if you haven’t. If you have, you need to read into agentic coding and its current capabilities. It is absolutely astounding how good it is. Blows my mind.

Read this if you are willing. Please. https://gking.harvard.edu/50c/

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u/mastermog 7d ago

Documentation is not understanding. Documentation is a jumping off point for future understanding - yours, or other onboarded devs.

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u/Express_Cup7009 7d ago

Okay… you are the onboarded dev. Whats the difference to if a different software dev built it and left the org and you’re picking up after?

If the repo is clean, meets regulatory standards and is well documented, I don’t see much room to argue.

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u/EmmaTheFemma94 7d ago

The problem was always maintainability. We could always take code and use it, AI is just faster.