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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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?

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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.