> The problem is that vibe coding makes it possible to build a substantial solution before learning enough about the problem to recognise that a much better solution exists.
This example and Bend aside, I find this to be the biggest struggle with the perceived intelligence we have today. It's great at producing something that works, but it is not great at calling you out when you don't know what you don't know.
It's not able to educate and course correct you unless you have great self awareness and discipline.
That said, I think this goes for everything, it's easy to fall into this trap because it is very human. We simply don't know what we don't know, so it's not uncommon to revisit an old solution only to be enlightened that there is now new information that allows you to replace it with something much better.
I don't think anything here is new or changed, if anything changed is really just the rate that we experience this. LLMs make it easier and faster for the feedback cycle to happen.
Now back to Bend, I think putting your work out there and being unapologetic about it, open source even, and willing to take feedback, will go a long way.
I am more worried about the many closed source implementations of LLM built products that are being sold and people are depending upon that don't get this great criticism from many different thinking heads.
> I don't think anything here is new or changed
I would argue it's a little new though. I used to write dumb little programs all the time that explored an idea which was probably bad, and in that exploration I often found that there was a better way to do it, or that I didn't know as much as I thought I did, or that another thing already existed that was much better considered than my half baked idea, etc. But there was learning that happened there, so the process was still valuable. Now you can get a working bad idea without learning anything, there is full conservation of ignorance, but a full dopamine hit from "i made this thing". I guess you could argue it's just everything happening at a faster rate, but it feels different to me, and it is pretty eerie.
Yeah that's the other side of it, learning that is.
Before you would pause at overwhelming, now you get to "fail forward" with less at stake because the end result can still be verifiable even if the internals are a blackbox to you.
It's a sort of "deferred" and/or "optional" learning dilemma we now exist.
You could open the box, look inside, ask questions, but you would need to care and feel engaged, which is very hard to do when the result is already there.
This is why I framed it as requiring self awareness and discipline. Very easy to get caught into the slot machine dopamine cycle loop.
Sometimes the end result is good, but the means aren’t. With the “give me something” approach of most LLM usage, often you won’t realize you have bad code full of hidden bugs. Often, the steps are “it works on my machine” follows by an error in prod.
Absolutely, and this is true to handwritten code as well. This is why code review, tests, constraints, and putting effort into the critical pieces of software is paramount to success.
I also would argue that in this case, the end result wasn't good but rather perceived good. It was good enough to pass a smoke test, but not an integration test, and end-to-end test, a runtime edge case, etc.
All of software development lifecycle should still apply and be relevant here, the tool just changes the rate at how it gets written and it is tempting to move faster and continue skipping other steps. Especially so in greenfield work as a solo founder with limited time.
I think at the end of the day, a good metric is your "give a shit quotient". How much do you give a shit about what you are doing is likely the most important thing into how it is going to perform.
hmokiguess · · focus · HN ↗
This example and Bend aside, I find this to be the biggest struggle with the perceived intelligence we have today. It's great at producing something that works, but it is not great at calling you out when you don't know what you don't know.
It's not able to educate and course correct you unless you have great self awareness and discipline.
That said, I think this goes for everything, it's easy to fall into this trap because it is very human. We simply don't know what we don't know, so it's not uncommon to revisit an old solution only to be enlightened that there is now new information that allows you to replace it with something much better.
I don't think anything here is new or changed, if anything changed is really just the rate that we experience this. LLMs make it easier and faster for the feedback cycle to happen.
Now back to Bend, I think putting your work out there and being unapologetic about it, open source even, and willing to take feedback, will go a long way.
I am more worried about the many closed source implementations of LLM built products that are being sold and people are depending upon that don't get this great criticism from many different thinking heads.
rozap · · focus · HN ↗
> I don't think anything here is new or changed
I would argue it's a little new though. I used to write dumb little programs all the time that explored an idea which was probably bad, and in that exploration I often found that there was a better way to do it, or that I didn't know as much as I thought I did, or that another thing already existed that was much better considered than my half baked idea, etc. But there was learning that happened there, so the process was still valuable. Now you can get a working bad idea without learning anything, there is full conservation of ignorance, but a full dopamine hit from "i made this thing". I guess you could argue it's just everything happening at a faster rate, but it feels different to me, and it is pretty eerie.
hmokiguess · · focus · HN ↗
Before you would pause at overwhelming, now you get to "fail forward" with less at stake because the end result can still be verifiable even if the internals are a blackbox to you.
It's a sort of "deferred" and/or "optional" learning dilemma we now exist.
You could open the box, look inside, ask questions, but you would need to care and feel engaged, which is very hard to do when the result is already there.
This is why I framed it as requiring self awareness and discipline. Very easy to get caught into the slot machine dopamine cycle loop.
skydhash · · focus · HN ↗
hmokiguess · · focus · HN ↗
I also would argue that in this case, the end result wasn't good but rather perceived good. It was good enough to pass a smoke test, but not an integration test, and end-to-end test, a runtime edge case, etc.
All of software development lifecycle should still apply and be relevant here, the tool just changes the rate at how it gets written and it is tempting to move faster and continue skipping other steps. Especially so in greenfield work as a solo founder with limited time.
I think at the end of the day, a good metric is your "give a shit quotient". How much do you give a shit about what you are doing is likely the most important thing into how it is going to perform.