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Comment by ElProlactin | Hacker News Reader

> And we’re saddened that the new process results in lower quality work, and that a lot of people just don’t seem to care.

1. Arguments like this seem to be based on the idea that, prior to AI, most of this type of work was being done by skilled artisans dedicated to quality work product. As I think anyone who actually worked in the industry and is being honest knows, this wasn't the case. There was a lot of mediocrity and worse.

2. I'm not sure the work is "lower quality" depending on how you define "quality". AI might result in an uncomfortable uniformity but at the same time, a lot of AI work product is pretty darn usable because the models have been trained against conventions that, love them or hate them, "work" for the vast majority of end users.

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>1. Arguments like this seem to be based on the idea that, prior to AI, most of this type of work was being done by skilled artisans dedicated to quality work product. As I think anyone who actually worked in the industry and is being honest knows, this wasn't the case.

I think this is more of "another brick in the wall." There was already a LOT of pressure to do the bare minimum to fulfill requirements and then declare success. Now, those pressures seem insurmountable.

If your requirements are reasonable and serve the needs of end users and the business, doing "the bare minimum" isn't such a bad thing. "I just remove everything that is not David."

Of course, the requirements aren't always right, but in my experience, engineers/developers are just as capable as business owners of defining requirements poorly.

> If your requirements are reasonable and serve the needs of end users and the business

Have you ever heard of the idea of malicious compliance? doing exactly what is required, and no more, is the path to ruin for all of us. Requirements will never work this way.

> the idea that, prior to AI, most of this type of work was being done by skilled artisans dedicated to quality work product

Some of us were lucky to have a few periods in our career where this was the case. I would agree that this disappeared prior to AI.

It still exists now, but it's always been a incredibly small niche role.

Exactly. The web pre jquery and bootsrap was a mess and not pleasant to code for. If you want to talk about low quality that was the norm back then.

You have terribly low standards for quality

I believe that anyone who has actually worked in this industry for any length of time and is being honest will acknowledge the fact that a lot of human-produced websites/web applications are mediocre at best.

The idea that every website or web app was being built by skilled artisans dedicated to the finer arts of their craft before AI is not realistic. AI didn't create spaghetti code, for example.

A lot of AI work product leaves a lot to be desired, but the realistic comparison is not to the best of what existed prior. Frankly, a lot of vibe coded apps are more functional and usable than web apps I've seen built by cheap outsourcing firms based offshore.

The big change I've seen is that before if you knew what you were doing you had two options:

- Make something crappy fairly quickly

- Make something good a little slower

AI has introduced a third option:

- Make something really crappy at light speed

A lot of companies are very excited about this and it makes it hard to advocate for "make something good a little slower" (even though AI can help speed that up.)

It feels like a race to the bottom. Companies were already prioritizing speed over quality. With AI a lot of them are doubling down.

Except that AI also allows people to make something half-decent at light speed.

Yes, the average vibe coded app might not scale to millions of users, might not be perfectly secure, etc. but let's be honest: the freelance web developer you would have paid $25,000 to build your app a decade ago was in most cases not going to deliver a highly-scalable, highly-secure product either.

AI can allow companies to prioritize speed over quality, but it has also enabled lots of small businesses and entrepreneurs to actually build things that they wouldn't have if they had to pay a developer $xxx/hour.

Yeah that’s fair

It still makes it a tougher sell to deliver high quality more slowly

Side note: when it comes to front end I’m thinking less about scalability and security (though they apply) and more about performance, accessibility, reaponsiveness, quality UI, maintainability, basic design sense, etc.

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