Hacker News Reader

Comment by paj26 | Hacker News Reader

I have heard of non-engineering folks vibe-coding dashboards/apps and deploying them in god knows what way - all with the support of management. Code is now cheap. Those with good engineering teams will be able to rein it in. Everyone else will be left with heaps of broken or (worse) wrong code. Business or life critical decisions will be made on that. When it’s wrong, do we blame the vibe coder?

View on HN

This already exists in the form of Excel spreadsheets with macros that go beyond the comprehension of any one person, and so will likely occupy the same niche, with some vibe-coded slop that's deemed useful being assigned to engineers to clean up and maintain.

Honestly, this is a really good step-up for a lot of businesses.

I can affirm that I'm seeing vibe-coded dashboards designed to ingest and run on top of Excel spreadsheets full of macros, VBA, and "Excel Scripts" interlinks.

I... Cannot call this a step up. They're expanding, not replacing.

Sure, but at least Claude is available to fix the slop instead of needing to depend on people who have gone away a long time ago. ultimately if it's valuable they can invest in someone to come in and build things the right way.

I'm afraid I'll believe that will happen, when I believe tech debt doesn't exist. That utopia does not seem on the horizon.

I used the Excel example the other day. What Excel gave us is a tool that was simple enough that people without a lot of technical expertise could wield it in anger, and so folks who have the domain expertise can do something useful with it.

It’s easy to look down on it as fragile, ugly, insecure or whatever, but by and large it works for solving people’s problems.

I see vibe coding the same way. There’s going to be a lot of shit, just like there’s a lot of shit spreadsheets, but I also think there’s going to be a lot of itch scratching.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com