> "Never really finish building it" is the key insight.
The problem with software is that it is never done. There is always another feature you could have and worse than building a property the work is only done by the people on the outside.
I think it's deeper than that, once you know software is never done you have to design for constant change.
When clients ask why something takes so long, I explain that I'm not building what you asked for today, I'm building something that will be easy to turn into what you asked for today and possible to turn into whatever you ask for tomorrow.
I've been using it for years. "Let's decide where we want the plumbing to go before pouring the slab", or "let's not focus on where the couch will go before we paint the walls". Or when a 'genius cowboy dev' discovers a super fast way to get from the 2nd floor to the kitchen by cutting a hole in the floor despite all the leaks it causes and how many other people have to work around the change.
My manager who vibe coded our entire webapp in claude design. Has difficulty understanding why its still not production ready.
My job is to wire to our backend data, and a lot of these wiring require me to be in there and actually think about the features. These take time, and I just haven't figure out a way to speed this process up with Claude.
On the other hand. If his tool does the job why not. If you asked a 90s engineer how javascript triggers millions of cpu instructions for just a few code steps he would call you crazy.
> "Never really finish building it" is the key insight.
The problem with software is that it is never done. There is always another feature you could have and worse than building a property the work is only done by the people on the outside.
I think it's deeper than that, once you know software is never done you have to design for constant change.
When clients ask why something takes so long, I explain that I'm not building what you asked for today, I'm building something that will be easy to turn into what you asked for today and possible to turn into whatever you ask for tomorrow.
This is definitely getting my favorite. I’m also going to shamelessly steal this house analogy.
Thanks for writing this!
The house analogy is great. The extreme is the Winchester Mystery house.
…which is always how I explain legacy code.
I've been using it for years. "Let's decide where we want the plumbing to go before pouring the slab", or "let's not focus on where the couch will go before we paint the walls". Or when a 'genius cowboy dev' discovers a super fast way to get from the 2nd floor to the kitchen by cutting a hole in the floor despite all the leaks it causes and how many other people have to work around the change.
We’re in the self driving car stage right now. A Waymo can drive itself but the belts and suspenders involved are more expensive than a normal car.
More expensive?
My manager who vibe coded our entire webapp in claude design. Has difficulty understanding why its still not production ready.
My job is to wire to our backend data, and a lot of these wiring require me to be in there and actually think about the features. These take time, and I just haven't figure out a way to speed this process up with Claude.
Is it big data? Claude should be able to tell you what to do and give you scripts to deploy anything behind a web app.
Yeah, I have 2 clients that are now obsessed with vibe coding. They seem to understand the realities.
On the other hand. If his tool does the job why not. If you asked a 90s engineer how javascript triggers millions of cpu instructions for just a few code steps he would call you crazy.
To me stories like this seem like just a moment in time.
Like in 1 to 5 years, vibe coding without looking at the code will likely be a lot better.
TBH I think we still need to explain this to ourselves first.
It's the rest of the owl.
My experience over many decades is this:
* If a business person thinks a change or new program is very easy to do, it is really a very hard project.
* If a business person thinks the change or new program us hard to do, usually it is a trivial project.
For me, this has been true for well over 40 years. I never use any kind AI for my work, it did not exist before I retired.
This is is relatable but I think the issue is that they are uncorrelated.
If it's easy and the business thinks it's easy it gets done. If it's hard and the business thinks it's hard it doesn't.
XKCD Tasks (from 12 years ago, to the day!) https://xkcd.com/1425/
Typical experience with Lovable from everyone I've talked to.
Check out Synthetiq if you want to actually get into production