I’m unsure, if this is the right community for this, but I’m really curious about agenic vibe coding for hobby projects. As in: I have trouble gasping the reasoning behind it, especially given it’s current prevalence.
I really like programming to the point of creating a lot of what I’d label “art for noone”. I’m also tangentially interested in ML ever since reading the DeepDream papers.
But, the whole “agentic” hobby stuff feels weird to me. I just don’t get why anyone would give their hobby project over to a machine. I get that people use is for work. I even understand how someone may want to sell slop for a quick buck, even if I hate that idea.
But your personal hobby game project? Why would I have a computer do my hobby for me?
Even not minding the ethical questions. I genuienly don’t get it. And worse, I feel like a lot of people vibe coding their hobby away, are not even interested in the technology, outside of getting it do their hobby.
I know this comes over a bit critiquey, perhaps because it is a little. But mostly I’m dumb founded. Thanks for any insights. Please don’t meat-proxy.
Edit: Just want to mention, I read and appreciate all comments. I just find my own replies sound too harsh, and I don’t want to discourage anyone from weighing in. Thank you!
This touches on something important: programmers seriously overestimate the value of their own code. This was true long before AI.
I’ve been in the industry the better part of 40 years, and been through many mergers and acquisitions of tech companies (hell, I lived through the dotcom boom and bust for a start); I can count on the fingers of one foot the number of times the code that arrived as part of an acquisition had any value - nine times out of ten, it’s easier to just ditch it and rewrite than integrate someone else’s code; what you are buying in those deals isn’t the code, it’s the domain knowledge of what it should do and how that you are acquiring (which is why looking after the key people who understand the domain/business is the no.1 goal to make tech acquisitions successful.)
All AI is going now is making everyone realise what was already true - code isn’t an asset, it’s a liability. Design, architecture, translation of needs/business rules into an overall solution that meets them - they are an asset. The actual code is a dead weight and if you are ever afraid of rewriting it, it’s just technical debt that you’re hiding behind a wall of copium. So who cares if the output of an LLM is ugly or unmaintainable? All code is ugly and unmaintainable, and you should have been treating it that way anyway.
You’re damned right! Every company treats their code like it’s a precious trade secret when in reality it is just what the intern got working four years ago in a few, confused days.
There’s been many leaks of internal code over the years. What have we learned from that? It’s useless for any purpose outside the organization. It could be a way for an attacker to find a vulnerability, but what it really reveals is that not a line of it is worth anything at all to competitors. Hence, it’s not precious and not really a trade secret.