frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: Is vibe coding overhyped or am I missing something?

3•tom1337•1y ago
In the recent months / weeks I'll ready so many headlines about "AI will be able to create whole applications easily", "No coders needed, everything will be AI", "Vibe Coding is the future" so I thought I'd try it out. I've been building React Apps and TypeScript Backends for a few years so I am not a total newbie. I wanted to create a simple React Native App which has a Bottom Sheet and display a map. Already at the first step - creating the map - ChatGPT o3 gave me completely invalid code. It used a pretty old version of the library which wasn't compatible with the latest react release. It also got few things with expo vs. "pure" react native wrong. Sometimes the code it threw at me included unused styles or variables.

Am I missing something? How are people seemingly building complex applications if the models struggle with basic things like keeping up to date with releases? What are your experiences?

Comments

codingdave•1y ago
You aren't missing a thing. LLMs produce code that is somewhat correct, but wrong enough that it needs correction. The people promoting "vibe coding" are saying that you can just tell it the concerns, and eventually it will land on something that works. Everyone else codes the corrections themselves. But AI simply does not produce working code without human interventions.

It also does not keep up to date with releases. That is not a valid expectation, and if you are working with leading-edge releases and libraries, LLMs will not help. On the same note, it cannot innovate - it will give you code that fits common conventions. Most of the time this works, but if you are doing truly novel work, its results will frustrate you more often than not.

PaulHoule•1y ago
I have been using AI assistants to help with a project that uses MUI for React. We're using a version of MUI that is a few versions old. It is hugely helpful at figuring out what kind of sx to put on an element or what to put in a theme to get things to look right. It makes mistakes, but if you tell it what you see in the F12 tools, read the manual and think a bit, it does pretty well.

It loves to use deprecated APIs, for instance there are a lot of props that you aren't supposed to use anymore and you're supposed to use the "slots" prop instead. It's not hard to change the code and you could probably ask them to do it, but it's the kind of problem I run into.

With SQLAlchemy I find assistants cannot make up their mind what version of SQLAlchemy they are generating code for. Between talking to my assistants and reading the manual I understand a lot about what changed in different versions, but what I really want is to have it look at my POM/packages.json/pyproject.toml and always give me advice for the versions I am using.

This isn't just an LLM problem, one of the "product ideas I don't have time to work on" in my file is a search engine for programmers that indexes the documentation for the actual versions of all your dependencies, so you are not stuck with Google's brain damaged behavior of returning results from random JDK versions. For instance, "String Javadoc" returns results for JDK 8 and JDK 11 (end of life!),

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-e&channel=e...

whereas a lot of us are developing to JDK 21.

rorylaitila•1y ago
With AI coding it makes projects even faster to get started. Like anything else, total cost will be dominated by long tail problems. Vibe coding can't solve the longest tail problem of "am I building the right thing?" These interstitial problems of code quality you mention will be worked out I think, but it won't matter. To put it the opposite way: if I already know in advance what I need to build to be "successful", the cost of getting code to production was already a minor concern.

That being said, the speed at which I can explore solutions with it is greatly improved. This has a big effect on my motivation to start ideas. In some domains, simply getting more times at bat is the critical path.

cranberryturkey•1y ago
CNBC had a bit about "vibe coding" this morning so its officially lamestream. lol

I use roocode and auto-approve most tasks and then I do a code review at the end. It saves a ton of time but costs a ton of money too

viraptor•1y ago
You're right, but missing some ideas. Sure, it will use an older library sometimes, leave unused variables or make mistakes. But if you're really vibe coding, the question is "if I respond that this doesn't work, will it be fixed?"

If it does get fixed, who cares about the variables or mixed patterns? Vibe coding at this stage is expected to give running code, not clean and maintainable one. And it often does, but it's not there for complex applications yet.

gary17the•1y ago
Vibe coding isn't over-hyped, it is a myth. :)

Why does the arrow (->) operator in C exist?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13366083/why-does-the-arrow-operator-in-c-exist
1•gnabgib•1m ago•0 comments

Trump admin didn't want Ebola-exposed Americans, sent them to Berlin, Prague

https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/05/trump-admin-didnt-want-ebola-exposed-americans-sent-them-t...
1•donutshop•4m ago•0 comments

Housekeeping Wages to Top $110K Year in New York City by Early 2030s

https://loyaltylobby.com/2026/05/20/housekeeping-wages-to-top-110k-year-in-new-york-city-by-early...
1•lxm•7m ago•0 comments

Amazon E-Bikes Take Root in Manhattan and Brooklyn

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/amazon-cargo-bikes-delivery.html
1•lxm•7m ago•0 comments

Google's open source distributed agent runtime

https://github.com/google/ax
1•rnella01•10m ago•0 comments

Birth Rate Debate: 40% of Girls Will Never Be Mothers [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eCM3NTBeb4
2•poiuyt098•11m ago•1 comments

Why does the arrow (->) operator in C exist?

https://lobste.rs/s/garq37/why_does_arrow_operator_c_exist
1•maxloh•13m ago•1 comments

Why Fashion Needs a World Model

https://twitter.com/ArkidMitra/status/2057130009203298693
1•Arkid•15m ago•1 comments

Web5-Mesh (IAON)

https://github.com/mamanga1/Web5-Mesh/tree/main
1•mamanga•19m ago•1 comments

Show HN: SafeRun – Replay debugging and inline prevention for AI agents 3

1•Tidianez•20m ago•0 comments

25 years ago Sega figured out the internet with Phantasy Star Online

https://www.avclub.com/sega-phantasy-star-online-gaming
1•debo_•22m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Agent Chat Bridge – give AI IDE agents an async callback

https://github.com/sathvikc/agent-chat-bridge
1•sathvikchinnu•24m ago•0 comments

Xcodes: Command-line Xcode version manager

https://github.com/XcodesOrg/xcodes
1•Lwrless•27m ago•0 comments

Show HN: SnapAPI – Screenshot, metadata extraction, and PDF generation API

https://snap.michaelcli.com
1•msmolkin•28m ago•0 comments

Timmy the Whale Got Stranded Off the German Coast. Then Things Got Weird

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/world/europe/timmy-whale-dead-denmark-rescue.html
1•duxup•28m ago•1 comments

Figma Design Agent

https://www.figma.com/blog/the-figma-agent-is-here/
3•satvikpendem•30m ago•0 comments

The Google AI Pro plan just got a quiet downgrade

https://www.androidcentral.com/apps-software/ai/google-ai-pro-plan-just-got-a-quiet-downgrade
2•geox•32m ago•0 comments

Trump Executive Order Expands Bank Secrecy Act

https://www.therage.co/trump-executive-order-expands-bank-secrecy-act/
3•Cider9986•34m ago•2 comments

MoonRay, DreamWorks Animation's Open Source Production Renderer

https://www.aswf.io/news/moonray-dreamworks-animations-open-source-production-renderer-joins-the-...
2•qainsights•38m ago•1 comments

Ignis: Run Obsidian as a self-hosted web app

https://github.com/Nystik-gh/ignis
1•thunderbong•39m ago•0 comments

Apple's new iPhone comes with Israeli chips

https://nonogra.ph/apples-new-iphone-comes-with-israeli-chips-05-21-2026
11•han1•45m ago•1 comments

To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system

https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/study-how-chips-really-work-mit-researchers-built-their-own-operat...
3•littlexsparkee•50m ago•0 comments

I'm Filing for Justice Samuel Alito's Disbarment

https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/samuel-alito-has-exposed-himself
19•ze0ng•53m ago•5 comments

Ultima Underworld Remake Released

https://kweepa.itch.io/unity-underground
1•vancroft•53m ago•0 comments

Androids Are All Dying, Except Google Pixel [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph-TMMku1xk
2•mgh2•56m ago•1 comments

AWS ExtendDB, open-source DynamoDB API with pluggable backends

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/introducing-extenddb-an-open-source-dynamodb-compatible-ada...
1•jsw•58m ago•1 comments

A Booming Shadow Market of Sketchy A.I. Investments

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/a-booming-shadow-market-of-sketchy-ai-investments
2•petethomas•59m ago•0 comments

Google is dethroning OpenAI as the king of consumer AI

https://www.economist.com/business/2026/05/20/google-is-dethroning-openai-as-the-king-of-consumer-ai
3•petethomas•59m ago•0 comments

I made a browser alone and barely got any users

https://kagerou.glass/
3•kageroumado•1h ago•3 comments

OpenAI to confidentially file for IPO as soon as Friday

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/20/openai-ipo-filing.html
16•doppp•1h ago•0 comments