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Explaining to business people why building software is still hard

https://www.manager.dev/newsletter/cursing-the-day-lovable-was-born
35•fagnerbrack•1h ago

Comments

miranaproarrow•49m ago
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.

holoduke•28m ago
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.
scottyah•14m ago
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.
platevoltage•11m ago
Yeah, I have 2 clients that are now obsessed with vibe coding. They seem to understand the realities.
godwinson__4-8•6m ago
Why is this reassuring?

Why won't smarter and cheaper models in the future be able to automate this part for your manager as well? How novel is the feature set? Is it he has a knowledge gap or the model is incapable of something? What expertise are you bringing to bear that is beyond the scope of a future harness/model? Why wouldn't such a model simply fill in the blanks for your management, perhaps observing a diff of whatever you did? How do you verify the correctness of your thinking? Why could a future model not replicate this process?

I am just very puzzled by these sort of takes as we approach the end of 2026.

vanschelven•43m ago
TBH I think we still need to explain this to ourselves first.
jmclnx•41m ago
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.

etothepii•34m ago
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.

zvr•13m ago
XKCD Tasks (from 12 years ago, to the day!) https://xkcd.com/1425/
radial_symmetry•38m ago
Typical experience with Lovable from everyone I've talked to.

Check out Synthetiq if you want to actually get into production

etothepii•35m ago
> "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.

randusername•20m ago
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.

pianopatrick•31m ago
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.

LastTrain•30m ago
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.
high_na_euv•17m ago
More expensive?
mikestew•2m ago
Not OP, but… It can drive itself…mostly (the “belt”). And when it doesn’t, you need remote drivers (the “suspenders”) to get it unstuck. I don’t need that with the car I drive myself, and it probably won’t be needed with self-driving cars (waaaay in the future, IMO).
joshdavham•24m ago
This is definitely getting my favorite. I’m also going to shamelessly steal this house analogy.

Thanks for writing this!

scottyah•17m ago
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.
davidhegarty•9m ago
The house analogy is great. The extreme is the Winchester Mystery house.

…which is always how I explain legacy code.

sublinear•23m ago
It's the rest of the owl.
tripleee•3m ago
This is all caused because no-one understands the purpose of quality in software

Low quality = cascading bugs, issues, slow to iterate and add or change features

This is just as true for human written as it is for AI

Instead we have everyone giving up on code quality as if it was just "beautiful code" perfectly indented that was only there for people to ooh and aah at

GPT-6 Sol and Luna

https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-6-sol-and-luna/
723•OfficialTurkey•2h ago•403 comments

Claude Opus 5.5

https://www.anthropic.com/claude-opus-5-5
832•km144•3h ago•635 comments

OpenAI GPT–6 Astra breaks Enigma message that has resisted solution since 2005

https://www.cryptocellar.org/bgac/the-mvueh-break.html
470•sohkamyung•6h ago•335 comments

SAML: A Fractal of Bad Design

https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/09/21/saml-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
62•aray07•1h ago•14 comments

Claude Opus 5.5 Intelligence, Performance and Price Analysis (Max)

https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/claude-opus-5-5
153•theanonymousone•3h ago•48 comments

WordPress: Unauthenticated path traversal leading to conditional RCE

https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/security/advisories/GHSA-7hp8-65ch-5whp
101•vntok•3h ago•52 comments

Native apps written in TypeScript and CSS

https://github.com/geastack/examples
25•arbayi•45m ago•3 comments

Unreal Agent

https://unreallabs.ai/blog/unreal-agent/
44•trollied•2h ago•28 comments

'We hacked the FBI:' Hackers say they have data on all FBI employees

https://www.404media.co/we-hacked-the-fbi-hackers-say-they-have-data-on-all-fbi-employees/
52•spenvo•2h ago•21 comments

Obscura: The first VPN that can't log your activity

https://obscura.com/#faq-technical
20•Flimm•47m ago•17 comments

OpenAI is well positioned to fast-follow Jev

https://arcturus-labs.com/blog/2026/09/21/will-openai-eat-jevs-lunch/
210•JohnBerryman•5h ago•163 comments

Explaining to business people why building software is still hard

https://www.manager.dev/newsletter/cursing-the-day-lovable-was-born
36•fagnerbrack•1h ago•22 comments

An update on how we confirm your age group on Discord

https://discord.com/blog/safer-for-teens-same-discord-for-adults
44•meetpateltech•2h ago•2 comments

Did OpenAI solve the wrong Navier-Stokes problem?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-openai-solve-the-wrong-navier-stokes-problem/
26•tomjakubowski•20h ago•5 comments

Overreliance on AI contributed to missile strike on Iran school – Pentagon

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-iran-school-attack/
204•devonnull•1h ago•104 comments

A Faster Shortest Path Algorithm

https://www.vals.ai/blogs/faster-shortest-path-algorithm
14•leumon•1h ago•3 comments

How did AMD Ryzen get 50% faster in two years?

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/09/18/how-did-amd-ryzen-get-50-faster-in-two-years/
97•ibobev•4d ago•14 comments

16-bit Intel 8088 chip (c. 1985)

https://allpoetry.com/16-bit-Intel-8088-chip
88•rbanffy•4h ago•12 comments

Markdown in /src

https://htmx.org/essays/markdown-in-src/
34•perrygeo•21h ago•9 comments

Launch HN: Coverage Cat (YC S22) – Umbrella insurance via your personal agent

https://www.coveragecat.com/
28•botacode•3h ago•20 comments

There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117299954135808210
186•Cider9986•3h ago•79 comments

George Lucas Returns to Earth, Bearing Gifts

https://commonedge.org/george-lucas-returns-to-earth-bearing-gifts/
36•surprisetalk•1d ago•14 comments

Show HN: JevBench, a reproducible benchmark for typed decision models

https://benchmarkheaven.com/jev-models
20•florianstandhar•7h ago•0 comments

The JavaScript Midlife Crisis

https://maroun-baydoun.com/blog/javascript-midlife-crisis/
7•maroun-baydoun•29m ago•2 comments

Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy

https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/i-wish-apple-would-just-stop-that-crap-apple-has-added-pe...
494•MC995•5h ago•381 comments

People hooked on vapes try a new way to quit: cigarettes

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-18/to-quit-vaping-some-are-starting-to-smoke
41•alephnerd•19h ago•32 comments

Writing Rust code that's fast by asking agents to make the code faster

https://minimaxir.com/2026/09/agentic-iteration/
83•mooreds•4h ago•43 comments

Solitaire Alone Together

https://solitairealonetogether.com/
116•eieio•22h ago•27 comments

Porsche puts wireless EV charging into production

https://electrek.co/2026/09/18/its-finally-here-porsche-puts-wireless-ev-charging-into-production...
46•cisc•2d ago•47 comments

Show HN: Drop – A rootless Linux sandbox with gVisor support

https://droprun.sh/
139•mixedbit•6h ago•48 comments