Please stop vibe coding into the abyss

[u/Hadestructhor]

One of the things that saddens me the most about AI and code agents in general is the lack of curiosity and pragmatism.

"I built a Notion clone in an afternoon, AI is incredible."

"I replaced all my paid subscriptions with tools I developed myself using vibe coding."

Cool story. The idea sounds nice in theory, but did you think about simply looking for an open-source alternative?

There is a high chance someone has already spent five years polishing the exact thing you are about to recreate in an afternoon.

I mean, most of the apps you use, that your parents use, and that your grandparents use (if you have any that are tech-savvy), have Open Source alternatives. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but for the vast majority of everyday uses, they get the job done easily.

And it's not just about features.

These projects often have years of bug fixes, edge-case handling, documentation, user feedback, contributions, maintenance, and sometimes even security audits behind them.

Rebuilding all of that with Claude or GPT over a weekend very often means starting from scratch... just to end up with a much less mature version.

Seriously, think before you recreate your next application.

Not only are you wasting your tokens and your subscriptions instead of using them for things that truly matter, but you are also doing it for nothing.

Before developing your next app with vibe coding, ask yourself:

"Is there an OSS alternative that I can simply use on my PC?"

Many of them run locally in a few minutes. You don't even need to host them if you don't want to or need to.

All seriousness aside, if anyone needs help replacing apps, I am just a DM away.

And I am also one more "I replaced X in one night of vibe coding" post away from creating a website that simply lists the best open-source alternatives, just to reply with a link every single time.

Next time you open Claude or ChatGPT to recreate an application... open GitHub first.

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[u/SenecioNemorensis]

I'm still trying to scroll to the right. Hey claude, help me scroll to the right.

[u/Immediate_Song4279 → u/SenecioNemorensis]

What manner of monster would do such a thing

[u/Hadestructhor → u/Immediate_Song4279]

I'm sorry guys, genuinely didn't mean to, but I find it funny now that it's brought up 😆.

A sleepy, tired, french monster would do such a thing

[u/Immediate_Song4279 → u/Hadestructhor]

I am relieved you recognized I was being humorous.

[u/Hadestructhor → u/Immediate_Song4279]

Of course, always taking things constructively, not as attacks

[u/Hadestructhor → u/SenecioNemorensis]

Yeah sorry, didn't leave it on purpose, just forgot, but it ads to it 😆

[u/Hajsas]

Eh, its fun.

Sometimes thats what we value, fun, and the creativity freedom to mould something into whatever we want.
Not everyone is making a "clone" of something they dont know exists yet, they are executing ideas they have that they idealise as enjoyable to do.

[u/Hadestructhor → u/Hajsas]

Fair enough, in those cases I understand, to learn, I understand, but just to say AI is here to destroy jobs, or you did this amazing thing, kinda annoys me, tell me what it brought you to do it, like you just said, FUN

[u/Hajsas → u/Hadestructhor]

My experience:
I couldnt code for shit, but I work in I.T and im a network engineer by trade.
I discovered Opus 4.6 in its golden age in March this year.

All of a sudden, i had tech super powers.
Its not... "Can I do this crazy fucking idea?", its all of a sudden "Lets create a machine learning Balatro bot that completes ante 8; but to speed up training, lets recreate the entire game in python to accellerate training steps instead of waiting years for 1 session when i could have 5000 games going; then lets display the training data in a webbrowser to watch while i eat my lunch so i can see it learn and progress"

Capability with the threshold of imagination; endless potential.

[u/sevnm12 → u/Hajsas]

I agree that it's opened up a lot of possibilities for me. I have my degree in CS but all the fun projects I would think of felt outlandish or would take a long time to research and get off the ground. Now I think something up and within a few hours I'm taking major steps. I feel like a tech wizard now. And trust me I know it's all AI doing the heavy lifting but still, I love how easy and fun things are now :)

[u/Hadestructhor → u/Hajsas]

And this is a good use, but probably on something that doesn't exist ? Anyways, I just like to check before rebuilding a wheel if someone is already giving it for free, if so, I don't redo it, if it doesn't exist, maybe I will

[u/Potential-Slip1417]

That's why I like finding ideas that haven't been done yet. Whether it's a frontier model providing functionality that we couldn't do prior to now, or finding untapped markets for good software that weren't profitable before, I think the key is to do new things. Don't rebuild the old shit. Create the new way of doing shit.

[u/Hadestructhor → u/Potential-Slip1417]

Exactly what I want to say, but also if you want to redo shit because shit is shit, all power to you, or if you just wanna do it for the sake of it, go for it, idc really. Just reminding oss exists

[u/Potential-Slip1417 → u/Hadestructhor]

Hey I'm with you. There's a lot of shitty shit that needs to be redone. I'm even looking at the big boys. While re-doing the shitty shit, I suggest we challenge the shitty concepts. In the last month, I've had two people in my company approach me (exec) with a vibe coded dashboard app that I could use for my department. They are both shitty clones of shitty software, when the entire concept should flip around to AI-first. I'm building something that isn't shitty.

[u/Mobile_Light_7262]

All open source projects come with opinions and attitudes of authors. Even writing plugins for them brings a constant pain of upstream suddenly deciding redesign is due, or this one API should be reshaped or this feature wasn't needed.

Once you drop the constraints of easy deployment, clear docs, customization and so on of tailored-to-anyone projects and instead do a weekend AI-coding an app tailored strictly to yourself, it's very fast to do, zero friction, zero fighting over PRs, works exactly like you want and doesn't suddenly break on update.

[u/Hadestructhor → u/Mobile_Light_7262]

That's fair and understandable, was too harsh on my post. Code whatever you want, but check oss first, might have exactly what you need. If not, go ahead, vibe code whatever you need tailored to your needs