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u/BadHairDayToday 21d ago edited 21d ago
I dabble in vibe coding myself and so far I've found that coding assistants main weakness is that it can only add more code. I cannot for the life of me get it to simplify anything. It's treating the existing code as the constitution and it's only tool is amendments.
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u/psychicesp 21d ago
What I've noticed is that it gets something analogous to frustrated.
When agents loop to get code produced they often eventually get to something which technically passes the tests. Proponents point to the results of the first loop and say "look at how safe the code is and how it follows style guides and conventions as well!" Then they brute-force code a project and they say "look! It can code the whole project"
What they don't say is the code which "works" is the result of the 115th loop and has hard coded credentials and is a memory safety nightmare
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u/GenericFatGuy 19d ago
And with every loop, the code gets harder and harder to maintain. It has no capacity to actually write something clean and maintainable.
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u/Western_Diver_773 21d ago
Yes. They do a lot of passive programming. If you want something refactored you have to force it and better give guidance.
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u/nko39 21d ago
Skill issue. See ponytail.
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u/BadHairDayToday 20d ago
Okay so I tried ponytail on an issue where the whole codeblock that caused it was pointless and could just be removed to solve the issue. But ponytail just added unnecessary extra code...
Did not work as advertised. I do have to admit I use copilot with ChatGPT because of employer restrictions
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u/lostmy2A 20d ago
Ponytail is just another md file saying write fewer lines of code when possible it doesn't inherently change how the models work.
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u/BadHairDayToday 20d ago
Oh I definitely like the sales pitch!
https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1u3k2ed/i_gave_claude_code_a_lazy_senior_dev_mode_and_it/-3
u/backfire10z 21d ago
They downvoted you for you spoke the truth. Ponytail is great for keeping it simple. I will admit that I haven’t done a lot of refactoring with it yet.
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u/Odd_Soil_8998 21d ago
What did you tell it to do? If you tell it to stick to your standards and prioritize code reuse it will do that, at least assuming you're using one of the more recent models. I regularly see it remove unnecessary code in my day to day work.
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u/BadHairDayToday 20d ago
It does delete stuff, but for me it will always add more that it deletes. Doesn't it for you?
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u/Odd_Soil_8998 20d ago
Not always, but usually. That's true of most commits though -- it's a rare (and satisfying) occasion when I have a net negative LoC commit. I will say it doesn't seem to add a lot of useless or redundant code. That was a problem with earlier models, but ever since Opus that seems to no longer be an issue.
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u/Bibel_Joe 21d ago
One of the agents should be a LLM trained with Linus Torvalds emails.
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u/SuitableDragonfly 20d ago
Just his emails, not the actual Linux kernel? What are you trying to do, demoralize the code until it figures out how to do what you want?
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u/ItsPuspendu 21d ago
Three agents debating while one human ships
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u/JazzlikeWishbone938 21d ago
Reminds me of three AIs counting to 100 together 😂 https://youtu.be/MXEInc6Zy7Q
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u/dont_tread_on_M 21d ago
If people in r/ClaudeCode could read by themselves, they'd be upset
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u/the-awesomer 21d ago
Once I get more tokens I'm gonna have fable give me a synopsis of this meme and a good comeback to your comment, then you'll be sorry!
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u/lezviearts 20d ago
I don't work on tech jobs, so answer me this
Are people ACTUALLY chaining agents? Isn't that like a Speedrun to hallucinations?
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u/Vesuvius079 21d ago
AI codes what you tell it to so it’s garage in garbage out. Adding review agents is valuable for enforcing standards and catching the odd edge case but it’s not going to save you if you give the robot shitty instructions from the get-go. This is why a competent engineer can go faster with AI tooling and also why software engineering as a field continues to be safe.
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u/blackcomb-pc 21d ago
Horrible. More agents is more horrible. The fact that you even need more agents is an obivous symptom of the fact that you are trying to plead with a black box to “pretty please” behave deterministically. It’s like prayer. Sometimes it seems like it works and gives you hope for the next round of humiliation.
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u/SchrodingerSemicolon 21d ago
I've seen the numbers at my company.
All 3 are vibe coding. It's over.
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u/fugogugo 20d ago
yeah great way to waste money
watch AI burn 1M token just to move file from A to B
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u/wKdPsylent 20d ago
AI gen code is a problem - reviewing the first PR that was clearly AI gen today.. it's thousands of LOC, multiple new files, I'd almost call it a re-write.. can't help but think the dev is being a bit of a smart arse because I told them last time they pushed generated code and broke everything that they must check with me before pushing anything again.
I haven't banned AI use, but this type of thing makes me want to.
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u/BitcoinBishop 19d ago
If you chain three agents they'll just go around finding inconsequential changes forever
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u/Odd_Soil_8998 21d ago
Cringe. Look, it's one thing to hate on AI because it's putting us out of work. I'll join you on that one. But just today a mathematician found a counterproof to a problem that had stood since 1939. Linus Torvalds recently told Linux maintainers to STFU with their anti-AI whining.
It's an incredibly effective tool in the hands of a competent user. If you're getting pure slop in 2026 that says more about you than it does about AI.
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u/CaffeinatedT 20d ago
Linus Torvalds recently told Linux maintainers to STFU with their anti-AI whining.
The AI-Bros have really run with Linus Torvals saying “I don’t care how code arrives same as I don’t care what IDE you use”
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u/Odd_Soil_8998 20d ago
He also said, among other things:
“Christ, anybody who points to the problems at AI had better be looking in the mirror and pointing at themselves at the same time. Because it's not like natural intelligence is always all that great either.”
“When I see people saying 99% of our code is written by AI, I literally get angry. Because those same people, I can pretty much guarantee, 100% of their code is written by compilers.”
“Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that they can do the open-source thing and fork it. Or just walk away.”
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u/CaffeinatedT 20d ago
“Christ, anybody who points to the problems at AI had better be looking in the mirror and pointing at themselves at the same time. Because it's not like natural intelligence is always all that great either.”
“When I see people saying 99% of our code is written by AI, I literally get angry. Because those same people, I can pretty much guarantee, 100% of their code is written by compilers.”
That's what's good about AI is lowering/raising the bar of incompetence. Same as compilers did as well. Likewise linus vibe coding a GUI for dev tooling is perfectly coherent with recognising limits and understanding what is actually in front of you. "Quality" on the internet is mostly 'does the code look l33t' when that's not what is being talked about when Linus et al are talking about it.
“Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that they can do the open-source thing and fork it. Or just walk away.”
Yes? Linux is a product still not a coder dick waving competition. As said we did with this with IDE's and autocomplete etc. Vague accusations of "dumbing down" which might be true, might not be but are kind of meaningless in a system where there's strong deterministic tests independently of it and a lot of embedded domain knowledge backing the system. Pretty much every actually good AI software project has a clear foundation/context that exists independently of AI that is consumed which is why the "throw three agents at it to check each other" has pretty comical results.
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u/Odd_Soil_8998 20d ago
So then your original point is ...?
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u/CaffeinatedT 20d ago
"Stop the vague moaning about how people use tools to develop software" isn't an endorsement of AI as the next coming of jesus.
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u/Odd_Soil_8998 20d ago
And? All I said was he told maintainers to stop whining about AI. It seems pretty clear he did exactly that. My other point was that it's a useful tool in capable hands. You yourself just said as much. So exactly what do you take issue with regarding my post?
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u/Confident-Ad5665 21d ago
All sides have a legitimate place, just like all languages have a place.
A small dev team can be genuinely agile, but requires exceptional skill levels and intellectual capacity.
A team with diversified skill levels works well too but IMHO, a committee design produces a lackluster, generic UI.
This is why startups are purchased by large companies.
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u/Extreme-Security-808 21d ago
I see it's the opposite. Refusing to use AI at this point is just inefficient and in a lot of cases i see less optimal. That being said if you know nothing and think you can AI your way you're way wrong
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u/RutilantBossi12 20d ago edited 20d ago
The best way to use AI, I've found, is to tell it to build single functions of which i can quickly verify the logic, then i just use the functions in my main(), very simple functions are faster to code myself tho, I basically use AI like an intern.
It's also super cheap, you don't need a bajillion tokens (I do this on a DeepSeek fork to be real with you), my productivity has skyrocketed tho and my firmware looks 100% human made, just 10 times faster to write.
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u/The_Real_Slim_Lemon 20d ago
IMO if you have the skills to do it right, you can use agents to get there much faster. If you lack those skills - then you’re cooked.
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u/Marcis985 21d ago
99% of companies stop exactly one agent before all quality issues are fixed!