Submitted 2 weeks ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://hackaday.com/2026/02/02/how-vibe-coding-is-killing-open-source/
Vibe coding is a black hole. I’ve had some colleagues try and pass stuff off.
What I’m learning about what matters is that the code itself is secondary to the understanding you develop by creating the code. You don’t create the code? You don’t develop the understanding. Without the understanding, there is nothing.
Yes. And using the LLM to generate then developing the requisite understanding and making it maintainable is slower than just writing it in the first place. And that effect compounds with repetition.
TheRegister had an article, a year or 2 ago, about using AI in the opposite way: instead of creating the code, someone was using it to discover security-problems in it, & they said it was really useful for that, & most of its identified things, including some codebase which was sending private information off to some internet-server, which really are problems.
I wonder if using LLM’s as editors, instead of writers, would be better-use for the things?
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How AI is killing everything.
Which is really it’s purpose, as far as i can see
LLMs definitely kills the trust in open source software, because now everything can be a vibe-coded mess and it’s sometimes hard to check.
LLMs definitely kills the trust in
open sourcesoftware, because now everything can be a vibe-coded mess and it’s sometimes hard to check.
Might make open source more trustworthy, It can't be any harder to check than closed source.
I don’t trust proprietary software anyway.
yeah it’s to the point now where if I see emojis in the readme.md on the repo I just don’t even bother.
I used to use emojis in my documentation very lightly because I thought they were a good way to provide visual cues. But now with all the people vibe coding their own readme docs with freaking emojis everywhere I have to stop using them.
Mildly annoying.
Check out this one I came across earlier - https://github.com/Jtensetti/fediverse-career-nexus/blob/main/README.md
or anywhere. Job descriptions for example.
ttbomk, emojis are legal function-names in both Swift & Julia…
The Swift example was damned incomprehensible, & … well, it was Apple stuff, so making it look idiotic might have been some kind of cultural-exclusivity intention…
The Julia stuff, though, means that you can use Greek symbols, etc, for functions, & get things looking more like what they should…
Also, I think emojis are actually better than my all-text style, for communicating intonation/emotion ( I’m old: learned last century ), & maybe us old geezers ought to adapt a bit, to such things…
That does NOT mean that cartoon “code” is good-enough, whether it’s cartoonish in plaintext or in emojis, though…
I’m just trying to keep the cultural-prejudice & the code-quality being distinct-categories of judgement, you know?
( & cultural-prejudice is an actual thing, though it’s usually called “religious wars”, isn’t it, in geekdom? )
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I think for someone that is very knowledgeable In a project they would probably somehow now if there is vibe coding. I think this will affect brand new projects but not that much of the older codebase. Even think it might enable finding old bugs in old open source codebase.
You are more optimistic than the maintainers of those older projects that have started to ban LLM generated bug reports. They tend to be a waste of time for the maintainers (e.g.: cURL project).
Interesting. I thought this will be another post about slop PRs and bug reports but no, it’s about open source project not being promoted by AI and missing on adoption and revenue opportunities.
So I think we definitely see (and will see more) ‘templatization’ of software development. Some ways of writing apps that are easy to understand for AI and are promoted by it will see wider and wider adoption. Not just tools and libraries but also folder structures, design patterns and so on. I’m not sure how bad this will be long term. Maybe it will just stabilize tooling? Do we really need new React state management library every 6 months?
Hard to tell how will this affect the development of proper tools (not vibe coded ones). Commercial tools struggling to get traction will definitely suffer but most of the libraries I use are hobby projects. I still see good tools with good documentation getting enough attention to grow, even fairly obscure ones. Then again, those tools often struggle with getting enough contributors… Are we going to see a split between vibe coded template apps for junior devs and proper tools for professionals? Will EU step in and found the core projects? I still see a way forward so I’m fairly optimistic but it’s really hard to predict what will happen in a couple of years.
I am building a commercial application in my free time and I can definitely see evidence of this templatization. There are things that are very common in C# developer’s implementations which I deliberately don’t want to do. The AI will do it with reckless abandon. I can tell it not to, but it sneaks back in.
OSS library funding has been a huge issue in general. I really think the companies that have trillion dollar market caps can fund the development of top libraries but they just don’t.
Eh. I never considered myself some hard-core old professional, but:
The LLM will not interact with the developers of a library or tool, nor submit usable bug reports, or be aware of any potential issues no matter how well-documented
If an LLM introduces a dependency, I will sure as hell go see it myself. Enough people do not do that for this to become a problem?
ever heard of node.js?
Heard, not used though. isEven™ too, but I never thought it goes like this in anything intended for external use
There’s a term called “dependency hell”. Sure, this one dependency is fine, but it depends on 3 other libraries, those 3 depend on a sum of 7 others, etc…
Nah, dependency hell is when two things you want to use depend on same thing, but different versions. The depth of dependencies needed to make “this one thing” work may or may not be a problem
It’s exacerbated by “oh this library is updated for no reason than its version is newer so we need to force that bleeding edge on any ecosystem we’re in” thinking.
We’ve absolutely lost the careful, measured long-term release and maintenance cadence that we built the Internet on.
Compare Systemd.
I just wanna say that’s such a good thumbnail
Oh yeah. If it was drawn by AI, well, it sure fooled me.
A Matrix guard thing but with cat details?
Microslop played the long game when they bought github
If the abominable intelligence is killing every corner of things we consider good its time to start killing the “AI”…
Open source is not only about publishing code: it’s about quality, verifiable, reproducible code at work. If LLMs can’t do that, those “vibe coding” projects will hit a hard wall. Still, it’s quite clear they badly impact the FOSS ecosystem.
I’ve been wondering if Stremio has been doing this they had no updates for years and now at least one every week that breaks more things. I’m on the old one just watching the chaos unfold.
The killing part is not necessarily people vibe coding programs into OSS projects, but even if the OSS itself is not vibe coded, people using AI to integrate with it will result in lower engagement and thus killing the ecosystem:
Together, these patterns suggest that AI mediation can divert interaction away from the surfaces where OSS projects monetize and recruit contributors.
From Section 2.3 of the reported paper.
This isn’t the problem with the AI, it’s the problem with the user. If you don’t know enough to select the library and make the AI use it, maybe you were never gonna finish the project without AI anyway.
I smell clickbait
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 2 weeks ago
Only until AI investor money dries up and vibe coding gets very expensive quickly. Kinda how Uber isn’t way cheaper than taxi’s now.
blaggle42@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
This.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Is that the latest term for “when hell freezes over”?
massacre@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Microsoft steeply lowered expectations on the AI Sales team, though they have denied this since they got pummelled in their quarterly and there’s been a lot of news about how investors are not happy with all the circular AI investments pumping those stocks. When the bubble pops (and all signs point to that), investors will flee. You’ll see consolidation, buy-outs, hell maybe even some bullshit bailouts, but ultimately it has to be a sustainable model and that means it will cost developers or they will be pummeled with ads (probably both).
A Majority of CEOs are saying their AI spend has not paid off. Those are the primary customers, not your average joe. MIT reports 95% generative AI failure rate at companies. Altman still hasn’t turned a profit. There are Serious power build-out problems for new AI centers (let alone the chips needed). It’s an overheated reactionary market. It’s the Dot Com bubble all over again.
There will be some more spending to make sure a good chunk of CEOs “add value” (FOMO) and then a critical juncture where AI spending contracts sharply when they continue to see no returns, accelerated if the US economy goes tits up. Then the domino’s fall.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 2 weeks ago
Hah, they wish. It’s a business, and they need a return on investment eventually. Maybe if we were in a zero interest rate world again, but even that didn’t last.
otter@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Unless I misunderstood, it will eventually dry up? Investors aren’t going to be willing to give money with no returns indefinitely
percent@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s only a temporary problem - if it becomes one at all. People are quickly discovering ways to use LLMs more effectively, and open source models are starting to become competitive with commercial models. If we can continue finding ways to get more out of smaller, open-source models, then maybe we’ll be able to run them on consumer or prosumer-grade hardware.
GPUs and TPUs have also been improving their energy efficiency. There seems to be a big commercial focus on that too, as energy availability is quickly becoming a bottleneck.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 2 weeks ago
So far, there is serious cognitive step needed that LLM just can’t do to get productive. They can output code but they don’t understand what’s going on. They don’t grasp architecture. Large projects don’t fit on their token window. Debugging something vague doesn’t work. Fact checking isn’t something they do well.
XLE@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Can you cite some sources on the increased efficiency? Also, can you link to these lower priced, efficient (implied consumer grade) GPUs and TPUs?
Infernal_pizza@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
They’ve thought of that as well, soon nobody will be able to afford consumer grade hardware
teslekova@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
It’s not going to be enough to spend thirty thousand dollars a year per person on it, though, so the current first mover corps are still fucked. I agree that the tech itself has huge possibilities, just not the pets.com ass bullshit that is currently being pushed.
caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
You say “dries up” like that wasn’t always the end goal for rideshare apps. Disrupt, overtake, starve out, hike prices.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 2 weeks ago
With Uber that was indeed the plan and it worked. The same plan was there for AI, but AI isn’t doing so well on the whole overtake and starve out thing. They’ll have to jump directly to hiking prices. So it’s only kinda like Uber.