We put a coding agent in a while loop

There will be a a new kind of job for software engineers, sort of like a cross between working with legacy code and toxic site cleanup.

Like back in the day being brought in to “just fix” a amalgam of FoxPro-, Excel-, and Access-based ERP that “mostly works” and only “occasionally corrupts all our data” that ambitious sales people put together over last 5 years.

But worse - because “ambitious sales people” will no longer be constrained by sandboxes of Excel or Access - they will ship multi-cloud edge-deployed kubernetes micro-services wired with Kafka, and it will be harder to find someone to talk to understand what they were trying to do at the time.

> and it will be harder to find someone to talk to understand what they were trying to do at the time.

This will be the big counter to AI generated tools; at one point they become black boxes and the only thing people can do is to try and fix them or replace them altogether.

Of course, in theory, AI tooling will only improve; today's vibe coded software that in some cases generate revenue can be fed into the models of the future and improved upon. In theory.

Personally, I hate it; I don't like magic or black boxes.

The prevailing counter narrative around vibe coding seems to be that "code output isn't the bottle neck, understanding the problem is". But shouldn't that make vibe coding a good tool for the tool belt? Use it to understand the outermost layer of the problem, then throw out the code and write a proper solution.

> [create prototype], then throw out the code and write a proper solution.

Problem is, that in everyones' experience, this almost never happens. The prototype is declared "good enough, just needs a few small adjustments", rewrite is declared too expensive, too time-consuming. And crap goes to production.

> Problem is

How much is it a problem, really ?

I mean, what are the alternatives ?

The alternative is obviously: Do it right on the first try.

How much of a problem it is can be seen with tons of products that are crap on release and only slowly get patched to a half-working state when the complaints start pouring in. But of course, this is status quo in software, so the perception of this as a problem among software people isn't universal I guess.

Sure.

How about the tons of products we don't even see? Those that tried to do it right on the first try, then never delivered anything because there were too slow and expensive. Or those that delivered something useless because they did not understand the users' need.

If "complaints start pouring in", that means the product is used. This in turns can mean two things: 1/ the product is actually useful despite its flaws, or 2/ the users have no choice, which is sad.

> How about the tons of products we don't even see? Those that tried to do it right on the first try, then never delivered anything because there were too slow and expensive.

I would welcome seeing a lesser amount of new crappy products.

That dynamic leads to a spiral of ever crappier software: You need to be first, and quicker than your competitors. If you are first, you do have a huge advantage, because there are no other products and there is no alternative to your crapware. Coming out with a superior product second or third sometimes works, but very often doesn't, you'll be an also-ran with 0.5% market share, if you survive at all. So everyone always tries to be as crappy and as quick as possible, quality be damned. You can always fix it later, or so they say.

But this view excludes the users and the general public: Crapware is usually full of security problems, data leaks, harmful bugs that endanger peoples' data, safety, security and livelihood. Even if the product is actually useful, at first, in the long term the harm might outweigh the good. And overall, by the aforementioned spiral, every product that wins this way damages all other software products by being a bad example.

Therefore I think that software quality needs some standards that programmers should uphold, that legislators should regulate and that auditors should thoroughly check. Of course that isn't a simple proposition...