(Following thread was prompted by people pointing out that the Bluesky dev team seems heavily into vibe-coding now and originally posted on said vibe-coded Bluesky platform that is now constantly failing.)
Over the past year, every single time one of the apps or services I use suddenly became less reliable and more buggy, I never have to look far for the "Claude is amazing and now writes most of my code" post for the devs involved.
Best part? It's always somebody with years of experience. Exactly the demographic that is supposedly able to use this shit safely, but my impression is they're just as bad as the novices
This is happening IMO because of one of the fundamental issues with software dev (and this predates "AI" and was one of the themes of my first book):
Most software projects fail and most of what gets shipped doesn't work. The way the industry is set up means there is little downside to shipping broken software
Few devs have a reference point for genuinely working software. Usability labs were disbanded over 20 years ago. Very few companies do actual user research, so their designs are based on fiction. Bugs are the norm
Alienation is also the norm for devs, both socially and organisationally. Whether it works for the end user doesn't cross their mind. Whether the design fulfils business needs is not their problem. Bugs are a future problem. Ship insecure software and patch it as user data gets stolen
Devs are so disconnected from the output of their work that many of the norms of the industry are outright illegal: there's a good chance that if you follow popular practices for a React project, for example, you'll end up with a site or product that violates accessibility law in several countries
Few devs would even know where to begin to look to answer the question "does my software work for the people forced to use it?"
@baldur Whoever came up with 'Yes/Not now' needs to be dragged into the streets and shot.
No wonder some folks don't understand consent - our software doesn't allow for it.
@otfrom I think it’s a mistake to blame it on Epstein. The consent / coercion balance change arises from licensing vs ownership, and the extractive nature of sociopathic billionaires.
A billionaire is going to billionaire, (or a baron), because they’re sure they know best, and other people’s rules don’t need to apply to them.
Sure, a whole chunk of them will want particular expressions of transgressive control of the sort Epstein provided, but the control and coercion were there already.
@hypostase that's why I said Epstein Class
The control and coercion are what they are after. The material wealth (billionaires) is one way to get it (there are others, but money works well)
@hypostase I see Epstein as a synecdoche for the whole worldview. I don't mean any particular individuals or scene.
They revel in being able to trick others. They think they have the most merit. They think they can take what they want and deserve it. They think our lives don't matter (or at least not as much as theirs)
@otfrom whereas I see Epstein as a lesser player, who crossed a very particular line, and was then being hung out to distract from the fundamental behaviour of the others. Wyrmtongue more than Saruman.
What he did was horrific, and needs to be stopped, and was hiding in plain sight, like ever so much child abuse.
But, much of the danger of the oligarchy, and their process of control, is not only in plain sight, but considered a necessary part of capitalist structure, and therefore good.
If we are to stop the former, we also need to stop the latter, and that’s harder to do without acknowledging that it’s there.
@hypostase ah, that might be where we differ then. The pedophilia was just part of Epstein circle. Taking children, taking money, threatening governments via insider knowledge and market collusion -- it is all there.
All the taking, and the only limit for them is where their whim takes them. They live to take what they want when they want in all things and they don't care about who gets hurt. Their feeling of supremacy protects them.
(Or at least this is what I'm seeing in the Epstein, Mandelson, Prince Andrew, Steve Bannon, Richard Branson, Elon Musk et al emails at the DOJ)
@otfrom yep. It’s all there. The danger is in thinking that it’s the only place that sort of collusion happens.
US gerrymandering, for example, is not fundamentally Epsteinian. It does introduce a very particular form of political corruption and control, that really needs to be addressed if consent is to become a forward part of political thinking.
But that’s not new, either.
@baldur years of industry "leaders” with new design patterns, a dozen development methodologies with the (sometimes misguided) intention of doing better software. Went from jokes about places using LOC as a productivity metric to bragging about how much (and only) code can be output
Deeply unserious industry
@zanchey @baldur "Look! I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that!? What the hell is wrong with you people!?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcIMIyQnOso
A lot of business relationship managers and team leads got into their positions by hiding their incompetence whilst pleasing upper management long enough to get promoted.
@baldur I still remember, talking to a twitter dev who had an utterly ridiculously foolish take on XYZ issue go viral.
They told me 'Uhhh, I've never had this much attention on me, my tweets never go beyond my social circle. I had to turn off my phone. It kept buzzing.'
... this was a person who worked on the UI. No shit they had no idea how to deal with high volume 'oh, you just 200k likes' kinda shit, they never experienced it themselves.
@baldur Honestly I think a big part of it is more than our industry being deeply immature still; I think the most important throughline of the research on LLMs' effects on cognition is a consistent attack on metacognition, which seemingly doesn't abate with experience. The same corrosion happens to juniors and seniors alike, but the seniors have more rationalizations at hand to pretend it doesn't.
(Speaking of, that "cognitive surrender" paper is the latest in that theme: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6097646)
@baldur Apropos of nothing, the absolute worst implementation of Raft I've ever seen in my Raft course was by a pair of senior devs with a combined 60+ years of experience who decided to pair program together and announced ahead of time to the group that they were going to "win" Raft. They did not.
An undergraduate who'd never coded with sockets before did reasonably okay.
Most people ignore that it's a fossil fuel funded cult, intentionally designed to keep a dependency on oil.
https://www.wired.com/story/trump-energy-industry-ai-fossil-fuels-pittsburgh-summit/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/technology/saudi-arabia-ai-exporter.html
Saudi Arabia aspires to be the next Russian Internet Research Agency, selling hack-for-hire election meddling.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/18/903512647/senate-report-former-trump-aide-paul-manafort-shared-campaign-info-with-russia
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-would-paul-manafort-share-polling-data-with-russia
With Larry Ellison's help.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/larry-ellison-trump-2020-call-b2084757.html
https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article/project-2025-oracle-19654875.php
@baldur I feel like having spent most of my career building embedded systems aimed at industry rather than consumers, where customer support issues can mean sending a technician out with a USB stick on a ten-hour road trip, has insulated me from the worst madness.
If your sloppy coding breaks a manufacturing line or distribution network, bugs become expensive fast.
Though having said that, $CURRENT_EMPLOYER is pushing for greater use of LLMs in our workflow...
@baldur I suspect that these people are so fixated on automation that they’ve moved to agentic generation of their code within days of adopting the LLM.
I probably babysit and check the LLM’s answers 1000% more than most people and it STILL attempts to introduce absolute junk into my code and makes me look like an idiot, reassuring me that my (actually stupid) idea is brilliant time and again.
Case in point: Claude Code runs in THE TERMINAL on a custom **react game engine**. 🤦🏻♂️
@baldur This has been on my mind the last few days, too: https://mas.to/@nielsa/116171030173125331
I see so many people falling into LLM delusion, who I thought would know better, with no seeming pattern in *why* they fall for it.
Yes, the lack of negative incentives is certainly a factor.
My best explanation so far is that LLMs are kind of "acting" like 17 cons (some new, some old) in a trench coat, and different combinations of these trick different people who'd be able to resist most of these on their own.
@[email protected] Yeahhh I've been thinking about this type of thing recently, too https://mas.to/@nielsa/116155283958385166 It's an eerie, lonely feeling to look at those one thought of as good at the exact things needed to see through the flashy deceptions of LLMs not just fall for them, but commit fully and strongly. And, in my experience, then refuse to face factual points that should convince them to let go of the delusion...
Most software projects fail, most of what gets shipped doesn't work, *and also* most of them never needed to be written in the first place.
It's easy to ship a product when the purpose of the product is something like "discourage people from using medical care they've paid for."
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