I just had to post this somewhere in this thread, but I bought his Vibe Coding book after listening to him talk through it. I figured it would help me understand his approach and therefore help me get into the same mindset for vibe coding on a serious level. It was garbage. The book is largely written and edited by LLMs and it shows on every page. It was a slop how-to book without many useful gems on how to go about vibe coding outside of "just do it".

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bschwindHN 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> help me get into the same mindset for vibe coding on a serious level

> vibe coding on a serious level

I hope your experience with the book has taught you a valuable lesson about "vibe coding", it seems like it was unintentionally very accurate.

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SwellJoe 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have historically liked Yegge's writing, and he's been pretty tuned into what's happening in tech...he rightly predicted JavaScript would take over the world (many people predicted it, as well, including me, but it wasn't obviously true to everyone for another year or two after that prediction was made). I don't think I ever really deeply disagreed with something so much as I disagree with him on AI.

I mean, it's inarguable that our industry has changed dramatically and most code going forward will be written by LLMs. But, I don't think it follows that you can produce quality software without a human in the loop. And, I don't think it follows that burning tokens 24/7 by way of creating unending busy work for agents is going to result in utility. I haven't actually tried Gas Town (it's too ridiculous on its face for me to be willing to invest time in learning it), but I'd still wager that a single competent dev sitting in front of Claude Code can produce better software faster than anyone, experienced or otherwise, trying to get Gas Town's infinite monkeys driving in the same direction.

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aaa_aaa 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I think his writing is a mix of word salad and eloquent bs.

	▲	tclancy 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It didn’t used to be. Back in the mid 2000s I basically designed our company’s tech interview process based on a few articles he’d written about how he was doing the same at Amazon. He was a must follow for me back in the salad days of RSS. When I saw the Gastown announcement I had trouble reconciling the author and the writing.
	▲	SwellJoe 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It certainly is now, but it's also seemingly all written by LLMs now, as well. He wasn't always like this, though he has always been prone to exaggeration and simplification. He had a lot of solid insights, though, and I enjoyed reading him. Things change.

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heavyset_go 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Venn diagram of crypto scam artistry and AI scam artistry is a circle

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hedgehog 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Did you end up finding a reference you liked better? I'm default suspicious of anything called "vibe coding" but there are probably some good lessons in that territory.

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throwdbaaway 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

His Vibe Coding book is invaluable as a textbook example of slop.