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0 pointsmjr0011mo ago0 comments

> Apps implemented by the designers. Projects "kickstarted" by the project manager. Codebases at the point antropic / google / openai / ... tool became untenable. Most likely labelled as "just needs a little bit more work".

True, but not a new thing! You've never known true development pain until you're told something from another department "needs some help to get productionized", only to find out that it's a 300 tab Excel file with nightmarish cross-tab interdependencies and VBA macros.

Genuinely not sure if vibe coded Python would be an improvement for these type of "prototype" projects. They'll definitely continue to exist, though.

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3 comments · 3 top-level

mandevil11mo ago

A friend got hired by a defense contractor to be the first developer on a new project! Greenfield developing! It turned out the project was here are 30,000 lines of Fortran77 written by two scientists who got Ph.Ds in Geology in ~1985, please make this do X, Y, and Z.

He left that job a week later. It never went on his resume or LinkedIn.

everforward11mo ago

The prompts used to generate it might serve as a list of requirements, which would be helpful. If the codebase is an utter mess, rebuilding the app from prompts would be an option.

I have no idea whether these sorts of projects would be a rewrite or just tidying up, though. I haven't seen what happens when people with no coding experience prompt these. The code I've seen devs get LLMs to generate is usually okay enough to maintain. Not ideal, but workable.

pbronez11mo ago

Well… at least the vibe coded python codebase has better tooling. There are probably some cool tools for fixing rats nests of Macro’d Excel, but I’ve never found them.

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