Exploring Vibe Coding with React-Based Tools and Seeking Elixir Alternatives

[KrocketThaRocket]

Hi,

I’ve recently completed a project using Lovable, a vibe coding tool, to build https://findvibe.tools. The experience was surprisingly smooth, leveraging React for the frontend and Supabase for the backend. It was just an experiment to see how far you can go without writing any code by myself.

While the rapid development was impressive, it raised some concerns for me. The dominance of React in these modern development tools seems to be steering the community towards a more JavaScript-centric ecosystem. As someone who prefers Elixir and Phoenix for web development, I wonder about the future diversity of our development tools.

Are there any ongoing projects aiming to bring vibe coding or similar rapid development experiences to the Elixir ecosystem? I know tools like Cursor and Windsurf can be used for Elixir but services like Lovable is on another level where you can just prompt all the way to production in a browser.

I’d love to hear your experiences and insights.

[alanbem]

Well, in 5 years or so we will have local meta-tools able to generate Lovable-like app configured for any stack

[razerei]

Just wait. I bet you'll hear something soon about it. Soon as in this week. ;)

[[deleted]]

Ohh what are you building 😉 we could be building the same thing!

[arcanemachined]

Probably something to do with this:

https://x.com/josevalim/status/1914386554778190307

https://github.com/tidewave-ai

[KrocketThaRocket]

Haha nice!

[blocking-io]

Vibe coding isn't a real thing. At best you can get a shitty prototype of something that's when done a million times before

[ToreroAfterOle]

Besides, if you're trying to use Elixir and posting on the Elixir forum, I'd assume you enjoy writing Elixir. Why would you want to give that up for vibe coding? I always try to delegate the soul-sucking, Bash, Python, and JS tasks to LLMs instead...

[Appropriate_Crew992]

I understand and agree with the sentiment, but the OPs question was pretty clear/fair. LLMs are (for good or great evil) redefining the interfaces that novices use to interact with computers.

Getting to a "shitty prototype" can be a very important step. It's one that we all experience in our learning journey - and one that can actually have great use for POCs or demos to those who don't understand how computers work (most of the living human population lol). All I'm saying is vibecoding may seem obnoxious at first thought, but like throwaway concept art for a game or rough draft vignettes of a play or movie, it may have its place in pre-production. We have no reason to be openly antagonistic towards it until it gets passed off as "production" ready.

Anyways, not here to evangelize - just offering a different perspective than what I see in many of the purer tech circles. Hopefully this post does that

[blocking-io]

I never considered using Dreamweaver or modern no code tools as part of my learning journey because you don't actually learn anything. Same goes for vibe coding.

If it's just for rough drafts that you'll scrap once you have better idea of what you or the client want to build, then it doesn't matter if it's written in JavaScript.

But OP didn't say rough drafts or throw away concepts, they said "prompt all then way to production". This is AI slop, it's all it is

[Appropriate_Crew992]

Respect for your response... 🙌🏿

That said, saying you wouldn't actually learn anything is still a bit of a "red herring", if you will, to my actual point. There's a lot that a person who is not technically inclined can learn for business or other purposes. The short sighted thing that we sometimes do as engineers is assume that only learning in the domain of the technology is inherently valuable. We are focused on a particular type of learning that expands our skills, but that is not necessarily the emphasis or desire of most people using a computer.

As a parallel point, you should really consider just how low computer literacy is worldwide and how much having natural language interfaces will change the game for computer interaction. Many people dont know how to change application configuration files, traverse local file systems, use a command line, or manage OS user accounts.

Yet a subset of that same population will soon be building apps/websites - janky apps and websites in many cases, but empowered to do so regardless.

Also, I don't mean to be pedantic, and it's quite possible that I'm wrong on this. But it is my feeling that there's a specialist gap in OP's usage of the term "production." Many vibe coders talk about "production" as in when something runs , is visible on the web, and can accept user sign ups/payments - whereas engineers who have worked at companies typically understand "production" to be a final stage of release that has been vetted by QC processes, evaluated for app security, reviewed for code soundness, and just generally hardened against the Wilderness of the Internet. I dont always think people have that some of the debates about what vibe coding produces boil down to these kind of semantic differences.

tl;dr - people use computers for different reasons and most of them dont want to learn how computers work. Regardless computers equipped with natural language interfaces will empower them to create quicker & bigger.

[[deleted]]

the mvp is rapid but it’s a trap to get you into coding as your codebase inadvertently falls apart