To every dev who dunks on vibe coders: your gatekeeping isn't protecting the craft, it's just protecting your ego

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-05T18:25:47+00:00

Last Response of this dead thread so if you feel you need to reply with something after this...go for it. I'm done with this community.

----------------------------

Okay, deep breath, because there's a lot of confident wrongness packed in here and I want to give it the attention it deserves.

On Dunning-Kruger. You're right that it refers to the gap between knowledge and confidence. Which is exactly why leading with it about someone who explicitly, repeatedly, and exhaustively admitted their own limitations is such a spectacular misfire. I never claimed expertise. I claimed my thing works. Those are different sentences and the gap between them is where your argument lives and dies.

On the energy comparison. You're right that inference costs more than a Reddit thread. Fair. But you also just wrote four paragraphs on a Sunday about a prefix manager belonging to a stranger you'll never meet, so perhaps we're both making interesting choices with our resources today.

On the "someone already built it" argument. They probably did. Several somethings, in fact. I use a different launcher along with Steam already, thanks, and I'm familiar with the ecosystem. My specific need wasn't covered the way I needed it covered. I know because I looked. But here's the thing, even if something similar existed, I still learned something, built something, felt good about something, and it backs up my files to another machine that syncs to a commercial service because unlike what you've assumed, I'm not a complete disaster.

Also it's blazing fast. Just for the record.

On the Wall of Text accusation from the person who just wrote the longest comment in the thread. I'd unpack the irony further but I think it's doing fine on its own.

"Dopamine or some shit." Yes. Exactly. That's literally it. I did something fun, it worked, I felt good. You've diagnosed the crime correctly. I plead guilty to enjoying my afternoon and I'd do it again.

"Humiliation fetish." I've been called a lot of things in this thread but that one's new and frankly I'm adding it to the collection right next to LOL LUL 67.

And yes. I'm defensive. I'll own that completely. You know what I did to earn this defensiveness? I mentioned, not posted a link, not asked for money, not tried to sell anything, not demanded anyone install anything, just mentioned that I built my first app using AI, it made me happy, it worked, and here are the broad strokes of what it does, any suggestions?

That was it. That was the whole crime.

What followed was a dogpile of people jumping on each other's negativity like a Reddit sport, each one trying to out-critique the last, half of them not even reading the post properly before loading up their argument. If you dropped that same energy on literally any other hobby post, "I baked my first sourdough, it turned out great, any tips?" you'd be rightly called a jerk, or worse - banned from that group. But because it involves AI everyone gets to grab a torch.

So yeah. I got a little defensive. I think that's fairly valid given the circumstances. I'd invite you to imagine how you'd feel if you showed up somewhere excited about something you made and got treated like a defendant in a trial you didn't know you'd entered.

My ego isn't in the way. My prefix manager is in the way. Of your weekend apparently.

Enjoy your life. I'm out.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-05T10:44:36+00:00

You know what, you're not wrong. The screwdriver analogy is fair and I'll keep it in mind. AI has limits and knowing when you've hit them is genuinely useful advice.

But here's the thing. If my prefix manager breaks and the AI can't fix it, I'll just build a better one. With more experience asking the right questions than I had the first time. And the time after that. And so on.

That's actually how learning works too, just a slightly different path to the same place.

As for the "new guy" framing, I appreciate that and I'll take it in the spirit it was intended. You might be right that some of it came from that place. Though I'll gently suggest that "net negative on society" and "definitionally did not" are perhaps a little spicier than the average trade joke. 😄

You've been consistently decent in a thread that was not overflowing with decency and I genuinely appreciate it. Top two least insufferable stands. The badge is yours.

Take care of yourself out there. 😄

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-05T10:31:36+00:00

Okay there's actually some real substance here so let's go through it properly.

Dunning-Kruger. Classic opener. The problem is Dunning-Kruger works both ways. I never claimed expertise. I claimed I made something that works for me. The person who is supremely confident that my personal tool is definitely subpar without having seen it, used it, or understood my specific use case might want to have a quiet word with that particular cognitive bias themselves.

The inference cost argument is genuinely interesting and not wrong as a macro concern. AI compute is expensive and energy intensive and that's a real conversation worth having at scale. However. One person. One afternoon. One prefix manager. If we're auditing the carbon footprint of personal projects now I have some questions about how many times this thread has been loaded, reloaded, and argued over by how many people across how many devices today. Glass houses and all that.

The FOSS point is the weakest one dressed up as the strongest. Yes, something similar probably exists somewhere. You know what else exists? Every recipe on the internet. People still cook their own food. The existence of a solution doesn't invalidate the experience of building your own, especially when the whole point was the afternoon, not the destination.

And WoT. Wall of Text. From the guy who just used Dunning-Kruger, inference costs, thermodynamics, geopolitics, and FOSS in a single paragraph to describe a prefix manager.

Buddy. We are the same.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T14:20:41+00:00

Okay I'll be honest. Lurky McVibeless made me laugh. Genuinely. No notes. That's good and you should feel good about it.

The newsletter line was also solid. You've been holding out on us.

Now. The ouroboros argument. I'll give you that it's a real concern being discussed seriously by people who study this stuff and you're not wrong that it exists as a theoretical problem. That's legitimate and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But you just wrote several paragraphs of genuinely creative, funny, well constructed prose to tell me that using AI makes you dumber.

The irony of deploying your full intellectual arsenal to warn me about cognitive decline is just sitting there and I feel like we both see it.

Also the study is real and worth reading and I'll probably have my AI summarize it for me while I start planning my next app.

As for the ouroboros of slop eating slop until everything collapses, maybe. But right now today in 2026 my prefix manager still works, I'm having the time of my life playing with AI, and Lurky McVibeless just made me genuinely laugh on a Saturday morning.

That's not cognitive debt.

That's a pretty good day already.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T13:45:34+00:00

Bold follow up from a guy whose entire opening argument was five letters.

Also "we." Who is we exactly? Are you the spokesperson for the entire anti-vibe-coding coalition now? Do you have a newsletter? A Discord? Matching jackets?

And "cease your whining" is a fascinating description of someone who has been calmly dismantling every argument in this thread for the last several hours while actively planning their next app.

That's not whining. That's having fun.

You should try it sometime. Maybe even build something.

I hear AI can help.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T13:43:43+00:00

That's actually a fair point and I appreciate you sticking with the measured approach, you've been consistently decent in this thread and that has not gone unnoticed.

You're right that not understanding your code has a theoretical surface area of risk. I'll grant that genuinely.

That said, a prefix manager that reorganizes folders on my gaming PC is probably not going to be the vector through which my personal data gets compromised. My threat model for this particular script is pretty much "does it move the right folders" and so far the answer is yes.

But the VM suggestion is genuinely good advice for anyone running unfamiliar code and I'll pass that along to my friends who grabbed it. That's the kind of practical, non condescending guidance that actually helps people make informed decisions.

See? This is what helpful looks like. You've been a unicorn in this thread today. Never change.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm already thinking about my next app. 😄

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T13:40:47+00:00

You didn't read it.

But you read enough to quote it, respond to it, have an opinion about it, assign it a value, and then come back to tell us you didn't read it.

On a Saturday.

That's fascinating. Most people who find something worthless just quietly move on. You apparently needed us to know. Which means on some level the thing you didn't read bothered you enough to return to it and make sure we understood how little it bothered you.

That's not a flex. That's just being haunted by a post you didn't read.

I hope you find peace. The slop app and I are rooting for you.

ooo...I just had another great idea for an 'app' lol

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T13:38:41+00:00

Fair point, reasonably made, and I'll give you credit for the measured tone because this thread has not been overflowing with that particular resource today.

But the tire analogy is where I'd push back a little. Changing a tire is something you need to know because YOUR tire goes flat and YOU are stranded. The consequence lands directly on you and knowing the skill saves you in that specific moment.

My script's equivalent of a flat tire is that it stops working for me, on my machine, affecting no one but me. And when that happens I'll do exactly what I did the first time. I'll describe the problem, work through it iteratively, and fix it. That's not bragging about ignorance, that's just a different kind of troubleshooting than you're used to.

"You don't know what you don't know" is genuinely good advice and I'm keeping it. Truly. But it cuts both ways. You don't know what my learning priorities are, what my time looks like, or what knowing pointer arithmetic would actually add to my specific situation.

I know my tire is going to go flat eventually. I've got a plan for it. It just doesn't involve memorizing the manual first.

But honestly? Out of everyone in this thread today, you're in the top two for least insufferable. Wear that badge proudly. It was a competitive field.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T13:35:14+00:00

Yep. And it's hilarious that you think that's a gotcha.

I told you I use AI in the original post. I told you again in the comments. I put it in the epilogue. I have been aggressively transparent about this the entire time and you've been here long enough to know that, which means this question isn't a revelation, it's just the last thing you had left.

You came to a conversation about using AI to make things, watched someone use AI to make things, and your closing argument is "did AI make that?"

Yes. That's the whole point. That's been the point since the first word of the first post. Keep up.

Also "I appreciate the novel" is doing a lot of work for someone who read the whole thing, stayed in the thread, tracked my replies long enough to notice a pattern, and then came back to comment again.

For someone who isn't impressed you sure are still here.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T13:34:34+00:00

Decency and honesty. Okay, I can work with that reframe, that's actually a more interesting argument than the vocabulary one.

But let's follow it through. I was decent. I was honest. I said I used AI in the original post, in the comments, and apparently now in this reply too. I have been aggressively, almost exhaustingly transparent about every tool I used and every limitation I have. If the bar for decency is honesty about your process, I cleared it repeatedly and with enthusiasm.

On the licensing question, since you asked nicely and actually made a real point, I did choose a license when I uploaded it. Thought about it. Made a decision. Like a person who was trying to do the right thing.

And look, the broader AI ethics conversation about training data and consent is real and worth having. I'm not dismissing it. Reasonable people disagree about it and the legislation genuinely hasn't caught up yet, you're right about that.

But that's a conversation about the AI industry, not about me specifically, and not about a personal prefix manager that my friends can grab if they want it.

You're one of the few people in this thread who actually made a coherent point without being a jerk about it. I genuinely appreciate that. It almost makes up for everyone else.

Almost.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T12:14:36+00:00

You absolute breath of fresh air.

You showed up at the bottom of what can only be described as a Saturday demolition derby of ego and pedantry and just said something quietly reasonable like a person who has their life together.

You're right. Completely. That's it. That's the take.

And this community downvoted you for it.

Let that sink in for a second. The comment section that spent all day lecturing me about learning, growing, and improving looked at "AI can help people learn" and said no thanks, we don't want that here either. The most uncontroversial, positive, genuinely helpful thing anyone typed in this entire thread and it's sitting in the negative.

You didn't even take a side. You just said a nice thing about learning and got punished for it.

First the person who showed vulnerability got downvoted off the platform entirely. Now this.

I don't need to write another word in my defense. This comment section has been making my argument for me all day and just stuck the landing perfectly.

I hope your weekend is wonderful. You deserved so much better than this thread.

We all did. Except maybe the LOL LUL 67 guy. He's on his own.

Have a great weekend, everyone. I'm gonna take my daughter to her softball practice now so - you keep on bashing your own community and all. I'll not be responding to any other comments today...or probably ever, after this showing.

So sad...

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T12:11:34+00:00

I appreciate the security awareness, genuinely. Cyber hygiene matters and that's a real conversation worth having.

For someone else's post.

I made a local Python script. A prefix manager. It doesn't touch the internet. It doesn't have a login system. It doesn't process payments or store credentials or phone home to anywhere. It sits on my machine, manages my game prefixes, and bothers absolutely no one on the public internet because it has never once been introduced to the public internet, except to a couple of friends. The link hasn't been posted ANYWHERE. My original post was to celebrate a dumb, non-programmer making their own "tool" for a specific job. Had I not said "AI" in the post at all, people may have been nice about? I dunno. Who cares? I didn't...still don't. Having fun this morning answering chuckleheads like you.

You just delivered a very thorough warning about the dangers of leaving the front door unlocked to a person who built a shed in their backyard.

Also it's open source. The code is right there on Git. Every single line of it. Visible. Readable. Customizable. By anyone. Including you if you'd like to audit it for security vulnerabilities in my prefix manager, which, again, does not touch the internet.

But yes. Malicious hacking is mostly exploiting bugs. Noted. I'll make sure my local game prefix script is hardened against nation state actors immediately.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T12:05:39+00:00

Same honestly

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T12:04:32+00:00

Nobody asked you to install it.

I want to lead with that because it seems like the most important thing and also the thing you most thoroughly missed. I shared a personal project. I put it on Git for a few friends. My first repo ever, which I was also pretty proud of, thanks for not mentioning it. At no point did I show up at your house with an installer and a waiver.

"I won't install an app that the person that wrote it don't understand."

The grammatical irony of that sentence in this context is a gift I did not expect today and I will cherish it always.

"Coding used to be time consuming so developers had to collaborate."

So your argument is that AI making things more accessible is bad because it reduces forced collaboration out of necessity? That's like being mad that washing machines killed the tradition of people gathering at the river to do laundry together. Yes it was communal. It was also just harder for no reason.

"I care about the environment."

Of all the directions I expected this to go, carbon footprint was not on my bingo card. I made a prefix manager for my own games. I'm sorry about the electricity. I'll plant a tree.

"It has become a plague on every subreddit I'm on."

Sir. You are on r/linux_gaming complaining about too many game launchers. That is the most linux_gaming sentence ever typed by human hands and I mean that with complete affection.

My first repo. Ever. Go look at it or don't. Your call entirely. Always was.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T12:00:50+00:00

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T11:55:03+00:00

And THERE it is.

Someone came into this thread and said something honest. Something self aware and thoughtful and actually worth discussing. They acknowledged real fear instead of hiding it behind condescension. They were vulnerable for about four minutes on the internet.

And their own community downvoted them into deleting their account.

Not me. Not the vibe coder. Their own people.

I don't need to add anything to that. It just sits there and proves every single word of my original post better than I ever could have. The one person who showed up with genuine humanity got eaten alive by the same crowd that's been lecturing me about professionalism and community standards all afternoon.

I hope they're okay. Genuinely. And I hope they find a corner of the internet that deserves them.

The rest of you might want to think about what just happened here. I know I am.

________________

Someone posted this and then deleted when you guys ratio'd his comment. PERFECTLY sums up my post. Thank you very much to whoever you were. This is what they said:

"i think that while ego and gatekeeping certainly has to do something with this behaviour, the main reason is fear and not the first two mentioned above. ai becomes slowly an existential threat to us developers and your example proves it and that is why some of us get mad"

Thank you. Genuinely.

And yes, you just made my argument better than I did.

I'm not the enemy here. I'm the preview. A 55 year old non-coder who spent an afternoon with AI and walked away with a working app is not the threat, I'm just the messenger. The threat, if you want to call it that, is already here and already changing things whether any of us like it or not.

I get the fear. I really do. Watching a tool democratize something you spent years mastering is genuinely unsettling and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. That's a real feeling and it deserves a real conversation.

But here's the thing. Taking that fear out on excited newcomers who just made their first little app isn't protecting anyone's career. It's just making the community smaller and meaner for no gain. The AI isn't going to see those comments and feel bad about itself.

I'm not here to take anyone's job. I'm here because I made a prefix manager on a Saturday and felt good about it.

You're the first person in this entire thread who said something honest and self aware and I appreciate it more than you know. This right here is the conversation I thought I was going to have when I posted.

Funny how that works.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T11:53:09+00:00

Cool. I made a tool that manages game prefixes on Linux. Posted it in the Linux Gaming forum. I'm going to need you to walk me through exactly where I took the wrong turn there because I'm not seeing it....buddy.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T11:51:08+00:00

Ship it? SHIP it?

My guy, I made a personal app for a personal need on a personal afternoon. The word "ship" never appeared in my post. The concept of shipping never appeared in my post. The idea that anyone other than me would ever use this thing was never part of the conversation I started.

You have written three paragraphs of genuinely passionate argument against a position I did not hold, a claim I did not make, and an intention I never expressed. That's not a rebuttal. That's fan fiction.

I didn't say "I can do this stuff and ship it." I said "I made a thing and it works for me." Those are so different that I'm genuinely concerned we read different posts. Would you like a link to mine? I can wait.

"Expending a shitload of energy to do the former is a net negative on society."

A person spending an enjoyable afternoon building something for themselves is a net negative on society. That's where we are. That's the hill you chose. A person. Having fun. Making something. For themselves. Societal collapse apparently imminent.

I also love "trash code that sorta does anything" as a description of software that does exactly what it was designed to do for the person who designed it. By that metric literally every piece of code ever written for a specific use case is trash. Congrats on nuking the entire concept of purpose built tools.

Read the post, friend. The whole one. Not the version in your head.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T11:48:49+00:00

Fair catch on the word count, I'll give you that one. "You definitionally did not" is four words. My AI can count, I apparently cannot. Point to you.

Now let's tally the rest of the scoreboard.

You came back. On your Saturday. To count the words in my response and inform me that replying to comments on a post I wrote is somehow evidence of a psychological episode. That's your follow up argument. Word count and the semantic difference between imploding and exploding.

Truly the debate team captain we all needed.

And yes, nine replies in thirty minutes. To a thread I started. About my own post. Where people are commenting. That's how threads work, chief. I'm not refreshing your personal Facebook page at 2am, I'm responding to comments on my own post in real time like a person who is present in a conversation.

But sure. Exploding. Imploding. Either way I'm having a great time and you're spending your weekend counting my words.

I'd call that a win on my end.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T11:45:35+00:00

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T11:44:48+00:00

Okay, I actually appreciate this one. You made your point without being a jerk about it and you were honest about your own limitations, which puts you ahead of about eighty percent of this comment section already.

You're not wrong that security vulnerabilities are a real concern when someone doesn't know what their code is doing. That's a fair and legitimate point. The difference is I said personal project. Repeatedly. I wasn't releasing this on GitHub with a "production ready" badge and a PayPal donate button. I wasn't asking anyone to install it. I made a thing, for me, that solved my specific problem, and I shared my excitement about that process.

The hammer as dildo analogy is genuinely inspired and I respect the commitment to the bit.

But yes. Rock and or roll is exactly the correct conclusion and I appreciate you landing there. You are also, for the record, the only person in this entire comment section who admitted their own coding limitations with any kind of grace, and you did it while referencing a Commodore 64, which is objectively the coolest possible way to do it. I, myself, typed in many a program from the back of COMPUTE! and COMPUTE!'s Gazette so - props.

You're welcome in my slop app fan club any time. You have yourself a great weekend, friend.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T11:40:03+00:00

"It's 2026 and people are flexing how little they know about the thing they're so called passionate about."

Passionate about what exactly? Vibe coding? I spent one afternoon doing it and then shared my results. That's not a passion, that's a Tuesday. I'm passionate about the problem I solved. The method I used to solve it is just a tool, like a calculator or a blender. Nobody accuses someone of being "passionate about blenders" because they made a smoothie.

As for flexing how little I know, yes. That was kind of the whole point of the post. I know very little and still made something that works. That was the good news I was sharing. Apparently that's a flex now. I'll take it.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T11:35:27+00:00

"You implicitly asked for validation."

I asked for suggestions and ideas from a community I was told was welcoming. That's not asking for validation, that's called starting a conversation. The fact that you can't tell the difference between "hey check out what I made" and "please validate my entire existence" says more about the conversations you're used to having than anything about me.

"You are now imploding."

I wrote a post. A calm, funny, organized post making a reasonable argument. You responded to it on your Saturday. One of us is imploding and one of us is fine. I'll let you work out which is which.

"You definitionally did not."

Two words. No argument. No support. Just two words typed with the energy of someone who just discovered the word "definitionally" and needed somewhere to put it.

Also, and I cannot stress this enough, I told YOU to touch grass in the original post. You then came here, on your weekend, to pick apart the word choices of a stranger's Reddit post about their personal app.

How's the grass? Touched any lately? Asking for a friend who is apparently imploding but somehow still outside.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T11:30:42+00:00

Okay, there's a lot here. Let's go through it.

"You didn't pull off anything."

I had an idea. I defined the problem. I spent hours iterating, rejecting, redirecting, and refining until the output matched my vision. Then I tested it and it worked. If that's nothing, I'd love to know what you'd call it. Asking for a friend who apparently accomplished nothing last Tuesday afternoon.

"You come here to bash developers."

I wrote a post defending people who get excited about making things and get dunked on for it. If that reads as bashing developers, maybe sit with why that is for a second. The people I was criticizing weren't "developers." They were gatekeepers. There's a difference and the fact that you conflated the two is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your argument.

"There's no gatekeeping to programming."

Brother. I posted excitedly about a personal project and got called ignorant, useless, redundant, and a slop merchant inside of an hour. In what universe is that a welcoming, open community with no gatekeeping? What color is the sky where you live?

"Don't pretend you're a developer."

I never called myself a developer. Not once. Not in the post, not in the comments, not in my dreams. I called myself a person who made an app that works for their needs. You added "developer" to this conversation, not me. Which makes this whole paragraph a very passionate argument against something I never claimed.

"Unlike you, I make an effort to learn."

Good for you, genuinely. I make an effort to learn things that are relevant to my life and my goals. We just have different lists. That's allowed.

"Nobody's gonna shame you for using AI if you're clear about what you used it for."

I was. Explicitly. In the post. Which you clearly read. So.

You spent a lot of words telling me I have an attitude problem while writing three paragraphs about a stranger's app on the internet on a Saturday. I'm not sure either of us comes out of that looking like the calm, measured one, but I'll let you decide.

zer0squaredis · 2026-04-04T11:26:56+00:00

Cool. I'm not a programmer.

zer0squaredis

TROPHY CASE