Vibe guy - the idea guy turning into a vibe coder
If you're an outspoken software developer, you might have stumbled on the so called idea guy here and there. It's the type of person who wants to start a project by solely contributing their idea - while being in charge and control of everything. Usually this individual has no real skills. They merely contribute their idea. However, this person has a significant malicious trait: They want to own everything.
Usually idea guys are trying to form a team as they can't execute anything themselves. Unfortunately, they treat their team as mere ants while they think too highly of themselves. They want all the fame and popularity for themselves. Remember the classic "I made this" meme? It's perfectly on spot here.
When I started my Discord server for HortusFox (now the discord server turned into a general community server for all my projects and endeavors), it didn't took that long for an idea guy to hop in. So, gather around kids, it's time for a story of an idea guy trying to get someone doing their job.
So, this user hopped on the discord and posted a link to a paper they wrote about a plant management app. They asked me in a cryptic way to contribute to their project. The user said that they could do it on their own as they had "python courses during college", but they'd need my help in order to implement all these features from their list. It quickly turned out that they had no clue on programming, but merely wanted someone to implement their "golden, outstanding feature list" voluntarely without any form of compensation or recognition. After I denied their request a few times, they got offensive. Since my server was fresh, I didn't want any drama, so I choose to ignore them. A few days later they left the server.
This is a classic example of an entitled idea guy who can't execute anything, and heavily relies on other people's work - and then gets mad when called out.
But, lo and behold, finally their revenge is at hand! The idea guy now evolved into a new form: The vibe coder!
Finally, they can use AI to turn their golden and glorious ideas into reality. Is fame, admiration and money now finally going to come along their way?
Nope! As some open-source, self-hosted apps perfectly demonstrated, these projects crash and burn shortly after they established a name.
Security vulnerabilities, unmaintainable code, bugs and a commit history of horror are only a few but severe examples that turn a project into a nightmare. Once again the idea guy proved only one thing: They are incapable of building, creating and executing software projects. They are the kind of individuals that hurt the self-hosted community tremendously, in fact, they drag the name of FOSS development through mud - creating a general distrust on opensource projects.
How can you still trust that a project is not vibe-coded? Well, sometimes it's easy to see and after a while it is revealed by heroes of the community who dig deeper. But generally, it's annoying, as users waste their energy to spin up an app in their environment only to later be disappointed by the vibe guy. Self-hosting and FOSS development have principles. For instance, you want to own your data, and be in control of them. You don't want to be affected by questionable actions of corporations. You want accessibility. You want transparency. However, given the current nature of AI and its usage, this only hurts all of these principles.
I've already written an article on why we should reject vibe coding. And it covers the issues mentioned here as well.
As a matter of fact, if you want to create and publish a project, you need to know what you're doing. You need to be an experienced, professional software developer. There is no shortcut to that.
Meanwhile I'm just proud that HortusFox is 100% free of vibe coding / AI slop. And I'm thankful for all the community engagement.
Have a nice weekend!
