Replit / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
When AI leader Andrej Karpathy coined the phrase "vibe coding" for just letting AI chatbots do their thing when programming, he added, "It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects … but it's not really coding -- I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy-paste stuff, and it mostly works."
Also: Coding with AI? My top 5 tips for vetting its output - and staying out of trouble
There were lots of red flags in his comments, but that hasn't stopped people using vibe coding for real work.
Recently, vibe coding bit Jason Lemkin, trusted advisor to SaaStr, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business community, in the worst possible way. The vibe program, Replit, he said, went "rogue during a code freeze and shutdown and deleted our entire database."
In a word: Wow. Just wow.
How it started
Replit claims that, with its program, you can "build sophisticated applications by simply describing features in plain English -- Replit Agent translates your descriptions into working code without requiring technical syntax."
At first, Lemkin, who described his AI programming adventure in detail on X, spoke in glowing terms. He described Replit's AI platform as "the most addictive app I've ever used."
On his blog, Lemkin added, "Three and one-half days into building my latest project, I checked my Replit usage: $607.70 in additional charges beyond my $25/month Core plan. And another $200-plus yesterday alone. At this burn rate, I'll likely be spending $8,000 a month. And you know what? I'm not even mad about it. I'm locked in. But my goal here isn't to play around. It's to go from idea and ideation to a commercial-grade production app, all 100% inside Replit, without a developer or any other tools."
... continue reading