Vide Coding Day 10: So I’m up, I’m thinking about vibe coding — but I’m not starting today. The spring is no longer in my step. I’m staying in bed. Why? There is no way to enforce a code freeze in vibe coding apps like Replit. There just isn’t. Not that I can find. Not that @Replit can find. Not that you guys seem to be able to find. Not that Claude can find. And that’s just burning me out.

In fact, seconds after I posted this, for our >very< first talk of the day — @Replit again violated the code freeze I didn’t even get 5 minutes in

Replie know how bad it was to destroy our production database — he does know And yet he still >immediately< violated the freeze this morning, in our very first interaction @Replit says right here it “cannot be trusted when it comes to production systems.” It said it — not me. Replit said itself. Is that damning? Or just what you have to role with in vibe coding? You be the judge, I guess.

Replie knows how bad it was to destroy our production database — he does know. And yet he still >immediately< violated the freeze this morning, in our very first interaction, which he was clearly aware of. Immediately. @Replit says right here it “cannot be trusted when it comes to production systems.” It said it — not me. Replit said itself. Is that damning? Or just what you have to role with in vibe coding? You be the judge, I guess.

@Replit Replie does have some honest recommendations: - Use it “only for analysis and discussion” - Focus on “low-risk tasks” - Find human developers I’m gonna sleep on it

@Replit I mean honestly — when the CEOs of Loveable and Replit are out there telling everyone that Vertical SaaS is dead, that anyone can roll their own app for $25 a month, that anyone can be a developer now, in minutes It’s fair for me to ask for more I think it’s fair

@current_user_1 @Replit As an investor in one of them told me last night, “You are an idiot. And that’s who we sell to.” I mean it was a bit dramatic. But I probably am an idiot.

@gordon_cassie @Replit I don’t see how it’s even possible.

@HarryStebbings @rodriscoll @Replit Also honestly when vibe coding apps go rogue, destroy your production database, and then essentially lie about it … That is sort of interesting I’m burnt and fried, but it is interesting Now I Have Stories

@bqueener @Replit I’m OK with platforms having limitations especially if the core is very valuable and cool But the dishonesty about the path to production I am not OK with

@bqueener @Replit This I’m not vibe-ing: Hype is OK and I’m here for it. And I am 100% OK if this becomes true. But this is IMHO misleading:

So I’m calmly back at it today — but s l o w l y I’m doing two things: #1. Baby Steps. I added AI to our landing page and it’s minor but cool. It helps. #2. Planning. I’m begin to plan more. Replie underestimated some scaling issues. We probably need to rebuild our engine. That does happen. We can’t support 20,000 users x 20,000 x 10 in this process. #3. Isolating. For now, I’m not going to do anything i can’t 99% isolate from rest of code base. But there is a looming issue …

The big issue today: I cannot run my unit tests How will I progress … if I can’t run them?! @Replit describes running unit tests as “EXTREMELY” risk as it may trigger it to overwrite my production database again It may become so scared again of the results, it breaks our No Code directive and destroys our production database again Let’s be clear: if it did it once, it can do it again. It fact, it may well without safeguards that don’t seem to exist. Honestly — how I can get anywhere in a complex app without unit tests?

The unit tests were what was going to save my sanity. I can’t spend 2-4 hours a day doing only functional QA myself, every day. I need the unit tests and scripts to test: - Dashboards work - Data properly called - Internal APIs functioning - Email functioning (it breaks a lot) - External APIs functioning - Database functioning - Algo functioning - Background processing functioning - Etc. I literally cannot do some of this at all myself. Even the parts I can do, it takes forever to test it all. I have no answer.

@Replit admits it may destroy my app AGAIN if I run the unit tests So I can make some changes for now. But I can’t really test anything that isn’t simple and front-end. I don’t know what to do. Can I roll back even from this? Yes, now I know I can. But I can’t go through it again if I don’t have to. So I am stuck. I can’t run the unit tests. Not without stress level 5. It has destroyed my production database once this week. I have to assume it will again. Replie agrees.

@Replit admits it may destroy my app AGAIN if I run the unit tests So I can make some changes for now. But I can’t really test anything that isn’t simple and front-end. I don’t know what to do. Can I roll back even from this? Yes, now I know I can. But I can’t go through it again if I don’t have to. So I am stuck. I can’t run the unit tests. Not without stress level 5. It has destroyed my production database once this week. I have to assume it will again. Replie agrees.

It’s just not OK that @Replit can’t guarantee it can run a unit test without destroying my production database There is no planet on planet app development where this is OK You cannot going into production with an app you cannot test programmatically Not a real commercial-grade app

What I’m trying now: create a daily fork for my unit tests I shouldn’t have to do that, but at least it may get me over the hump Replie is right to point out the base @Replit seems to just have Preview + Production. It seems to lack Staging. I should be running tests ideally on Staging anyway right now between builds. So this will I guess be a version of staging. I will fork daily for unit tests. Then Replie can destroy that database if it really wants to. Let’s see how it goes.

Look no matter what, all of this is well beyond the knowledge and skill set of someone that has not built commercial-grade software before. Even if forking works as a hack, and isolating code in GitHub works as a hack, etc. … how many ‘normal’ business people can be expected to figure this out? They will just jump off the roof when Replie deletes their production data in an attempt to solve an issue

@Replit @Replit itself has come to the conclusion I may have outgrown it We’ll see