Comment by thwarted
13 hours ago
> It shows that you can build a crazy popular & successful product while violating all the traditional rules about “good” code.
We already knew that. This is a matter of people who didn't know that or didn't want to acknowledge that thinking they now have proof that it doesn't matter for creating a crazy popular & successful product, as if it's a gotcha on those who advocate for good practices. When your goal is to create something successful that you can cash out, good practices and quality are/were never a concern. This is the basis for YAGNI, move-fast-and-break-things, and worse-is-better. We've know this since at least betamax-vs-VHS (although maybe the WiB VHS cultural knowledge is forgotten these days).
WiB is different from Move Fast and Break Things and again different from YAGNI though.
WiB doesn't mean the thing is worse, it means it does less. Claude Code interestingly does WAY more than something like Pi which is genuinely WiB.
Move Fast and Break Things comes from the assumption that if you capture a market quick enough you will then have time to fix things.
YAGNI is simply a reminder that not preparing for contingencies can result in a simpler code base since you're unlikely to use the contingencies.
The spaghetti that people are making fun of in Claude Code is none of these things except maybe Move Fast and Break Things.
> WiB is different from Move Fast and Break Things and again different from YAGNI though.
Yes, which is why I listed all three.
It's not about if the vibe coding results in any of these strictly, it's that the vibe coder can claim that the low quality doesn't matter and cite any of these as support for why the low quality doesn't matter.
VHS was not worse is better. It’s better is better.
Specifically, VHS had both longer recording times and cheaper VCRs (due to Matsushita’s liberal licensing) than Betamax did. Beta only had slightly better picture quality if you were willing to sacrifice recording length per tape. Most Betamax users adopted the βII format which lowered picture quality to VHS levels in order to squeeze more recording time onto the tape. At that point Betamax’s only advantage was a slightly more compact cassette.
Also to correct another common myth, porn was widely available on both formats and was not the cause of VHS’s success over Betamax.
Betamax was arguably better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war
Not in ways that the market cared about.
Arguably better quality, but at the cost of being shorter. In the great trade off of time, size, and quality, I think VHS chose a better combination.
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It depends which definition of "better" you use. VHS won the adoption race, so it was better there. While Betamax may have been technologically superior, in hindsight we can say it apparently failed to address other key aspects of the technology adoption lifecycle.