Programming Horror

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Welcome to Programming Horror!

This is a place to share strange or terrible code you come across.

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Bad vibes: How an AI agent coded its way to disaster (www.zdnet.com)

submitted 7 months ago by pete_link@lemmy.ml to c/programming_horror@programming.dev

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33720279

Written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols, Senior Contributing Editor
July 23, 2025 at 11:31 a.m. PT

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.

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[–] Mikina@programming.dev 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Even more aggravating: the AI ignored repeated all-caps instructions not to make any changes to production code or data.

Lol.

[–] unexpected@forum.guncadindex.com 2 points 5 months ago

While I've been soundly on the "AI is a waste of time for anything that needs to be correct" train since day one, I am having a hard time believing this story.

Granted, I am not a professional programmer. So maybe there is a reason that this project database isn't being backed up? Much less... how did the AI get access?

This sounds like creative fiction.

[–] Horse@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

this story sounds like complete horse shit
either it's entirely creative fiction or he's a complete fucking idiot who gave admin credentials to a glorified autocorrect while not backing up data or using version control