I keep seeing things that were vibe coded and thinking, "That's really impressive for something that you only spent that much time on".
To have a polished software project, you must spend time somewhat menially iterating and refining (as each type of user).
To have a polished software project, you need to have started with tests and test coverage from the start for the UI, too.
Writing tests later is not as good.
I have taken a number of projects from a sloppy vibe coded prototype to 100% test coverage. Modern coding llm agents are good at writing just enough tests for 100% coverage.
But 100% test coverage doesn't mean that it's quality software, that it's fuzzed, or that it's formally verified.
Quality software requires extensive manual testing, iteration, and revision.
I haven't even reviewed this specific project; it's possible that the author developed a quality (CLI?) UI without e2e tests in so much time?
Was the process for this more like "vibe coding" or "pair programming with an LLM"?
> That's really impressive for something that you only spent that much time on"
Again, I haven't even read this particular project;
There's:
Prompt insufficiency: Was the specification used to prompt the model to develop the software sufficient in relation to what are regarded as a complete enough software specifications?
Model and/or Agent insufficiency,
Software Development methods and/or Project Management insufficiency,
QA insufficiency,
Peer review sufficiency;
Is it already time to rewrite the product using the current project as a more sufficient specification?
But then how many hours of UI and business logic review would be necessary again?
Is 100 hours enough?
A 40-hour work year has 2,080 hours per person per year.
The "10,000" hours necessary to be really good at anything number was the expert threshold that they used to categorize test subjects who performed neuroimaging studies while compassion meditating. "10,000" hours to be an expert is about 5 years at full time.
But how many hours to have a good software product?
Usually I check for tests and test coverage first. You could have spent 1,000 hours on a software project and if it doesn't have automated tests, we can't evolve the software and be sure that we haven't caused regressions.