Vibecoding will lock in today's popular libraries.

· Bits and Bobs 3/31/25
  • Vibecoding will lock in today's popular libraries.
    • There's already a preferential attachment effect for libraries that are popular today.
      • All else equal, it makes sense to use the thing that others are already using.
      • There's more likely to be documentation, other compatible libraries, bugs are more likely to have been discovered and fixed, etc.
    • LLMs are already more likely to recommend popular libraries.
      • They're more common in their training set.
    • With vibecoding, you just accept whatever code the LLM gives you.
    • That allows creating lots of new stuff quickly… but also means that it will be harder than ever before for new libraries to break onto the scene.
    • Maybe that's fine; the javascript industrial complex arguably already has orders of magnitude too much innovation/churn.
    • Perhaps front end development will now just be frozen as whatever was popular at the end of 2024.
    • As that layer gets less innovation, maybe innovation will turn to higher layers.

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