Stop vibe coding your website!

I recently read an article about a new app called EasyDMG, that solves a huge annoyance when working on a Mac and installing something from outside of the App Store - the .DMG

Basically the process is:

  1. Download the .dmg file
  2. Open it and drag the file to your applications folder
  3. Close the DMG window
  4. “Eject” the DMG

Not the worst thing in the world but a stupid song and dance that isn’t needed for sure. That’s why EasyDMG sounded pretty great - it takes over the opening of .dmg files and just extracts the files and none of steps 2-4 are needed. Annoyance solved!

Then I went to the EasyDMG website and got that same sinking feeling I get more and more these days - the site was clearly AI vibe coded.

I know that Web Development Is Not Everyone’s Passion, but in the grand pantheon of programming languages, HTML and CSS are pretty damn straightforward. So it’s not that hard to really make a website anymore, either by hand or through one of the six bajillion free themes and tools out there. And yet the creator of EasyDMG couldn’t be bothered, they just outsourced it to AI. AI sites have a particular “smell” to them, and you can spot them a mile away. I won’t link to any but I know you’ve seen them - all you have to do is look at Claude or OpenAI or Grok or any other LLM out there and, surprise, they all look alike!

Which of course begs the question, if they didn’t take the time to make a site for this product they are offering (free or otherwise), how much time did they take to actually develop the product itself? Do I REALLY trust something that would overwrite a default Mac OS process to a possibly vibe coded app? The idea might be the best in the last 20 years but if you don’t take the time to even put how you present it to the world how can I ever trust that you didn’t just rush the process to get something out there?

These days, I’m more likely to trust a plain white page, written in Times New Roman with blue links and default browser text, over any of the cookie cutter bullshit that is taking over the web more and more.

Spin up a Drupal or Wordpress site with the default theme. Write 10 lines of HTML yourself. Hell, buy a Squarespace or Wix site. Just don’t disrespect me with something that AI spit out for you in 10 minutes. Have some pride.