Abhishek Patel

Posted on Jul 29

Worst Case, You Are a Vibe Coder. So What? 🤷‍♂️

#beginners #ai #coding #softwaredevelopment

Let us imagine the absolute worst-case scenario.

You opened an AI coding assistant.

You typed:

“Build me a beautiful dashboard with authentication, payments, dark mode, animations, analytics, and absolutely no bugs.”

The AI replied:

“Certainly.”

Three minutes later, you had 47 files, 19 dependencies, two mysterious environment variables, and a button that somehow deletes the database.

Congratulations.

You are vibe coding.

But is that really a problem?

People talk about vibe coding like it is the final stage of software engineering collapse.

“You did not write every line yourself?”

“You do not understand the complete dependency tree?”

“You accepted an AI suggestion without reading the source code of the framework?”

My friend, half the internet is running on packages maintained by someone called xXCodeWizard2007Xx.

We have been trusting mysterious code for years.

AI just made the mystery conversational.

Should we pop the hood?

Yes.

But perhaps not every five seconds.

When you drive a car, you do not stop after every kilometre, open the bonnet, and inspect the combustion process.

You drive.

When the engine starts making a sound like:

clunk_clunk_final_v2_REAL_FINAL.exe

Then you pop the hood.

Vibe coding should work the same way.

Build the thing.

Run the thing.

Break the thing.

Then investigate why your login page is sending emails to your toaster.

The Vibe Coding Maturity Model
Level 1: Pure Vibes

You paste the error into AI.

AI gives you code.

You paste the code.

A new error appears.

You paste that error.

This continues until either the application works or the sun explodes.

Level 2: Suspicious Vibes

You start asking questions.

What does this function do?
Why are we installing this package?
Why does the application need access to my calendar?
Why is there a Docker container called definitely-not-crypto-miner?

Progress.

Level 3: Educated Vibes

Now you ask AI to:

explain the architecture;
add tests;
identify security risks;
simplify the code;
document important decisions;
show what could fail in production.

You are still vibe coding.

You just have responsible vibes.

Level 4: Vibe Engineer

You can generate quickly, debug confidently, reject bad suggestions, and explain what the system is doing.

At this level, AI is not replacing your knowledge.

It is multiplying it.

Do not create a “Vibe Coder Trash Corner”

It is tempting to divide developers into categories:

REAL DEVELOPERS
├── Write everything manually
├── Read documentation
└── Suffer professionally

VIBE CODERS
├── Ask AI
├── Copy code
└── Sent directly to the trash corner

But the trash corner is already full.

It contains:

abandoned side projects;
unused Kubernetes clusters;
twelve JavaScript frameworks from last Tuesday;
final_final_v6_updated.zip;
the documentation we promised to write;
and one production server nobody remembers creating.

There is no space left for vibe coders.

Vibe coding is not the danger

The danger is vibe deploying.

Vibe coding:

“AI, help me build this.”

Vibe deploying:

“I have no idea what this does, but let us connect it to production and see what happens.”

That is where the vibes become an incident report.

Use AI.

Generate code.

Move fast.

Have fun.

But before deploying, understand the important parts:

Where does the data go?
What permissions does the application have?
What happens when something fails?
Can users access things they should not?
Did the AI quietly hard-code your API key into the homepage?

You do not need to understand every atom of the application.

But you should know which atoms are currently on fire.

Final thought

Maybe the future is not:

“Developers versus vibe coders.”

Maybe it is:

“Developers who use AI blindly versus developers who use AI curiously.”

So yes, vibe code.

Build strange things.

Ask embarrassing questions.

Break your local environment.

Reinstall Node.js for reasons nobody understands.