Distributed backend specialist. Perfectly happy playing second fiddle—it means I get to chase fun ideas, dodge meetings, and break things no one told me to touch, all without anyone questioning it. 😇
🙌 Thank you! I couldn't agree more about the whole vibe-coding thing (and I'm just as much a fan of the name). You're right though - it DOES have it's usefulness and there's a time and a place to let AI run wild (production isn't one of them).
This is my version of, let's call it "vibe-adjacent" coding (because it IS really fun):
Enterprise architecture ✅
Full suite of tests ✅
Human code ❌ outside of the documentation I wrote that actually explains it purpose
End result usable❓I really hope so, but we'll see (and I'm OK with that)
Saved time ❌ It's probably taken me at least 3 times longer to use AI for this than it would have had I just wrote the app from scratch
So why do it in the first place?
Had my goal been to build a prod-ready, enterprise scalable, fully secure app, then I would have just written one. What I wanted was to understand how to utilize AI, learn which prompts return the desired results, and have something shareable at the end. No - I didn't write the code. I spent weeks instead writing prompts and instructions, testing different AI models, slowly over time giving it more and more freedom just to see what happens when you push it to it's limits in that kind of environment.
That's about as much "vibe" that goes into any one of my projects!
Journey is More Important than Destination
The use cases in your examples are perfect. I think as long as you're learning along the way and helping others when you can, then have at it. The whole "I'm not a developer, but I built <insert thing of the week> with AI" thing? Drives me insane, too! (bonus if they throw in a "their job isn't THAT hard" or "I don't understand why they make xyz" somewhere)
🙌 Thank you! I couldn't agree more about the whole vibe-coding thing (and I'm just as much a fan of the name). You're right though - it DOES have it's usefulness and there's a time and a place to let AI run wild (production isn't one of them).
This is my version of, let's call it "vibe-adjacent" coding (because it IS really fun):
So why do it in the first place?
Had my goal been to build a prod-ready, enterprise scalable, fully secure app, then I would have just written one. What I wanted was to understand how to utilize AI, learn which prompts return the desired results, and have something shareable at the end. No - I didn't write the code. I spent weeks instead writing prompts and instructions, testing different AI models, slowly over time giving it more and more freedom just to see what happens when you push it to it's limits in that kind of environment.
That's about as much "vibe" that goes into any one of my projects!
The use cases in your examples are perfect. I think as long as you're learning along the way and helping others when you can, then have at it. The whole "I'm not a developer, but I built <insert thing of the week> with AI" thing? Drives me insane, too! (bonus if they throw in a "their job isn't THAT hard" or "I don't understand why they make xyz" somewhere)
I'm glad I'm not the only one 🤝
Thanks for sharing such thoughtful insight. Your comment alone (with a few additions) could easily make an article on its own.
I completely agree that vibe coding can end up being more time-consuming than just development, especially when you consider long-term maintenance.
I’m really glad to hear the post was relatable to you! 🙏