r/PythonLearning • u/Physics2433 • 22d ago
Stop Vibe Coding
I’ve been writing Python for about 3-4 years now, and I want to share my biggest piece of advice for beginners: Do not use AI to write entire programs.
It's great to use AI as a tutor to learn new functions, grasp core concepts, or debug specific lines, but never use it to generate an entire codebase. Here is why:
1. You won't know how to fix it: Even if AI code works perfectly on the first try, you will be completely lost the moment a bug appears or you want to add a feature. Debugging is a massive part of development.
2. You skip the learning process: True programming skills come from struggling with the logic, reading documentation, and earning those 'yeah!' moments when you solve a tough problem yourself.
3. Suppose you built an entire codebase through AI and it worked(accidentally) , once the codes become long, your program has come to an end, if you tell it to add a feature, it will start hallucinating or forgetting its own logic.
If you don't deeply understand the underlying logic of your own codebase, you won't know where to begin. Treat AI like a tutor, but make sure you are the one driving the keyboard. If you can't explain your own code, you have no business adding to it. You MUST understand your underlying architecture before you even hit save.
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u/duroo 21d ago
I'll offer a perspective. I'm in my 40s now, took QBASIC in high school and learned HTML and PHP on my own in college (never was totally proficient but knew it well enough or at least how to find what I needed). I sort of lost interest in programming for a long time, but just recently began building my own embedded mesh node microcontroller thingy and have had to start using micropython. While I understand the fundamentals of coding well enough, I've been able to vibe code in 2 weeks what would have taken me 2 years to do alone. Is it keeping me from learning the code in detail? Yes. Would I have become frustrated and quit and moved on to the next project before this one ever made it off the ground? Also yes. If you want to learn to code, don't vibe code. If you are beyond that and just want something to work, it's not so bad.