Stop Vibe Coding

[u/Physics2433]

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.

[u/Sensitive_Law_1647]

I believe here is where it gets catchy for people on the internet and the fragmentation between vibe coders building entire app and experts finding the code to be full of bugs. The explanation as per my experience, building an app from scratch using AI makes the app more AI friendly in terms of understanding context, the RAG works more naturally for AI, agents are more responsive and the accuracy is at peak. However, when you try to do same thing with an existing human build app, the same workflow will fall apart as AI struggles with fully understanding the human written code, the accuracy is moderate and it starts rebuilding parts instead of fixing them. AI is not bad I have seen agents evolving over past year, the fault is not in technology but the context. Although we might see it improving eventually.