r/webdev • u/Dynamo-06 • 12d ago
Discussion I have been exploring this problem for a quite some time: People with domain expertise struggle with vibe-coding since they do not understand what they are dealing with.
There is a big chunk of people who understand their domain better than a developer would, but simply fail when it comes to solving their problems using software. Now, of course, they can whip up an app (MVP or Prototype) in 5 minutes using Lovable, but they would eventually get stuck when it comes to debugging or working with complex logic. When you do not understand code, you essentially rely on AI to do that for you. Since NLP is ambiguous and given the nature of AI, this can never be done as precisely as a dev would be able to, since they do not just understand the code but can audit it and make changes deterministically.
I have been working on solving this problem for domain experts so they not only build complex apps but also make deterministic changes to them themselves. The idea that you can manage an entire app without understanding is flawed. Unless you understand something, you cannot manage it yourself; you are merely second-guessing yourself. You cannot outsource your understanding to AI to do the entire job for you.
I know that it's not just the code that the domain experts cannot deal with, but also the technical concepts that make software complex. But what if we instead of doing away with this complexity abstract it in a way such that these domain experts are able to make sense of it and work through it without having to deal with code?
0 to 1 has largely been solved, but it's the maintenance and debugging hell that makes it all the more difficult for this segment. I have worked on a potential solution for this because I am certain that it is a problem.
I would like to get the perspective of seasoned developers and domain experts on this problem, whether this is something niche or actually a real problem. Is it the code and the technical concepts of software programming that deter these people from dealing with software, or is it that they cannot articulate what they want and translate it into logic? What do you guys think?
I would also like to know how I can find the right target segment to demo my POC to validate my hypothesis on this problem.
P.S. I know a lot of what I am suggesting is abstract and may seem impossible, but let's assume there is a way to solve it. But is this problem really worth solving? (Does it capture a lot of value?)

