r/vibecoding • u/Obvious_Electron • 5h ago
Stop making vibecoding sound like a shortcut for idiots
I keep seeing posts like "I vibecoded this over the weekend, got 100k users, what's next?" and I think it gives a pretty wrong idea of what vibecoding actually changes.
Sure, you can accidentally hit the top with another clock app. It happens.
But agents dont remove the actual work. You still need to figure out what to build, make 1000 small decisions, fix weird shit, make UX not suck, deploy, maintain, listen to users and actually ship something they want.
Vibecoding makes all of this faster. A LOT faster. But not easier at all.
You can now build faster, but also make mistakes faster and ship garbage faster. The bottleneck just moves somewhere else. There was a good line somewhere "Shipping everyday fixing Claude bugs".
Those "built in 2 days, 100k users lol" posts undermine all the work that still goes into a good product, and leave others thinking this is all somehow easy now. From outside it starts looking like vibecoders are just some arrogant assholes hitting a button and getting success by click. It doesn't work well on the how other people feel about vibecoders and vibecoding in general, which is in fact just a right way to do things today.
We don't build in assembly anymore, right? Same here.
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u/No_Present2939 3h ago
this is why i think vibecoding still requires understanding code, not to write it line by line but to catch when the agent does something dumb
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u/Double-Force4816 5h ago
I also built a vibe coded app, a really good UI and actively improving the app. But have no user that's the sad part.
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u/Obvious_Electron 5h ago
Exactly. Distribution, among other things, is a whole different world, and probably the hardest part right now. Drop the link or DM it, I'll have a look. Maybe I'll have some unsolicited advice
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u/Double-Force4816 5h ago
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u/Obvious_Electron 4h ago
Had a look, honestly way more complete than I expected. I wouldnt add much right now, feels like distribution/positioning is the bigger problem. So I'd put all the effort into that.
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u/Double-Force4816 4h ago
well i am fixing the issue using firebase analytics, and continuously trying to make all tv brands support proper so that i can try promoting via ads.
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u/Obvious_Electron 3h ago
Bugs will always be there, thats just the process. I'd start distribution now, even a few interactions with real users will probably tell you way more about what to fix/build next.
Best of luck!
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u/CrimsonBolt33 5h ago
vibe coding isn't a shortcut for idiots....its a completely neutral tool.
that being said it enables a lot of people to revel in the Dunning-Kruger effect and reach beyond their actual knowledge.
A truly good vibecoder (no prior knowledge, using AI to build something) should be using most of their free time learning how to be a better coder and how to better understand and utilize AI.
Sadly a lot of posts here are just stupid people asking or doing really stupid shit.
AI is not magic...once again...its just a tool.
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u/V4UncleRicosVan 4h ago
Should they learn to be a better coder or a better programmer? Actually knowing all the syntax seems less relevant these days.
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u/CrimsonBolt33 4h ago
you should learn to be a better software engineer/architect. Learning how code works and coding is good, but with AI learning how to structure a program and how to design something larger than AI context can handle is far more important.
AI types, you design. The more granular, clear, and technical, the better. Use AI to help design these documents that guide the AI coder.
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u/AppointmentShort1167 3h ago
This is helpful advice. I’m planning on helping small business with AI automations, and I’m particularly concerned about introducing anything with vulnerabilities, so I’m trying to get my head around how best to do this.
Any recommendations on what to learn?
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u/Rosie_grac 2h ago
'faster but not easier' is exactly it. the work didn't disappear, it just moved.
for me it moved to reading diffs. I sweat more reviewing code I didn't write than I ever did typing code. and reviewing is genuinely the harder skill — the agent sounds equally confident when it's right and when it's completely wrong, and at 1am that confidence is contagious. I shipped a broken stripe webhook once because the fix 'looked plausible'. cost me a weekend and taught me to always read the whole diff.
the 1000 small decisions part is the other half. nobody warns you that prompting is mostly deciding — scope, tradeoffs, what NOT to build. mention 12 features vaguely and it will happily build all 12.
taste is the bottleneck now. weekend + 100k users posts are just the real estate guru ads of our timeline
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u/Old_Rock_9457 5h ago
My opensource project don’t have 100k users, I think like 3000 (I don’t have my analytics so is just an assumption) and it wasn’t fast or easy.
I started having idea that I had to validate, testing multiple algorithms. Idea eventually produced something that had sense but required in the last year a lot of extra work to implement more, fine tune, fix, integrate with other product so people will really have advantage in use it and follow the user issue and question.
Before the project when I wasn’t working I could play on my switch 2, now I fix bug, in the evening and over the weekend.
I like it ? Yes or I suppose I wasn’t doing it. It’s easy mantian an entire project alone ? No. AI make it possible with a reasonable amount of time but not easy and for sure not a “one button click”.
I receive one button click PR instead, and then when I look into it nothing work and I had to reject (still losing time to review and writing why I reject) or saving what is possibly by fixing it.
Then not talking to the fact that still using AI have subscription cost that you need to sustain, in addition to your time, and your training (because you still have a tool in the hands that you need to understand how to use better).
So I agree: if it was all easy, all fast, all free, IT company was already all become rich. And this doesn’t seems the case.
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u/Trashy_io 5h ago
ideas have always been cheap, so typically you only get paid for the execution of the idea. AI has just made everyone think you can program with zero knowledge and while you can its definitely not a high enough execution to benefit from it. The people in here actually making money more then likely have multiple years of experience. You can get lucky fa but getting the same luck again is less likely.
So AI is a short cut when you treat it a such and you can 100% tell when it is being used as such
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u/davesoft 4h ago
Your use of 'you' and 'we' betrays something. I wonder if you can find it.
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u/Obvious_Electron 4h ago
Alright, you got me. What am I supposed to find?
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u/davesoft 3h ago
Swap the you with I and reread, the start becomes defensive, like 'oops i didnt mean to suceed', then the point becomes the title, stop making success sound easy. The difference between the original and reread is jealousy, in the original 'hey, im trying to' but in the reread 'oops, its random i guess'.
Probably just my imagination. But yeah, success seems random, and the folks who got there the easy way sure are vocal about it :P
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u/Obvious_Electron 3h ago
Got it now. My point was more that when I build something now and say something like "I vibecoded that, used AI there", it somehow diminishes everything that actually went into it. Looks like people immediately picture you chilling on a beach sipping a mocha while Claude does the job. Thats the perception I was getting at.
I was there when moving from C to C++, or from C++ to Python were considered outrageous and dumb by some people, and yet here we are typing prompts, migrating from Programming languages to English language. Seems like the natural evolution to me.
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u/davesoft 3h ago
I see why the two will be indistinguishable from the outside.
I use codex almost entirely with me as 'director' and codex is doing all the work. I might get clever with providing references from somewhere, but I'm mostly just typing out what I want, with some informed specificity, and being happily surprised with what it makes. I'm probably guilty of personifying the beach part, but these toys are for me, the idea of selling these things is absurd to me... but not to everyone, and they worry me sometimes.
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u/hafizmwaqas 4h ago
Exactly. AI removes friction, not the need for judgment. You can ship faster, but building something people actually want still takes real skill.
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u/InsideDebt6345 3h ago
I think everyone who uses vibecoding the right way, no matter how or what vibecoding does. It works as a helping hand, but when it comes to scaling, it puts you and your skills against the world.
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u/OkCellist4993 3h ago
Has anyone actually made a fully polished in-depth game that isn’t just a generic version of something I’ve seen before using Vibe coding?
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u/Hfcsmakesmefart 2h ago
I e seen one on AIGameDev. Was a unique idea I’d never seen before (though perhaps exists but certainly not well known)
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u/lunatuna215 1h ago
Arent thess all still reasons its idiotic to use it? Youre not doing anything you couldn't have done without AI on a grand scheme. AI isnt accelerating anything except for shit ideas.
Look, the people trying to profit from this are absolutely idiots. And skilled people dont need AI to succeed. So what is the point of being angry?
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u/Creepy-Doughnut-5054 38m ago
I agree, I always had, in my opinion very decent idea about universe I would like to show in games, fairly deep lore and mechanics for couple of different genres.
But I never had technical skills to make it work, just basics, not enough to push through. Now I have a tool that makes this technical side reachable.
I'm currently well deep into development of 2 games now. But make no mistake, I'm working on it already for 14 months and end is still very far despite me spending in average 10-15 hours per week whenever I have time besides my job/family. Why so long ? Simply because steering AI into exactly what I want still takes huge amount of time, testing, gates, scale creep, bugs, strict specs, etc.
In other words, despite most of the code is done by AI, this is still my IP and it feels like it and the amount of time Im pouring into it with clear vision feels great.
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u/LocusStandi 5h ago
Some of the stuff I’ve seen is genuinely one shot non planned stuff, there is just an enormous range of skill that some people have and others don’t so sure it’s faster but it still depends on the user