The Rise of Vibe Coding
In today’s tech landscape, there’s a dangerous new methodology silently sabotaging startups and side projects alike. Its called Vibe Coding — the practice of blindly asking AI to build your app using vague prompts, it causes hours of endless copy and pasting bugs that you don’t understand and its leaving you open to hacks, crashed, and hidden nightmares all because someone told you AI can replace a developer and it can’t….
Vibe Coding isn’t just using AI assistants to help you code. It’s what happens when you use these tools as a replacement for understanding core principles. It’s choosing the dopamine hit of “it runs!” over the disciplined approach of “it’s built right.”
With the explosion of AI coding tools, this problem has reached epidemic proportions. The barrier to entry for creating something that looks legitimate has never been lower. But the gap between a demo that impresses friends and a product that can handle real users has never been wider.
How to Spot a Vibe Coder (Maybe in the Mirror?)
Vibe Coders exhibit some telltale behaviors:
- Architecture? What Architecture? – They dive straight into coding without mapping system relationships, data flows, or scalability considerations – because they don’t even know what those are or that they needed to to that.
- Version Control is Optional – Git is used as a backup tool, not a collaboration framework (if used at all)
- Testing is for the Weak – Manual testing consists of “it loaded on my machine”. No thoughts around real QA, Function Tests, Smoke Tests, etc…
- AI is the Co-Founder – Every decision, from naming variables to database selection, gets outsourced to ChatGPT or Claude.
- Errors Are Surprises – No logging, no monitoring, and definitely no graceful error handling.
- Documentation is Tomorrow’s Problem – Which inevitably becomes never’s problem.
- Constant indecision – You ask to make the button have the word “Submit” on it, AI does that, and adds 300 lines of extra code you didn’t ask for, what does it do? You don’t know because you don’t understand what its doing…
If you’ve nodded along to any of these, you might be flirting with Vibe Coding yourself. Don’t worry, awareness is the first step to recovery.
The Real-World Costs
Let me share a story that’s an amalgamation of several projects I’ve encountered:
A promising fintech startup secured $500K in pre-seed funding based on a sleek demo built entirely with AI assistance. The interface was beautiful, the pitch deck immaculate. Investors were impressed with how quickly the two non-technical founders had “built” their MVP.
Three months later, when user numbers hit just 250, the entire system collapsed. What looked like a sophisticated financial platform was actually:
- A React frontend with no state management
- API endpoints with zero rate limiting
- User data stored in plaintext
- Authentication that could be bypassed by simply changing a URL parameter
- Database queries that performed full table scans on every request
The cost to rebuild properly? $350,000 and eight months of development—nearly their entire runway. The startup closed shop before ever getting to market.
This isn’t rare. I’ve seen variations of this story play out dozens of times in the last year alone.
The Most Vulnerable Targets
While anyone can fall into the Vibe Coding trap, certain groups are particularly susceptible:
- Non-technical founders who don’t know what they don’t know
- Bootcamp graduates who learned syntax but not systems
- “Entrepreneur-first” builders who prioritize launching over learning
- Solo developers without peers to review their work
- Hackathon enthusiasts who’ve only built for 48-hour demos
The common thread? A focus on short-term output over long-term viability.
Technology Danger Zones
Vibe Coding thrives in certain technological environments:
- Frontend frameworks (React, Vue, etc.) where it’s easy to create impressive UIs that mask backend disasters
- “Serverless” setups misunderstood as “I don’t need to worry about servers”
- No-code tools pushed far beyond their intended use cases
- Firebase/Supabase implementations that ignore security rules and data modeling
- AI-generated APIs with no consideration for authentication or data validation
It’s not that these technologies are bad—they’re just particularly easy to misuse in ways that look good until they catastrophically aren’t.
The Antidote: Principled Development
So what’s the alternative to Vibe Coding? I call it Principled Development. It means:
- Understanding before building – Know how your system will work at scale before writing a line of code
- Fundamentals first – Learn database design, security principles, and system architecture
- AI as assistant, not architect – Use AI tools to accelerate implementation, not to make critical design decisions
- Testing as a lifestyle – Build automated tests alongside features, not as an afterthought
- Documentation as you go – Document your decisions and designs as part of the development process
This approach isn’t slower—it’s sustainable. Yes, the initial velocity might be less impressive, but you won’t hit the wall at scale that Vibe Coders inevitably crash into.
Start Building Right
If you’re starting a new project or trying to rescue one from the Vibe Coding abyss, here are three immediate steps:
- Document your architecture – Even a simple diagram of how your components interact will reveal potential issues
- Implement basic monitoring – You can’t fix what you can’t see breaking
- Start testing critical paths – Focus on the user journeys that would kill your business if they failed
In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more detailed guides on each of these steps, along with case studies of projects that transitioned from Vibe Coding to Principled Development.
Building right isn’t just about technical purity—it’s about business survival. In a world where anyone can create a functioning demo, the companies that thrive will be those built on solid technical foundations.
Are you ready to move beyond the vibes?
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