Coding

7

I wouldn't recommend it on big projects. AI gets confused quickly because it doesn't understand the whole blueprint. So, if you want to vibecode, you need to know what you're doing.

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u/No-Moment-1279 1d ago

I actually made an app, a music app by vibe coding everything 😂 but I feel as if I cheated my way to the finish line😂 So yeah, thanks for the insight

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u/Plenty_Line2696 1d ago

For lots of use-cases vibecoding is perfectly fine, and if it's your only frame of reference you might fall into the trap of thinking "It did this really fancy thing and i'm impressed so it must be able to do everything" and that line of thinking has a lot of people riding a hypetrain. As you look deeper and start to understand the codebase and learn how things could be better designed, organized, structured, and you learn what code smells are and how to resolve them, or alternatively if you learn the hard way by trying to build bigger, more complicated distributed systems and finding the sorts of weird bugs and slowing progress because of typical of vibecoded structures, you'll start to appreciate the power of a good codebase and why vibecoding does have limits.
That said, often vibecoding is good enough and actually the logical pragmatic choice. In my opinion though even if it is I think it's good to at least understand the high level structure so you can bring a bit of human organization into a project because you'll get a lot of empowerment for relatively little effort if you take at least a little ownership.

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u/Standard-Cap-4455 23h ago

Most AI projects are just very messy. The AI has either done it itself or enough time to get the context it needs. Even a messy project can be read by an AI, but a human being would not be happy to work on it.
If the project is only touched by AI, it might give you something useful, but doing anything yourself on it is a giant pain. And because it's a pain, you will use AI even more which then turns into a cycle that gets worse and worse.

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u/Equivalent-Hair-1619 20h ago

Plus it inserts its own blueprint. I recently tried it with go, but with history in OOP, after hearing go supports OOP in it’s own version. The go support is fine, but the go community has its own styles that don’t follow OOP design and the bots not only follow that community style, but are lost when you use a coding style from other languages. Yet if the project was in Java, the bot generated OOP is perfect. So there’s all this baggage from the training data.

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u/chriscanadian1991 1d ago

I would personally say, vibe coding without understanding the language is like going to Italy and trying to order a coffee. Unless you know what the kind of coffee you wanted looks like and smells like... the only way to figure out if its wrong or not is to do the taste test.

I am not saying don't do it... but it comes with risks. I would highly recommend working on small file bases while you learn what your dealing with (the AI assistants themselves) -- while also building your own knowledge base on what the programs and frameworks accomplish on their own.

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u/No-Moment-1279 1d ago

Okay let me try and use this context but with different countries, Let's say I'm Going to USA but before I had been to UK so I know English and some few things which are similar to those of Americans... So I know some basics, how to debug, deploy and even setup different softwares but the deep things inside the language is what I don't know

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u/chriscanadian1991 1d ago

100%, the main thing is leaning on what you know.
For me I am a Manufacturing Logistics Analyst - I understand the basics of coding through SQL (Structured Query Language) -- but not python which is the majority of my side project outside of work.
For me personally, it was mainly understanding the relationships between the systems. For example - I don't need to fully understand the inner workings of NLPs to understand the fit and function of those subsystems (Stanza, Raza, Transformers and so on).
it honestly depends on what your end game is too. AI has lowered the bar for someone to begin learning code, my main concern is it doesn't lower the bar for quality too.
It can become dangerous if the person doesn't necessarily "care" the outcome of the system that they are building - that being said... Your original question alone -- kinda proves the opposite, so... Respect ;) -- from one vibe coder to another, if you have questions or anything please feel free to reach out.
I will assist where I can.

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u/No-Moment-1279 1d ago

Thanks

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u/CorpT 1d ago

You can ask a friendly Italian advice on what coffee to order.

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u/chriscanadian1991 1d ago

This is true lol -- it was an example -- I also didn't want to say just use Google Translate lol.

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u/CorpT 1d ago

Well, it was also an analogy. You can ask the bot about anything you don't understand.

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u/CaptainIncredible 18h ago

is like going to Italy and trying to order a coffee
Yeah, but also like going to Italy and trying to order a coffee and inadvertently pissing off the Cosa Nostra, Ndrangheta, Camorra, and Sacra Corona Unita and finding your family members kidnapped and held for ransom and people in the neighborhood you grew up in suddenly homeless because their houses burned down... and you know you fucked up somewhere, but you've no idea where exactly or how to fix things.

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u/kutac56 1d ago

Bot

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u/No-Moment-1279 1d ago

Bot!!?? I'm not a bot bro..

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u/nullptr_0x 1d ago

Ai is very powerful but very accommodating. You need to be able to provide good specs to get a good outcome.

To have good specs, you need to have a deep understanding.

Consider my free programming 101 course https://understandit.dev

I'm trying to solve this exact problem of helping people develop a deeper understanding of programming while AI does more and more of the day to day coding.

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u/No-Moment-1279 1d ago

Good notes👏

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u/IigmabaIls1 21h ago

nice shitty slop

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u/Even_Gap_2253 1d ago

do you know at least 1-2 programming languages though?

I know TS, PHP, Golang, C++, C, Python from the back of my head, so yeah I totally vibe code a Kotlin server that billions of people use, do that everyday. The thing is the concept are mostly the same, and you can get oriented in a few hours at the most.

But if you don't even know 1, then idk, maybe bad idea I guess.

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u/No-Moment-1279 1d ago

Ii actually know half of most languages, I know the syntax and some extra things but not that deep level knowledge

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u/No-Moment-1279 1d ago

Javascript, Kotlin, Python, php

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u/BrainScientist3000 1d ago

Vibe coding is very different from actually learning to code. They both result in a program, but one is fully specified and the other is 'guessed at' for implementation.

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u/CorpT 1d ago

For writing hello world? No. For other things? Maybe.

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u/Useful-Agency_ 1d ago

The way id say is make ai do a big work, tests that needs to be passed or confirmed for project to be done then jump in and dont hesitate to tell ai to make you a guide to understand better and find holes

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u/BleedReddit 1d ago

YES!!!!!!!I learned this the hard way when I was learning Bash. When i stop checking what it the command does on google before executing code, i let chat-gpt run it and show me the output. it recursively ran cat on files starting from the root directory that gpt then showed me in it response. ... BAD!

if you want to share my experience. here is the command, i had it in my reference for bash label Intrusive.
find / -type f -exec cat {} \; > output.txt 2>/dev/null

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u/burlingk 1d ago

The idea of vibe coding is that you just let the bot do all the work. You don't learn anything and you just let the bot make a mess.

It's better not to do that.

You can ask the bot for ideas and information, but don't let it do the work.

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u/geraT-wogl 23h ago

vibecoding without even basic knowledge is like wearing a tuxedo with spongebob squarepants undies.
here is my work in case you have the time to roast it https://wogl.io

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u/CaptainIncredible 18h ago

Is vibe coding without knowing the whole language dangerous

It could be. What are you doing with the app? If its just something you run for fun on a laptop that isn't too important to you and has all the important data on it backed up, then yeah its fine.

Let's say its a web app with authentication and database and you put the app on a server in your network in your house, and then open your firewall so anyone on the internet can use your app - I'd say you are in for a bad time. Bad people will likely exploit holes and expose you to viruses and shit.

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u/Key_Net820 4h ago

Let me tell you from personal experience.

I suck at front end work. I particularly suck at CSS. I vibe coded the crap out of a front end task. I got reprehended and lamented for how crappy my code came out, despite the fact that it worked.

AI is great at generating code that works. but it does not understand the context of your project, and what it takes to make things easily maintainable for the long term.

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u/ThreeCharsAtLeast 3h ago

Do you want to learn the language or get better at programming? Then vibe coding is a bad idea because you may develop a habit of not exploring good approches yourself.

Does correctness matter to you? Then vibe coding is a bad idea because some errors are hard to spot if you don't understand all language features, the libraries or the approach. You could still have AI help you with bug hunting on top of manual bug hunting, though.

Do you want to continue the project after a couple of months? Then vibe coding is very risky because AIs can't make good architecture and you'll accumulate tech debt if you are careless or inexperienced.

Do you want others to respect your work? Then vibecoding is bad because it demonstrates a lack of care.

Do you want to quickly hack something together? Then go ahead but don't re-use anything at all if you want to make something more polished. Otherwise, you'll just inherit the tech debt.

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