The Vibe Coder: Non-Technical Developers and Mirage of AI

The Rise of "Vibe Coding"

So, "vibe coding" has been making waves recently, all thanks to some tweets about this guy who built an app using AI alone. No actual coding, just pure vibes. The result? His app got completely obliterated by the community and hackers alike. Turns out, AI may be smart, but it's not that smart.

But what exactly is vibe coding?

What is Vibe Coding?

Vibe coding is a development approach where instead of, you know, coding, you just prompt an AI model like ChatGPT or Gemini to generate everything for you. The AI writes the logic, structures the app, and spits out whatever you need.

Sounds futuristic, right? Just describe what you want, and boom—a full app ready to go. No need to learn syntax, algorithms, or debugging. Just vibes.

Except… reality isn’t so kind.

If you’ve spent any time on YouTube, you’ve probably seen those flashy AI coding videos:

• “I built a full-stack app in 5 minutes using ChatGPT!”
• “I made $10,000 with an AI-generated SaaS app!”
• “No coding skills? No problem! AI will build your app for you!”

It all sounds too good to be true—and most of the time, it is.

Take, for example, the infamous case of a YouTuber who built an AI-generated startup. He used ChatGPT to code an entire project, launched it, and bragged about how easy it was. The catch? Within days, hackers tore the app apart due to security flaws, and the entire thing crumbled under actual user traffic.

Another creator tried making a full website using only AI-generated code. The result? A buggy mess with unoptimized performance, broken features, and missing authentication. He spent hours debugging and ultimately had to rewrite most of the project manually.

The bottom line: AI can generate code, but it doesn’t replace real development skills.

The Harsh Reality of Vibe Coding

A friend of mine—let’s call him AI Enthusiast #47—was hyped about AI-generated development. He told me, “Bro, you don’t even need to learn to code anymore! Just prompt the AI, and boom—crazy cool websites you're cooked bro”

So, naturally, I challenged him. “Alright, build something.”

Excitedly, he opened his favorite AI model and started prompting it to build a web app. After an hour of back-and-forth, he had something that looked decent—until he ran it.

• Errors everywhere.
• Broken UI components.
• APIs not connecting properly.
• And worst of all? He had no idea how to fix it. (He's not a dev)

At the end of the day, he spent more time prompting the errors to fix them than if he had just written the app himself from scratch after learning to code. The AI-generated code was messy, inconsistent, and lacked documentation. After hours of frustration, he rage quit and admitted, “Yeah, maybe I should learn the basics first.”

This is the problem with vibe coding—it sells a dream, but the reality is debugging a nightmare you don’t even understand.

While LLMs (Large Language Models) can generate pretty solid code snippets, building a whole app? That’s another story.

1. The Context Window Problem

AI models have a limited memory span. They might remember what you asked them five prompts ago, but try building a complex app with multiple components, and they’ll forget critical details halfway through. They even forget what they were doing and just staright go to write something else. This means you’ll constantly be re-explaining your own app to the AI, which is ironic because wasn’t the whole point to avoid writing code yourself?

2. The 70% Bad Code Problem

Most AI models are trained on publicly available code. And guess what? At least 70% of that code isn’t great—either outdated or present in repositories that were created to disrupt AI (Okay last one was a joke), inefficient, or just plain wrong. If you generate an app entirely with AI, you’re likely inheriting a ton of vulnerabilities (not talking about you Next JS), spaghetti code, and security risks and much more worse things such as law suits from the serverless architecture hosting companies for abusing their service.

3. Debugging is a Nightmare

Let’s say you manage to generate a fully functional app (somehow Not possible still). What happens when something breaks? What if you need more features and AI is unable to generate? Debugging AI-generated code is a horror story. You didn't write the logic so guessing the code is best way to go about it and since you wrote your code while vibing so you have no documentation even the model can't help you at this stage. Errors are just foreign text to you written in a different language.

At this point, you’re left with two choices: spend hours untangling the AI’s mess and give our your few brain cells left or just rewrite the app from scratch (this will be faster actually). And if you’re picking the second option, why even bother with vibe coding in the first place just to waste your time?

My Thoughts on Vibe Coding

Every few months, there’s a new AI breakthrough that makes headlines and sends the internet into a frenzy. Remember when Devin, the "first AI software engineer," was announced? People started saying, "This is it! Developers are doomed!"

And then… nothing happened.

Devin turned out to be just another AI coding assistant with a fancy label. It wasn’t writing full applications from scratch, wasn’t making high-level architectural decisions, and certainly wasn’t replacing skilled developers. The hype died down just as fast as it started.

Vibe coding is, at best, a gimmick. A flashy marketing term that AI companies love to push, promising a future where anyone can build apps without learning to code. But software development isn’t just about generating code—it’s about understanding why and how things work why your refrigerator can display a Friends episode.

That said, I don’t think we should shame people who are just experimenting with AI. Exploring new tools is fine curiosity is good, but if someone’s entire plan for becoming a developer is to let AI do the work, they're not meant to be in software or any field in that matter. Learning the basics first is crucial.

Oh, and if you’re interested in AI’s role in development, check out my previous article on AI and programming and beginners. here

Conclusion

Trends like vibe coding will come and go, but software development isn’t getting automated away anytime soon. AI is a tool—a powerful one—but it can’t replace actual developers. Instead, it’s best used to enhance productivity, not as a replacement for fundamental knowledge.

So, the next time you see someone talking about building a full app using just AI, remember: they might be shipping products, but they’re also shipping a lot of hidden problems with them.

While I sit back and watch AI-generated apps crash and burn, I’ll stick to writing code that actually works and is mine.