Vibe Coding Is a Problem

Welcome to Syntax. Today, we're talking about vibe coding. Now before you before you shut it off because you're sick of the obnoxiousness of vibe coding, let me give it to you straight about, like, what we're trying to do. We're gonna we're gonna be talking about, like, just building random stuff with AI that might be kinda good, but you don't necessarily care. We're gonna talk about what it is and whether or not we should be doing this and and some examples of of stuff we have vibe coded. I don't Node. People the other words that people have been using this JS, like, well, like, personal software kind of fits into this, you know, or or throwaway software I've been calling it JS, I've built quite a few things recently where I just need it very quickly. Once it served its purpose, it it gets thrown away.

Yeah. So it's funny that you say that personal and I do think personal software is connected for a lot of people.

And I think personal software might be more connected for, I would say, more responsible developers than it is for other people, if if that's the best way to say that. Because Yeah.

What I found with vibe coding is that, specifically, it's a lot of, inexperienced people doing it because they are becoming productive with it, but they cannot be that productive without it because they don't have the knowledge base. That's an assumption, but that's my experience, what I'm seeing on on socials. So vibe coding, what if you've never heard of this term, you're not on social media, you haven't seen people talk about it, what the heck is it? It's basically coding entirely using prompts, things like cursor or cloud code, these types of systems that are agentic, that do a lot for you, that are adding multiple files, connecting things, running projects.

And the idea with vibe coding mostly is that you JS the developer are not getting really deep into the code. You're not really paying attention to the close details.

You're mostly just running it, seeing if it works, seeing how it works, prompting again, tweaking, prompting again, prompting again, just on repeat until the thing does what you want it to do.

It's a form of AI Scott, and right now, you can actually make stuff with it. You Node, believe it or not, people might if you're not getting into the stuff, you can be surprisingly effective vibe coding. But, again, it ends up being being a lot of slop. And, there's I think there are certain instances and projects and things like that that make more sense for exploring that type of way. And and, sadly, I think the inexperienced developers amongst us might not understand when and where that that line is. Totally. I I find myself Wes I

wanna get into it and I try to correct a problem, I I find sometimes I'm two or three prompts in, and I just have to scrap it and sort of start it start again from that prompt because it just starts making it Wes and worse, and it starts adding a whole bunch of stuff. But the the whole idea with with five coding is that you don't necessarily care. And as long as it works, it works. And I'm kinda somewhere in between because it's surprisingly some of the stuff is surprisingly good, and it's kind of fun, the stuff that you can make with it, where you might not have been able to possibly people are making games.

Levels. Io is is building this, like, whole airplane thing.

Mhmm. They're just building whatever they possibly would want.

And certainly, that will make people who are good at this stuff mad, but that always happens in every single industry. When something comes along and makes it easier, it doesn't do away with the need for those people, but it certainly makes the intro level sloppy version of something very, very attainable. We saw it with with drag and drop website builders. Right? Yeah. Us WordPress Devs hated these Dreamweaver drag and drop or these Squarespaces, things like that. We hated that because it the code that it outputted was garbage, you Node? But the reality is that

a lot of people don't necessarily care, as long as it works and does what the thing that they're trying to do. Yeah. I remember the first Adobe web builder that I had that had a drag and drop UI, and it's like, oh, I can get something looking really Node, and then it wouldn't work in various instances or it's full of bugs or all kinds of weird stuff. I think right Node, in 2025, you know, March 2025 as it is right now, I think VibeCoding is good for demos. It's good for personal software, which we'll touch on that. It's good for concept? Proof of concept.

And it's also good for century at century.i0 because your code is gonna suck sometimes. It's gonna be terrible.

It's and you might not know it's terrible, which is man, that's, like, that's at Century's ideal landing spot JS, like, you have some bugs in your Node, and you don't know about them. And, like, if you're vibe coding guys flop running. Yeah. Yeah. You don't even know it's not like you don't even know about your bugs. You don't even know about your code, let alone the bugs, which is gonna be full of them. So, so check it out at century.io.

Solve all your problems that way, and there is actually an AI tool within century too. So maybe at some point, century part becomes part of the AI vibe coding flow, and you just click fix it for me. Oh, there's a bug. Fix it for me. Fix it for me.

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This podcast is presented by Century in case you could not tell that. But either way, I do think that it is a major concern for vibe coding specifically. If you are an advanced developer and you're using these agentic coding solutions as an assistant, as like a junior level programmer that you're watching very carefully, and you're approving all of the code line by line, and you're reading it and you're really comprehending exactly what's going on for every single thing that's added to your code Bos, one, it's gonna be a lot better at the end of the day. But two, you might actually get very frustrated and wanna do some of it yourself because the the AI stuff can do a whole bunch of changes at once, and you're like, that's not what I would have Deno, and that's a bad idea. Whatever you're doing, it's a bad idea. Let me do it myself. Move. It's mine. You know? But other people, I I think they just they're just checking to see if that that shit works, and that's it. You know? So I mean It's it's really funny because, like, when the the AI images stuff first hit, I don't know, probably

three years ago, everybody was posting the most hilarious images that popped up. Right? And then when the chat stuff popped up, everybody was posting the hilarious chat back and forth, and then that sort of died out. And and now that you can just, like, literally make a game or or build some software, we're having that in JS well. People are making fun software, they're building little games and whatnot. And I think that will will die down as people go, Yeah, of course, you can you can generate a dog eating a hamburger, you Node, like, oh, wow, you Node, like, that was that was the most hilarious mind blowing thing a couple Yarn ago. And now you see it, like, of course, like, anybody can do that. So I think we're sort of in that stage right now for building these types of things. But not to say that it's just, like, it's just garbage as well because, like, I'm thinking right now, my kids wanna have wanted to make a math game for a while. You Node, they wanna make, like, a flashcard, but, like, imagine Wes could build.

I thought, like, yeah, we could build that. Let's set across some time. And for me to make a little flashcard game from scratch, like, that's I don't know. I could probably do that in six hours or something like that. Wes. Totally. But I could probably make something with the three d world where you run around and answer questions. I'd probably make that in, like, an hour or so. And now and that would be so exciting for them. And I think, like, that would be a net win because they're excited about computers, they're excited about coding, and they're gonna be learning math. I know. I was thinking about this a lot with, like you know, my son and I are getting into game development, and

it takes so long to see any major real change in it, especially because I'm not great at it, that, like, he he's losing attention. And I'm doing my best to be like, oh, we got a guy. He's walking around now. He's not pointing in the right direction. He's not doing the right animations, but he he moves. And my son's just like, okay. Great. When are we gonna get to, like, build Mario? Yeah. Because he'll he'll play Mario Maker where you're just dragging and dropping everything onto the screen, and it's so nice and fast. You get instant results or whatever. And that's what he really wants, you know, out of the experience. And, yeah, I I do think that instant feedback or or visual it's great for being inspired. There's all kinds of things. I think a lot of it falls apart when you try to build long standing production code bases.

Not that you can't use these tools, but you need to treat them more like a an assistant that you're you're really watching closely, rather than vibe coding it. I think about this all the time. I have friends that are like, oh, I made this, app that does this whole thing, and I just did it with prompts. It was super easy. Like, I'm gonna turn turn this into a product. And I'm thinking like, alright. Well, do you know anything about authentication? Do you know anything about databases, security? Do you know anything about anything? And just the answer JS no to all of those things. Right? And without those answers and while the you today probably can't confidently ship something that is good without those those tools and knowledge and and, you know, there there's still that gap there. So, yeah, vibe Node your production for now at least. Right? Yeah. Vibe coding your production code is only gonna be I'm gonna say it's not good at all because, again, vibe coding kind of implies that it's you're not even looking at the code really or you're not getting deep into the code. But, yeah, for throwaway personal software, projects, demos, inspiration,

I think it's it's totally valid and and works just fine for that stuff. Totally. I I think I'm going back and thinking about the stuff that I've built in the last little while. And and and quite honestly, I don't even remember half the stuff that I've I've I've Node because I just I build it, it does its thing, and and I throw it out.

But Yeah. I'll we'll we'll throw an image up on the screen right now JS I'm building a pnpm parametric grid, that I'm three d printing, and I'm I'm gonna be hanging this grid in our gym. And then you can put all these hooks into this grid and hang up all the different attachments for the gym.

And normally, this stuff is you just print off a sheet of it. You print off as many as you want, and they all click together, and you're you're up and running. However, because I wanna put a nice border around it, I realized it's much more complicated because I need a top right, bottom left. Like, it's basically the sliding panels of CSS in real life. I need the I need the corner pieces. I need the tops, the bottoms, the lefts, the rights, and the internal pieces.

Node different possible pieces. And I was like, man, I'm having a hard time visualizing this. So I started, like, writing it, scribbling it down on a piece of paper to try to visualize what I needed. It's a four by six grid, and I was like, you know Node? I'm just gonna start prompting my way into this. So I built a little thing that I said I have a four by six grid, and I need to define what each of the edges are called. Right? Top left, top right, edge right, edge left, etcetera, internal.

And then I just I just kept saying, good. Now visualize it. Good. Now make me a cut sheet of how many need to be printed for each piece. And, like, that took me, like, fifteen minutes, and I was just like, okay. I I never would have not never, but that would have taken me much longer, and I don't have a nearly as nice of a visualization if I were to build this myself. I probably would not have built it myself. I probably would have made a spreadsheet or or a piece of paper or something like that. Yeah. And to be clear to to people listening, it's not because you cannot do that. You are very capable of making,

this interface A grid. Yes. A grid or any of this stuff. It the the benefit really comes from the speed and effort that it takes.

That's really where where you see the benefit. Like, for instance, we had my whole MIDI controller thing, and, like, Wes. Could I have absolutely coded a MIDI piano UI, which is the keys or all you know, they're the way the piano keys are shifted? Or I can ask cursor to create a piano for me aesthetically in CSS, in HTML, but I can guide it. I can say use grid or flex Bos for this. I can use this or that. Give it this aesthetic, whatever. You can guide it with the technology.

You can tell it the approach to use. You can give it hints and stuff like that. But I didn't vibe code that entire app, but I vibe coded the keyboard interface because I just flat out didn't wanna take the time to do it. And it's again, it's just a a four fun project. Right? So I do I do really find that that to be like a nice little sweet spot. It's something that you could do. You know how to do it. You know what it looks like when it's done right, and you can just ask it. Save me some time here. Do me a solid. Mhmm.

I think another area for this sort of vibe Node is you're you're going into things that you're not necessarily comfortable with. So Mhmm. The the Roomba, I wrote a whole bunch of c plus plus, I think. I forgot what language it was. Yeah. You know? And Yeah. I think it was c plus Wes. And I was debugging, serial connections and and Scott of going through that. And and I built the whole UI to control the the vacuum, the Roomba thing. I have a video on, you can go watch it. I built that whole whole thing. And that Wes, I guess you call that vibe coding because I if you look at it, it's it's not ideal. There's a lot of like weird React hooks and and stuff, but but it worked. It worked really nice and it was able to get it up up and running really, really quickly. So both languages where you're not really comfortable with or or areas of stuff you've never worked in before, and then UIs and things that you need to just crank out as as quickly as possible, because because you're just learning. And it's not to say that I didn't learn anything. I think I came out of that project way smarter than than I went in. Right? Like, I know so much more about microcontrollers, and and I feel so much more confident in c plus plus now. Not that the robot can write it for me, but, like, I I feel like I understand a lot more about it. And I don't know that I would have gotten that understanding reading a book. But controlling a vacuum, I would have certainly got there.

Yeah. It is a it is a whole thing because, like, I think there is some degree where vibe coding is stupid.

If you don't know what you're doing and you don't know what the code is is doing and you're not learning anything from it and you're just pushing out more slop into the world, I don't like that. I think that's bad.

But if if you are using it as a learning opportunity, you're using it to excite yourself, you're learning it to make things be productive, all of those things, I can get behind that, and I can see a benefit to that. So Oh, yeah. Yeah. Different. Yeah. I think I think of, like, somebody like a kid right now trying to build a game,

and and they hit problems, and they're trying to debug it, and they're they're typing in. And they're reading the replies.

It might be because we have a race condition here. And I go, oh, that's what a race condition in this JS, and Wes and we solve that. And there are so many different things you can learn very quickly just building these silly little throwaway applications. So as I know we had a lot of angry people, Scott of angry replies about when we do AI stuff on this podcast.

That's story. But I think I think it's a net win for when you're trying to learn something and you're trying to just you're either trying to fix a problem that you have for your own personal stuff or you're trying to learn something new. I think it's a net win with this stuff. Yeah. Totally.

Alright.

Anything else you wanna say about vibe Node, or do you just wanna

vibe off? I wanna vibe off. Yes.

I don't even know what else Node say about it, but that's it. Let us know what you have vibe coded. Love to hear it. It's, it's great to great to see everybody's replies.

Yeah. Totally. Love it, hate it. What do you think?