Vibe Coding: it's the new big thing, right? "Make a great website without learning how to code!" That's the pitch. And unless they're talking about platforms like Wix (opens in a new tab) or Squarespace (opens in a new tab), promoting the whole "without learning how to code" bit is just really bad advice, and here's why -
- Shipping without understanding: Most AI tells us that it can be wrong at times and to always double-check. If you can't read the code you're asking AI to spit out, how do you know what you're shipping is... shippable? How do you know there aren't any security flaws? How do you know if it's accessible to all users?
- Something broke: If you have to debug something and you don't know how to interpret the code, how will you even know what to fix? If you don't understand the errors the IDE or browser console are yelling about, how will you make them shut up?
- Trying to land that dev job: You got an email saying that an employer is impressed by your skills. They ask you to do a coding test on a platform that restricts the use of AI or search engines (and the platform will know if you broke the rules). What are you going to do? And if you land the interview by some miracle, are you going to take your AI instance with you to help explain how your code works?
I get it. A lot of people don't have time to learn how to code, but need a website. Wix and Squarespace are great tools in these scenarios. If you want to make something from scratch, however, or are trying to get a dev job, you should learn how to understand the code that's being produced.
Ethics
Something else to consider is whether or not your AI code that you can't read is to the benefit of anyone.
- You: How much time are you really saving going the "easy" route? If you need to fix something, you're going to have to learn what to fix and how to fix it - which you could have done anyway by learning the stack you're using.
- Employers: Why waste their time when you're using AI and can't back up what you're claiming is yours? They're busy and trying to fill a role. They have dozens, if not hundreds, of other resumes to look over from candidates who are actually qualified for the job.
Am I against vibe coding as a whole? Nope, not at all. I do it myself, in fact. The difference is that I understand what the code is doing. I often use vibe coding to get snippets for things that would take a long time to type myself.
Example: I need a React component that takes props title, description, URL, and an image. I tell AI the conditions and exactly what needs to be produced. It spits out the code, and I can understand it. AI didn't format something quite right? I can edit that part myself. AI didn't include ARIA tags for WCAG compliance? Okay, let me add those in. That takes a lot less time to do than writing out the whole component myself, especially if it's something pretty big that requires a ton of Tailwind CSS utility classes.
Seriously, don't shoot yourself in the foot. If you need something quick, use Wix or Squarespace. Drag and drop, easy peasy. But please, don't rely on AI to write an entire website or app codebase that you won't have a clue what to do with if something goes awry.