Stop Vibe Coding: Why Intuition Isn't Engineering

Vibe coding is making developers worse at their jobs. Here's what's happening — and what to do instead.

What Is Vibe Coding?

Vibe coding is the practice of writing software by feel — prompting an LLM, accepting whatever it generates, and moving on without understanding the code. The term captures a real and growing problem in the industry.

Why It Feels Productive

The dopamine hit is real. You start a session, describe what you want, and code appears. Features ship. PRs get merged. It feels like 10× productivity. Until it doesn't.

The Hidden Costs

Vibe-coded systems accumulate invisible debt. The AI generated what you asked for, not what the system needed. You own code you don't understand — and that's a liability.

# What vibe coding produces
def process_data(df):
    # TODO: understand what this does
    return df.groupby('x')['y'].transform(lambda g: g / g.sum())

# What engineering produces
def normalize_by_group(df: pd.DataFrame, group_col: str, value_col: str) -> pd.DataFrame:
    """Normalize values within each group to sum to 1."""
    group_sums = df.groupby(group_col)[value_col].transform('sum')
    return df.assign(**{value_col: df[value_col] / group_sums})

The Alternative: Deliberate AI Engineering

The goal isn't to avoid AI. It's to use it deliberately — as a tool you control, not a oracle you defer to. That's what Beyond Vibe Code teaches.