Vibe Coding Is the New No-Code
And like no-code, it’s great for prototypes - but risky for anything serious.
I’ve been coding with AI for a while now, using it across a variety of projects.
Lately, there’s been a lot of noise around the idea of “vibe coding.” You’ve probably seen the posts:
I vibe-coded this app over the weekend… developers are cooked!
It’s the kind of hype cycle we see every time a shiny new tool or paradigm shows up in tech. And to be fair, AI really can accelerate development in ways that feel borderline magical. It’s a thrilling moment to be part of.
But let’s be clear: most of what people are showing off right now are demos, prototypes, or MVPs. AI agents today aren’t building complete businesses, shipping full platforms, or replacing developers. Yet.
As things are today, vibe coding works great in the early phases of a project, when speed and experimentation matter most. But building a reliable, secure, scalable service still requires humans who know how the pieces fit together. Trying to vibe code your way through a serious product is a fast track to technical debt and integration headaches.
This reminds me a lot of the no-code movement. No-code tools make you feel incredibly powerful in the early stages. You can spin up something fast, get it looking slick, and show off a working demo. But as soon as you need to handle something beyond the basic use case—like connecting systems together, dealing with edge cases, or fine-tuning performance—you quickly hit the limits of what the tool can do. What once felt magical starts to feel brittle and confining.
There is a reason that no-code platforms have not eliminated developer jobs. I believe it will be the same with AI -
Even the simple website you’re reading this on has multiple integrations: Supabase, Mailgun, Sentry, custom auth. I used AI extensively to accelerate the build, but at every step, the system was guided by an engineer (me) who understands the architecture, the risks, and the trade-offs.
We’ll get to a place where AI agents can handle more of that heavy lifting. But we’re not there yet. And no amount of hype will change that reality.
Don’t let the noise convince you that vibe coding is a shortcut to production-quality work. Use it for what it’s great at—then bring your engineering brain to the table.
Side note: I've been having fun making images for my blog posts using ChatGPT. Some of the things it comes up with are hilarious! 😭