The Vibe Coding Trap: Fast Code, Slow Death

Chat-based LLMs have unlocked a new dev pastime: vibe coding.

It feels amazing. You type a dream: “Give me a full-stack app that does X.” The bot spits out 200 lines of syntactically perfect code. You paste it. It kinda runs. You tweet a gif of the MVP. Instant dopamine.

Then what?

You just committed a codebase you don’t understand, can’t debug, and definitely can’t scale — and you’re telling everyone it’s your “startup.”

This is how vibe coding kills projects in slow motion. Here’s why:

1. Vibe code skips the thinking

LLMs are great at spitting out plausible syntax. They suck at designing resilient architecture for your actual use case.

If you don’t think before prompting, you’ll get exactly what you asked for: plausible nonsense.

2. Vibe code rots instantly

Since you didn’t write it, you won’t refactor it. Since you don’t understand it, you can’t extend it. Bugs multiply. Fixes break something else.

It’s a disposable prototype pretending to be production code — which is fine if you treat it that way. Most don’t.

3. Vibe code hides landmines

Behind those neat function names lurk:

• Fragile type juggling
• Silent failure paths
• Security holes big enough to drive a ransomware truck through

If you didn’t read every line, you don’t know what it’ll do when reality hits.

How to escape the trap

Use LLMs like a pair programmer, not a code vending machine.

• Prompt for ideas or helpers, not whole apps.
• Read every line before you run it.
• Add tests, logging, and real error handling.
• Refactor as if you wrote it yourself — because now you own it.

Bottom line

Vibe coding is fun. It’s fast. It feels like cheating.

But when you ship it to production, it cheats you back — with tech debt, hidden bugs, and brittle half-finished features that crumble under real users.

Fast code. Slow death.

Skip the vibes. Do the work. Build something you can actually maintain.