Vibe Coding: The Glorious, Glitchy Dead End of Modern Software Development

Cecil Baffour

• 4 min read
Vibe Coding: The Glorious, Glitchy Dead End of Modern Software Development

  1. Phase 2: The Denial
    You realize the app crashes when users click anything. “It’s fine,” you say. “I’ll patch it later.” Your definition of “later” is sometime between tomorrow and never.
  2. Phase 3: The Panic
    A bug appears. No one knows where it came from. You dig into your own code and realize it might as well have been written by a sentient potato with commitment issues. What is this logic? Why does this function do five unrelated things? Why are you using eight different naming conventions in one file?
  3. Phase 4: The Existential Crisis
    You consider quitting tech altogether to open a surf shop in Bali. You spend ten minutes staring at the screen, hoping divine intervention will refactor your code.
  4. Phase 5: The Rewrite
    You delete half the project and start over. Ironically, this time with... a plan. (Gasp!)

Why Vibe Coding Feels So Right (But Is So, So Wrong)

Vibe coding appeals to the emotional side of developers. It feels creative, liberating, and efficient—for about five minutes. It’s like building a treehouse during a windstorm with whatever wood you find lying around. Sure, it’s standing now, but don’t invite anyone over.

It’s also deceptively productive. You're moving fast, solving problems on the fly, and you're in the flow state. But here's the problem: productivity without direction is just chaos at scale. It’s like sprinting through the forest without a map. You’re definitely moving—but mostly in circles.

Signs You're Stuck in the Vibe Coding Trap

  • You don’t use version control, or your commits are named “fixing stuff,” “maybe this works,” and “pls god no crash.”
  • Your “MVP” is held together with console logs, duct tape, and the occasional prayer.
  • You have 47 open browser tabs of Stack Overflow answers, none of which actually solve your problem.
  • No one (not even you) understands your code three days after you wrote it.
  • Your entire architecture is based on “it just felt right.”

The Vibe-Coded Codebase: A Horror Story

Let’s paint a picture. Your app works—kind of. It’s live. People are using it. But under the hood? It’s a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Functions are nested within functions that reference global variables named “data2” and “thingy.” Your CSS is a lawless free-for-all of !importants and hover hacks. One API call goes to your dev environment, another to production, and a third to a mysterious server you swear you didn’t set up.

Then a teammate asks you to fix a bug. You open the codebase and feel like Indiana Jones staring into the Temple of Doom. You don’t fix the bug. Instead, you take a long walk and wonder when it all went wrong.

Spoiler alert: it went wrong the moment you chose vibes over structure.

Why Planning Isn’t the Enemy

Vibe coding often stems from the fear that planning slows you down. And it does, for a minute. But that minute of planning saves you hours—or days—of pain later. Like a seatbelt, it's mildly annoying until you hit something.

Planning doesn't mean building a 500-page document with 17 UML diagrams and a ceremonial Gantt chart. It can be as simple as:

  • Outlining your components before coding them.
  • Writing TODO comments and breaking tasks into steps.
  • Sketching a quick data flow diagram on a napkin. (Bonus points if it’s coffee-stained.)
  • Deciding what your functions are supposed to do before they start doing everything.

And here’s a fun fact: you don’t have to kill the vibe entirely. You can channel it. Get into the flow, sure—but on a road you’ve mapped out, not a dark alley filled with memory leaks and regret.

So What Should You Do Instead?

Here’s your actionable anti-vibe-coding survival guide:

  1. Use version control like your job depends on it. Because it does. Write meaningful commit messages. You’ll thank yourself later. “fixed it” is not helpful. “Fixed infinite loop in cart reducer” is.
  2. Comment your code. If you can’t explain what a block of code does in plain English, maybe it shouldn’t be there. And no, “✨✨ magic ✨✨” is not a valid explanation.
  3. Break big problems into small ones. If your function is longer than your resumé, it’s time to refactor.
  4. Write tests. I know, tests aren’t sexy. But neither is losing three days of your life debugging something a unit test could have caught in two seconds.
  5. Pause to design. Before you type a single line, sketch your idea. A simple flowchart. A napkin wireframe. Anything. Vibe coding is like building IKEA furniture without looking at the instructions—except it’s your career, not a bookcase.
  6. Pair program occasionally. Nothing humbles a vibe coder faster than having to explain their “intuitive logic” to another human being.
  7. Adopt a consistent style. Code linters, formatters, naming conventions. They are your friends. Just because you’re chaotic-good doesn’t mean your code has to be.

Final Thoughts: The Vibe is a Lie

Vibe coding might feel fast, creative, and rebellious. But long term? It’s a professional quicksand. You sink deeper the longer you stay in it, and eventually, you realize you’ve built a product you’re afraid to touch.

So the next time you feel tempted to just “go with the flow,” stop. Take a breath. Write a plan. Create a branch. Sketch the architecture. Ask yourself, “Will Future Me hate this?”

Because if Future You is rage-scrolling through GitHub blaming Present You for every mess… congratulations. You’ve officially vibe coded your way into a dead end.

TL;DR Action Plan
Plan first, code second. Test your stuff. Write comments. Use version control. Don’t trust the vibe—it will betray you faster than a JavaScript date parser.

Save the vibes for Spotify. Your code deserves better.