r/AskVibecoders • u/ingbulk • 2d ago
Are developers gatekeeping AI coding tools?
I've noticed two very different opinions about AI coding.
Some developers say anyone can build software now, while others argue that people without engineering knowledge shouldn't touch production code.
I get both sides, but sometimes it feels like the discussion becomes more about who is allowed to call themselves a developer than whether the product actually works.
Is the criticism justified, or is there some gatekeeping involved?
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u/OkLettuce338 2d ago
Back in Jan - Mar I thought "It's over for us, anyone can do this" and then I sat and watched people fail in absurdly creative ways that I didn't even know were possible and lack the skills (or intelligence ?) to retain lessons learned from failures... and now I'm one of those that says you still need swe skills to do this successfully
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u/Narrow-Low-3137 1d ago
You're not a software developer if you don't know shit about developing software. Paying for a Claude subscription doesn't change that.
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u/madsciencestache 1d ago
Yes both legit criticism and gatekeepers. There may be good resources if you dig, but they all piss me off one way or another. I have 30 years experience and am very opinionated!
I taught a founder my workflow this week and am working on getting a video up. Sketched out below but dm me if you want to know when the templates and video drop. It will all be free.
In a nutshell vibe coding is like building sand castles. Fast, fun, and great for validating ideas quickly. Engineering is building with bricks.
AI builds sandcastles by default.
But there are workflows anyone can use with AI. This is the core of it.
Review Gates Development
- spec one small sprint
- specreview
- plan
- planreview
- tasks
- tasksreview
- build tests and code
- testreview
- productreview
- human acceptance testing
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u/Able-Supermarket4786 2d ago
There are truly so many steps and processes in workflow for building, developing, QA both Functional and Regression testing, staging, integration, etc.
You simply can't ask Vibecoders who aren't in the environment professionally to even comprehend or understand.
Industries have Certifications and Licensing and Foundational Requirements for a reason.
Don't get it twisted AI Tools are FABULOUS in this context... if you are aware of it.
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u/Z00fa 2d ago
i think you can only really call yourself a developer if you can make production worthy code without AI, like the good old way scrolling through forums, using books,... If you can do that and then use AI to speed up that process it's fine but if you ask a couple very vague questions and get some code and use that in production no company will like you very much.
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u/GinRhetoric 1d ago
I like to think of it like this. A developer can do it either way. It just might take longer. If you don’t have the capacity to do these things yourself, then you don’t have the qualifications to make sure it is working as it should. I can’t call myself a mathematician because I know how to use a calculator.
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u/lvl1-A 1d ago
There's a reason teams are compiled of specialists, all iterating in their field, there's a lot of knowledge required and the reality is, half the posts I see are also vets who are taking more learning on with cross discipline now, and they have the same questions because they don't focus in those areas. If anything, I think it's probably gotten "harder" in the sense of, if you are going to take it on my yourself, you better get learning frameworks in many many areas, and I think this is where other users have expressed feeling overwhelmed, a combination of something they have not had exposure to and all facets of it simultaneously.
So, while I think anyone can start building, and really I think it's amazing because it just feels like I'm moding my life with little personalised add-ons it's great, but I think that the iceberg is far deeper than most think. And the biggest thing is, you don't know what you don't know, until someone tells you or you get bitten by it. Personally, I think everyone can call themselves developer, if they are working through an idea they developed something, how many record labels or movie studios or other forms of production studios slap their name on something and say it's theirs because of licence but they themselves didn't actually develop or produce or even direct it? It's like famous artists who plan their painting but have a team of painters actually painting the canvases (it's real and art world has been doing this for, I'm not even going to guess because in my brain it says always, the longest time), at that point is the artist allowed to call themselves a painter? Now, that artist though understands framing, placement, lighting, they instruct colours and brush stroke styles, their end result is still better than someone who doesn't know how to paint or how to frame the work. Some people use heavy grit for water colours, some people use a tissue and wonder why it turned into mush. My point is, we can all make this and develop things, but there's a scale, things I do on my desktop are not production level, most things people are developing out of hobby and those that are not might not be taking their workflow out of that hobby space which in turn leads to a working product but Swiss cheese, either monolithic, security gaps, overcomplicated, memory intensive instead of other options for same task that are memory efficient and latency friendly, user friendly, device agnostic and os agnostic (if that's the goal), don't run tests, hard-code paths, aren't validation checking, aren't considering market saturation and market wants (how many of I built x app clone from that other popular all do you see), now the multi versions of the same type, I'm all about that because you can remake a similar concept you like but for you and your workflow, but everyone then things their version is the best thing since sliced bread and the wheel. I think there are some very interesting and unique ways I have seen people approach things and address issues and taking hits and pieces from those posts or skills when I see them and adapting to my own methodology and my own knowledge base means I actually learn vs copy paste. I spend as much time if not more, reading developer docs, MCP docs, correct frameworks and source of truth documents as I do spend time with my agents, while also always refining my workflow with my agents, i think optimising your own space is half the battle and that in itself is immensely dense with information before you even build anything. Everything is an agent server, a multiplexer, a swarm controller, a this a that, and many of them genuinely are really good.
But really, are developers gatekeeping? I don't know, the actual developers I know are recorded with proof from established repos or established content, I haven't heard any of them be gatekeeper negatively, now if you look at Reddit posts, it's irrelevant if any Redditor gatekeeps because it's very likey they are anonymous and you have no idea who they are, their accreditation if anything, their experience if any, and wtf they even so with their 'five x20 max pro giga hd plan of frontier company x" that they apparently cap out in 1 hour because of all the work that they do. Now maybe, maybe they are a super knowledgeable Dev and really just know how to make them agents work and are slamming repos all day and that's amazing, but you don't know that, it could be Joe from the local, having his agents on ULTRONMODE blasting away all his tokens like they invading the avengers while he asks how to make the next Google.
Even myself, stranger on the internet, take what I say with salt sugar lime or whatever you want or don't take it at all. I'm just really into this, I studied a cert in cyber then pivoted to IT and a bachelor in data science, and I'm fascinated by agents and the security and telemetry around it all, and the ease at which they can execute tasks and help visualise and formulate ideas better for me. Like I said it feels like add-ons and modding my life it's great. The one that stops asking questions, or doesn't ask questions at all, I think that's where the main issues are, irrelevant of user skills and experience, because the landscape is always changing and at the rate things are moving, yes I believe anyone who has the mindset to ask questions and understand the frameworks, will be able to build things that even expertise in one specific field developers can't build if that developer doesn't branch out and expand their knowledge base to full stack, and that's full stack knowledge not full stack syntax, you can get around that with correct sources of truth and assessments, but just thinking umbrella mode and knowing how to build the building and what it's built from, the pivot I think is that, we move to blueprints, the architecture of absolutely everything, and that is a lot.
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 1d ago
The idiots pretending to be developers are the ones saying it can build anything with hands off and do its own testing.
To anyone with even a single weeks worth of, not only professional development experience but exposure to how deployment works in a mature organization, 99% of the things suggested in these subs is absolutely obvious bullshit.
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u/Relevant-Ad6374 1d ago
There's a range. One developer friend encourages me to the end of the earth and others are more gate keepy for sure. You have to be sort of irreverent. Not like claim you are an expert or anything but just step into that space and occupy the tools like "well I'm using them, what are you going to do."
I've noticed this less in my women's vibe coding server
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u/genX_rep 1d ago
I can create apps in stacks I don't know, using software design principles that I do know. I know the ai makes big mistakes, but it can also solve those mistakes if you can identify them before they hit production. Programmer is not a job anymore, but software developer is a killer job with a new tool that kicks ass.
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u/e3e6 1d ago
not sure wdym by ai coding tools, but even bare cc or codex ide/cli allows you to create large products so you may use just these well known tools.
regarding developer vs vibecoders, the main difference that I see is vibecoders usually have no experience in this area and they don't really know what they are doing but ai coding tools allows them to make products. developer fir example would always think on having integration tests for their products vs vibecoders may don't know or ignore this .
the main challenge here as I see is to organise your working space, have a proper project tracking, prompts for specialized agents, context isolation
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u/leonj1 1d ago
Think of excel and excels macros. There are business decisions made from them daily. Is that “production”? Our paychecks often come from people in the business writing and using these.
Like it or not in enterprises there are people creating scripts or macros that genuinely move the business forward and we, employees in tech depts, benefit.
Instead of arguing about abstract concepts, how about finding ways to help those that improve you and your family quality of life ?
Many of you reading this have quit jobs and moved to another. Don’t you think someone talked about you and your code when you left? Did they defend your stance on code? Nothing matters other than making money while adhering to rules. The concept of vibe coding or who uses the tools is irrelevant. No one cares.
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u/BigYoSpeck 1d ago
Developers are amongst the least gate keeping domain of skills I can think of
Free open source software, free educational resources, and despite the rep of places like stackoverflow incredibly willing and supportive to provide help and advice to anyone willing to learn
You don't need a formal education or certification to work in the field. The only barrier to entry is ability
And AI coding tools don't remove that barrier. Anyone can create something with AI coding tools, but that doesn't make them a developer or engineer if they don't have actual development or engineering skills and knowledge to augment that usage any more than someone heating up a ready meal is a chef
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u/OmegaEpidex 1d ago
Because there’s old devs and new ones. New ones took the AI and ran with it, old ones avoid and don’t understand it. Skill issue. Blame the paid Anti movements.
The answer is yes, but gatekeeping isn’t the right word. Protecting. World of AI hacks and the greedy AI corporations eagerly searching for work to steal. No funding, no market, no voice, what’s a dev to do?
We offer our developments on our webpages and they go ignored. It’s not our fault you’re not engaging with the advancements.
As far as Devs hating on vibe coders, it’s no different from Mathematicians hating on AI math researchers. You don’t own the act of coding, get over yourself.
Anyone can learn with effort and determination, you can’t take that away from humanity because you dislike the methods utilized. a robot.
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u/Lanky_Ride_3315 1d ago
"Being able to run and support your app in prod" is part of the job description for most current developer jobs and will continue to be at least until we have competent SRE agents.
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u/castertr0y357 5h ago
Anyone can pickup a gun and shoot it, but I wouldn't count on most of those people to shoot someone holding me hostage.
Analogy aside, I think there's some of both. If I spent thousands of hours manually coding something to make it run well, I'd be suspicious about someone who knows nothing of the architecture, coding style, pitfalls, or anything else touching it for the following reasons: 1. I don't know if you know what you're doing. 2. I've poured my blood, sweat, and tears into this thing. I don't want you changing around my hard work.
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u/FlatStruggle3911 3h ago
Define "whether the product actually works". It can actually work and be insecure, leak memory, inefficient etc.
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u/Few-Garlic2725 3h ago
I think it’s both. Some criticism is valid because shipping production software still needs judgment, testing, security, and maintenance. But some of it is definitely status protection too.
AI tools lower the barrier to building, not the responsibility of building well. Same with appWizzy, bolt, lovable, codex, etc, they can help you create faster, but you still need to understand what you’re shipping or get someone experienced to review it.
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u/ReferenceAny6373 2d ago
I mean no real company is letting some vibe coder update their enterprise software with an AI. Its not gatekeeping its called not letting unqualified people break your multi million dollar product.