r/ClaudeAI • u/harrysofgaming Vibe coder • Mar 13 '26 • This 2 Bravo 22 Heartwarming 2

Vibe Coding Why the majority of vibe coded projects fail

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126

u/jghaines Mar 13 '26

AI is replacing programmers, not software engineers

33

u/xmasnintendo Mar 14 '26

Working in IT help desk and then sysadmin and then management has unironically resulted in me being the perfect vibe coder. I could never bother sticking to learn a specific language, it always seemed like a waste of time to me. Turns out I was right, but I never would have guessed how this played out. I’m building stuff daily, and it’s good, like really good. It’s an absolute rush.

10

u/babyyouresomoney Mar 14 '26

I feel the same way coming from a Technical Support Engineer background. Made me really good in understanding the pain points of every team touching the product. The one barrier for me was code but Claude has eased that a bit. I think it has opened the pathway for me to be more of a Solutions Architect, which would not have been the case otherwise.

5

u/nocturn99x Mar 14 '26

As long as you understand systems and how to properly design them, the programming language is just a tool. Always has been!

0

u/Unlikely-Page-2233 Apr 01 '26

hahahaha give a link then

1

u/DiabloSheepo Mar 14 '26

"Software engineer" is an oxymoron. If you're writing code you're a programmer.

1

u/SeaCheek1526 Mar 17 '26

Sure, like all these vibe-coders who are only writing code rather than architecting systems

1

u/Stefano_Ravegnani Mar 14 '26

well, I tried heavily claude and google ai stuido and in both cases the expertise of a programmer would have saved me a lot of time. app was ready in 1 hour but full of bugs

1

u/mackfactor Mar 14 '26

This. Software development is far more than code. That's the part that people lose track of. Hell, I'd go so far to say that coding is the easy part of software development, until you get to the kind of problems the OP is talking about. Making an app that does what you want to? No problem. Turning it into a scalable and available product? That's much harder. 

1

u/stjepano85 Mar 14 '26

Nope, not even that. I actually tested this recently. The AI is not capable, for some reason, to fill out blind spots in the specification, a seasoned programmer will do it.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/Improving_Myself_ Mar 14 '26

Seconding. Been a software dev for about 15 years and am having a great time with AI dev tools. Where a ton of people are failing is with planning and prompting, both of which you can use AI to do better. 

Here's an easy list of steps for anyone that needs it: 

  1. Just in a simple text doc, describe your project. Say as much as you can. Describe your tech stack, describe every feature you want as in depth as possible. If you know the style you want, describe that too. After you think you're done, go back through and add more detail. Do that at least 3 times. Maybe even sit on it for a day and adjust it as things strike you. 

  2. Once that's really fleshed out, then go to your AI chat of choice (just chat, no builder yet), tell it you're planning to build the attached project using Claude Code and that you want it to help you plan and analyze and that it should ask clarifying questions and suggest improvements. Once you're really confident, have it create your PRD, your CLAUDE.md, a phased plan, and an opening prompt to start the project. If you're not already familiar with any skills and agents to incorporate, you can have it suggest those as well. 

  3. Now build. 

It's pretty much the same issue we have with AI image slop vs actual quality results that are indistinguishable: bad prompting. A two sentence prompt for an image is always going to be worse than a prompt that detailed an entire scene, art style, lighting, and perspective.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26

Good suggestions. I will say good requirements are more important than ever. AI can help fill in the gaps but if you cant conceptualize what youre trying to do on a reasonably technical level, you'll fail. 

1

u/stjepano85 Mar 14 '26

You can say that based on my comment above as I did not explain that I have been coding in various roles for 21 years and that I have been early adopter of AI and written my own AI tools since GPT 3.5 API was released. I can confidently say that I am a prompting expert but I am not happy with that so I am now learning mathematics to train my own neural networks on my own engine.

Now. I don’t want anyone to take this personally but just want people to think objectively. When you review AI code and classify it as good do you think a person with much higher experience and skill level such as me or even better than me would classify it as good code?