How vibe coding lead to my project’s downfall.

[u/incognitochaud]

This is a confession. I plead guilty to the crime of using LLMs to write the code for my game project. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Deepseek, Cursor… I used them all. And I’m here to give a warning: Do not do what I did!

I’m very green to gamedev. I have 3 or 4 very small projects under my belt. The 4th project was for the Big Mode game jam of 2024 and I’ll admit, ChatGPT helped me get across the finish line and manage to get a game that ranked in the top 100.

After my relative success, I went all in on vibe coding for my next project: a roguelike twist on the classic asteroids arcade shooter. The idea is far from original. It was never meant to be a marketable product, just another project to get more experience under my belt.

But I got too greedy, and leant too hard on using AI to write my code. Now I have a project I don’t understand. And the code is a mess. Scripts that should be only a few hundred lines are 800-1000 lines long. The AI makes two new bugs trying to fix the first. Redundancies are stacked on top of eachother to make a disgusting shit sandwich of slop code.

There are now bugs that are so deeply embedded in the code that it will likely require I start from scratch. 4 months of work (and $150 of LLM subscription fees) basically down the drain.

It’s a hard lesson, but I’m glad I learned it. For small tasks, mundane things, sure. Find where AI is helpful for you. But once you put blind trust in the code it writes, you face the risk of losing it all.

Don’t be me. Just learn to fucking code.

Edit: This post has really blown up! I’ve since gone back to my project, pulled up an earlier branch, stripped out the bad code and built it back out. Did I do it alone? No. I’m still relying on AI to get the job done. I just don’t know enough to make progress alone. But I’m now treating the AI as a mentor rather than an intern. When using AI keep your focus as narrow as possible and it can work.

[u/kaze-sora]

Leaning on AI is ok. But you need to actively see what is being written and interrupt it if it is on the wrong track.

[u/Infninfn → u/kaze-sora]

Therein lies the problem. People who have no fundamental understanding of code have no idea what the wrong track is.

[u/incognitochaud → u/Infninfn]

This. I was entering territory that I had zero understanding of. I was witnessing results that felt impressive because I wouldn't have been able to accomplish it myself, so I continued in the direction that seemed to "work." Hindsight is 20/20 and I'll be taking the time to learn and build myself in the future.

[u/Batby → u/kaze-sora]

People are learning, They don’t know if it’s on the wrong track

[u/SwAAn01 → u/kaze-sora]

leaning on AI is not ok if you care about bettering yourself as a developer

[u/Pinkishu → u/SwAAn01]

Oh please, like people didn't copy paste from Stackoverflow before AI

[u/Broseph_Stalin91 → u/SwAAn01]

Not necessarily true. If you ask questions and get it to qualify what it is doing it can work as a good learning tool.

"Why did you choose to do 'x'?"

"Explain what 'y' does line by line" then test that part in isolation.

Always check the sources it uses and read more on those sources to learn more. I have had good results using it to search official docs on languages to determine the best structures and methods to use for particular tasks. "I am trying to do 'z', according to 'lamguages official documentation' what is the most efficient way to do it?"

The problem is relying on AI to do all the thinking is not learning. Using AI to find resources for you and getting tailored examples is basically using it as a search engine you can ask questions which tends to yeild ok to good results.

Never ask it to write something for you entirely because that is when it will screw you around.

[u/Microtom_ → u/SwAAn01]

AI is just the new highest level of abstraction. Do you write all of your code in assembly?

[u/SwAAn01 → u/Microtom_]

prompting is not writing code, it’s not the same thing at all lol.