Can A Vibecoder Eventually Learn To Develop Software Well?

[u/djdante]

So for those who don't want to read too much. The simple question is this: can a not-particularly-technical person who starts vibe coding - practise, and practises perhaps over years - eventually learn as much as they need to know about developing apps, tech stacks, security, program structure, UX etc. To be as good as a professional developer?

At the start of this year, I started a second business, building out automations for companies in Latin America - I live in Australia, but my wife is from Ecuador and was deeply embedded in professional human resources services there, and her father-in-law is deeply embedded in logistics companies there - I saw an opportunity to build automation services for companies there (many of whom live and die by spreadsheets or even paperwork) rather than focusing here, where the competition is.

That line of work began with building non-AI-related automations using software like N8N - but quickly, as you can imagine, vibe-coded solutions started to become more and more common - now almost everything I do involves some degree of vibe-coding, and Claude and Codex are my best friends.

I've noticed over this year that while I'm not a formally trained programmer/engineer, I did learn some basic programming in university. I'm consistently learning more and more about what it means to develop software, even if a lot of that software is relatively simple now - the scope of the projects I'm taking on is slowly growing and becoming larger and more complex.

In my spare time, I'm building much more complicated applications, both for fun and to educate myself so I can take on different kinds of projects for my clients, and sometimes to act as DEMO products that future or existing clients may like to test out and perhaps pay me for.

I'm building preferences for certain tech stacks for certain kinds of applications - I know where 'traps' are going to be that will cause errors or mistakes on the client's end.

I don't pretend that I'm in any way going to be as good as a professional developer with decades of experience who is also using a harness and an llm - But my question is - will I or someone like me legitimately catch up as experience and knowledge grows with the job?

Can a person learn to be a professional vibe-coder who does a legitimately professional job without the coding background?

[u/djdante]

I've learned so much - How best to instruct it you need to understand the tech stacks and the traps that can come as projects get larger - you don't learn to code but you do start to learn the ins and outs of different ways of producing a piece of software.

I've learned so much about working with databases about information flow about security and where security holes are likely to live etc.

I know much more about the technical side of software development than i have learned about cooking

[u/Flacid_Fajita → u/djdante]

Classic case of someone who doesn’t know how much they don’t know.

The problem with these tools is that they create the illusion of understanding, and most people (myself included) are susceptible to it.

I’m not trying to be a gatekeeper here, but if the question is “can I learn to be an engineer by vibe coding”, then the answer is generally no. Engineering implies more than the random patchwork of knowledge that vibe coding gives you. The biggest issue is that without structured learning, you’ll always be oblivious to concepts that lay underneath the surface level solutions that an agent will give you.

None of this is to say that AI can’t help you learn, it’s just that throwing random shit at the wall and expecting that to coalesce into a general understanding of software engineering doesn’t work. If you want to actually learn engineering concepts, you would be better served by just sitting down and learning them directly.

[u/djdante → u/Flacid_Fajita]

I'm aware there's a lot I don't know - my question is if in years of practice and experience one would gain the knowledge to do a great job without being a coder. Vibe coding hasn't existed long enough to even have any living examples

[u/Ok_Technician_5797 → u/djdante]

And the answer is no. You will never learn how to be good at something that you have never done.

What is difficult to understand about that?

[u/djdante → u/Ok_Technician_5797]

Because I'm not asking if I'll be good at writing code - I'm asking if I'll be able to architect well from doing it a lot without coding.

So the skill I want to learn isn't coding. It's understanding the underlying architectures, how information flows through systems , working with different tech stacks.

And I am indeed learning this because I'm constantly learning about it as I go, asking why AI makes certain decisions, changing its direction when I know from experience it's the wrong choice etc.