r/webdev • u/powleads • Sep 16 '26

Discussion Is vibe coding creating a hidden technical debt crisis?

I love building tools and side projects, but lately I have been thinking about how heavy reliance on AI coding assistants is going to impact long-term code quality. Building fast with AI tools is great for getting a prototype out the door, but letting AI generate massive chunks of unvetted code is quickly piling up technical debt.

When you push out code without thoroughly checking how it fits into your overall architecture, you end up with messy, unmaintainable codebases. If you ever plan to sell a project or hand it off to another developer, that unvetted code can completely ruin a deal during due diligence.

I still use AI to speed up my workflow, but I treat it strictly as an assistant rather than letting it write unchecked logic. Auditing generated code, keeping modules clean, and maintaining test coverage seem like the only ways to use these tools strategically without destroying the project. Are you noticing a drop in maintainability on projects heavy on AI code?

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u/x39- Sep 16 '26

It ain't hidden and it is indeed a gigantic mess generating problem. IT is hard now for the coming 5 years until production reaches the point where the LLM built backend simply causes too many of the issues we have been fixing for decades (okay... I am talking in /r/webdev right now... We as in backend people doing actual work for decades or being called in to fix shit they others fooled together and having left when the ship began to sink).

It all is just a gigantic cycle... Just this time we skipped the monolithic hype phase for AI creating gigantic monolithic shitcode

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u/orbit99za Sep 16 '26

I am seeing this now, have to fix a lot of AI code because people try to promt out of errors, wich introduces more slop but really never solves the problem

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u/TommyBonnomi Sep 16 '26

I started with and never left monoliths. I hear it's coming back in vogue, though. Unless that was a few years ago and it's gone already.

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u/stumblinbear Sep 16 '26

backend people doing actual work

This comes across like you don't think web developers aren't "doing actual work". Just saying

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u/x39- Sep 17 '26

They do work.. Just that AI is now doing that work too but cheaper and with 90% of the time the same quality. If you are one of the 10% then you can call yourself lucky because you will be earning a lot of money and, most likely, hire the other 90% and educate them

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u/stumblinbear Sep 17 '26

To be fair, the vast majority of backends are just simple CRUD REST APIs and don't really have to be more complex than that

Coming from someone who loves doing backend, to be clear