This is why AI-generated and junior-written code breaks so beautifully. They don’t expect chaos. Seniors do.
Vibe coding in the wild: happy path or bust
Here’s how vibe coding plays out:
- You say: “Write code to process user orders and store them in a database.”
- The AI spits out neat loops and tidy functions. It works… on perfect data.
- But what if the input is garbage?
- Database full?
- Network flickers?
- File corrupted?
Doesn’t matter. The AI got milk. Kitchen fire? Your fault for not including a smoke detector in the prompt.
Junior devs follow the same script. Didn’t specify exploding cheese? Boom. Dairy everywhere.
Garbage in, garbage out (and no, it’s not fine)
AI and vibe coding are case studies in literal execution. Ask a senior dev to fetch milk, and you’ll get milk, snacks, and probably a bug fix for the fridge light. Ask an AI? Just milk. Nothing else.
Why? Because neither AI nor rookies have bled from 2am disk-space blowouts or emoji-infected CSVs. They haven’t felt the pain, so they don’t see it coming.
Experience means paranoia – and survival
Ask a senior why they over-engineer, and you’ll hear war stories:
- “Empty input tanked invoicing for three days.”
- “Half-written file forced a weekend of SQL surgery.”
- “Infinite email loop at 2am. CEO was thrilled.”
Real systems don’t stay on the happy path. Veterans checkpoint, retry, idempotent everything, and log like their sanity depends on it… because it does.
Most don’t know what to ask. AI included.
Reality check: most people (including plenty of juniors) don’t even know what to worry about. So AI doesn’t either. Unless told, it won’t account for:
- Garbage inputs
- Network timeouts
- Memory blowouts
- Disk full errors
Ask ChatGPT to “process all files and upload results,” and it’ll assume the disk is infinite, the network is flawless, and the files behave. Newsflash: they won’t.
Vibe coding is fine for throwaways
Use vibe code for:
- One-time scripts
- Internal demos
- Microservices that live and die in staging
If they implode, who cares?
But trust vibe code with prod systems, customer data, or money? That’s like handing a teenager your Christmas dinner shopping list and saying “just get milk.” What you’ll get is milk. And 16 hours of regret.
Want survival? Be explicit:
- “Check malformed or unexpected inputs.”
- “Limit loops. Batch safely. Handle extremes.”
- “Plan for full disks, locked files, dead databases.”
- “Log everything. Assume nothing works.”
Not sure yourself? Ask the AI:
- “What could fail in this code?”
- “How would you guard against network and disk issues?”
Getting just milk is irritating. Adding a kitchen fire? That’s malpractice.
Final grumbles from an overcaffeinated senior dev
Vibe coding takes the scenic route straight to hell. Production code survives because someone expected it to fail 20 different ways, built accordingly and tested every failure point.
Still settling for just milk? Check for smoke before you open that fridge.
