"Vide Coding" is one of the latest trends in automated software development following in the footsteps of the "no code" era. And for the most part, it's not bad. It isn't as innovative or as disruptive as some news outlets make it out to be however.
Because if you've vibe-coded for even 5 minutes, you know that the output is often times questionable at best. And depending on the tool and model you are using, you could end up with some serious technical debt.
So in this article I'll be breaking down some of the less talked about challenges that come with vibe coding.
1. Lack of Architectural Consistency
Vibe coding leads to architectural inconsistency because decisions are made in isolation without considering the broader system design. When developers code by feel, they tend to solve immediate problems using whatever approach seems quickest or most familiar at the moment.
The result is a patchwork of different patterns, paradigms, and approaches within the same codebase. You might find object-oriented code mixed with functional programming concepts, RESTful APIs alongside GraphQL endpoints, and multiple different state management solutions all coexisting without rhyme or reason.
This inconsistency makes the codebase exponentially harder to understand and maintain. New team members struggle to learn the system because there are no consistent patterns to follow.
Experienced developers waste time context-switching between different architectural approaches within the same project. Bug fixes become more complex because similar functionality might be implemented completely differently in various parts of the system.
You won't run into this issue immediately however, which makes it even more challenging. By the time you notice that your code lacks cohesion, it might be too late to simply revert back.
2. Poor Error Handling and Edge Case Management
One of the most dangerous aspects of vibe coding is its optimistic approach to error handling. When developers code by intuition, they tend to focus on the "happy path" – the scenario where everything works as expected.
Error handling and edge cases are often treated as afterthoughts, implemented hastily when issues arise in production rather than being designed proactively.
Vibe-coded applications frequently exhibit inconsistent error handling strategies. Some functions might throw exceptions, others return error codes, and still others fail silently. Network requests might not handle timeouts properly, user inputs might not be validated thoroughly, and database operations might not account for connection failures.
This leads to applications that work well under ideal conditions but fail unpredictably when faced with real-world scenarios. Users encounter cryptic error messages, data corruption occurs during partial failures, and debugging becomes a nightmare because errors aren't logged consistently or meaningfully.
I'll say now, that nobody likes working on error handling. It's usually very repetitive and tedious to validate every single input and to render some corresponding user friendly widget or banner for the user.
But in a production environment, it is one of the most important tasks that a software engineer has.
3. Technical Debt Accumulation
Vibe coding is a technical debt factory. When decisions are made based on immediate convenience rather than long-term maintainability, shortcuts accumulate rapidly. What starts as a small deviation from best practices soon becomes a cascade of compromises, each one making the next shortcut seem more reasonable.
Common examples include hardcoded values that should be configurable, duplicated code that should be abstracted into reusable functions, and temporary workarounds that become permanent fixtures.
Database queries might be written inline rather than being properly abstracted, configuration might be scattered across multiple files, and business logic might be tightly coupled with presentation logic.
The insidious nature of this debt is that it's often invisible to stakeholders and product managers. The application appears to work fine from the outside, but internally, developers are spending increasing amounts of time working around existing problems rather than building new features.
Simple changes require modifications in multiple places, and adding new functionality becomes progressively more difficult as the codebase becomes more tangled.
This isn't solely a vibe-coding issue though, to be fair. Every application has some level of technical debt, usually managed through frequent refactoring and code reviews.
The issue is more about letting it run on autopilot with no oversight for long periods of time.
4. Testing Nightmares
Vibe-coded applications are notoriously difficult to test effectively. When code is written without considering testability, it tends to have tight coupling between components, heavy dependencies on external services, and complex interdependencies that make unit testing nearly impossible.
Functions might depend on global state, make direct database calls, or interact with the file system in ways that can't be easily mocked or stubbed. Classes might have too many responsibilities, making it unclear what exactly should be tested.
The lack of clear interfaces and abstractions means that testing one component often requires setting up extensive mock environments for dozens of dependencies.
Integration tests become equally problematic because the system's behavior is unpredictable. Without clear contracts between components and consistent error handling, it's difficult to write meaningful tests that verify the system works correctly under various conditions.
The result is either inadequate test coverage or tests that are so complex and brittle that they break frequently and provide little confidence in the system's reliability.
Perhaps the most costly issue with vibe-coded applications emerges when they need to scale. Code written based on immediate needs and intuitive solutions rarely considers performance implications or scalability requirements. Database queries might be inefficient, algorithms might have poor time complexity, and system resources might be used wastefully.
These problems often remain hidden during initial development and testing because they only manifest under realistic load conditions. A database query that works fine with 100 records might timeout with 10,000.
An algorithm that seems fast enough during development might consume excessive CPU resources when handling concurrent requests. Memory leaks that are imperceptible during short testing sessions might cause applications to crash after running for days or weeks.
When scalability issues finally surface, they're often deeply embedded in the application's architecture. Fixing them requires significant refactoring or complete rewrites of major components.
In extreme cases, the entire application might need to be redesigned to handle the performance requirements, making the original vibe-coded solution a complete loss. It happens.
Moving Beyond Vibe Coding
The solution to vibe coding isn't to abandon intuition entirely. Experienced developers' instincts are valuable and should be trusted. However, these instincts should be balanced with deliberate practice of established software engineering principles.
Successful development teams establish coding standards, conduct regular code reviews, implement automated testing pipelines, and invest time in architectural planning. They create environments where developers can move quickly while still maintaining code quality through tools, processes, and shared knowledge.
The key is recognizing that sustainable software development requires both speed and discipline. While vibe coding might seem faster in the short term, the long-term costs in maintenance, debugging, and technical debt far outweigh any initial time savings.