I recently designed a website for the business I am starting with colleagues. I completed the design, and now I need to code the page. I couldn't help but think, "Why don't I try this vibe coding business I keep hearing about?"
I initially wanted to get my feet wet using AI to code the page and finish quickly, but I kept running into snags. It took me a long while to write the prompt that would give me something resembling what I pictured in my head. Of course, it was not perfect. It was still off by a bit, in a thousand tiny ways, but I was frustrated with talking to the machine at that point, and gave up on having more conversation to fix the thing. I was discouraged and still wasn't even close to what I envisioned for the page.
So, I took YouTube's advice and instead of using a prompt to describe what I wanted, I sent it a graphic of the design I had in hand. That produced a closer approximation of what I was looking for, close enough that I could tweak it past the finish line. Getting even a close approximation of what I wanted took much longer than anticipated. However, I was still excited to tweak it and then get it online.
My excitement quickly evaporated because the code itself was pretty insane. The things it did to achieve even the simplest tasks were too complex, which made it very confusing to read. The AI filled the code with hashed numbers, IDs, and Classnames, which made it hard to follow what I needed to fix and how to fix it. Each item was its own perfect little encapsulated issue to resolve, because of how it approached building the page like some Frankenstein monster. I quickly realized I had wasted my time and needed to start over.
Deflated, I started crafting the HTML first, then laying in the typographic scale, then pushing all the boxes into place. Naturally, I did run into snags and continued to use AI to code past those minor issues. I did end up coding the JS parts faster using AI, which is cool, but trying to shove a whole page through AI seems unrealistic when looking at the code it produced.
Everyone has their own vibe coding line in the sand, which is drawn based on how much that person already knows about programming in their particular field. In my case, I use AI to code in small steps. I treat it like a better Stack Overflow. This method still produces code that humans can maintain and easily change at will. Code that lasts into the future. Which is something I can respect and that is important to me.
That way, AI makes me faster without affecting the integrity of my work.