E6: I Tried Vibe Coding For 6 Months And Nearly Destroyed My Products (Why AI-Assisted Development Is Not What You Think) Founder Reality podcast

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E6: I Tried Vibe Coding for 6 Months and Nearly Destroyed My Products (Why AI-Assisted Development Is Not What You Think)

3d ago 20:11

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I fell hard for "vibe coding" - using AI to build apps based on vibes rather than understanding. Spent 6 months with Cursor and Claude, paying $200/month. Built 3 projects. One succeeded, two failed spectacularly.

- Project 1 (Success): Rebuilt our dormant mobile app in 2 days using Figma designs and Claude. Looked perfect, worked great, solved a real problem.

- Project 2 (Disaster): SimpleDirect Chat - added 10 features in weeks, hundreds of commits, now my own dev team won't touch the codebase. It's commercially unviable.

- Project 3 (Nightmare): Ghost blog redesign broke everything. 72pt fonts, broken margins, hours of failed fixes.

The wake-up call: The T app hack - a popular dating app built with vibe coding got completely compromised because of basic Firebase vulnerabilities. Driver licenses stolen, addresses leaked.

What I learned:

Vibe coding is amazing for prototypes and demos
It's dangerous for production and commercial apps
When everyone can code with AI, only 1-5% of companies will capture 90-95% of revenue
You're not just competing with other builders anymore - you're competing with AI-enabled teams

The brutal truth: Democratizing coding doesn't democratize success. It makes the market more concentrated, not less.

Why this matters for founders:

If you're vibe coding production apps, you're building on quicksand
The best developers using AI will dominate, not replaced by AI
Simplicity becomes your competitive advantage when complexity is cheap

My new approach: Stopped vibe coding. Focused on empowering actual developers with AI tools. They understand every line of code and can take it to the next level.

For CS students worried about AI: You won't be replaced if you're genuinely good at your craft. You'll be 5-10x enabled.

Disagree with my vibe coding take? Email [email protected] - always open to being wrong.

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