How Vibe Coding Can Make Your Software Headaches Worse, Experts Warn

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• Vibe coding enables 1 to programme successful plain English. 
• However, it intends velocity complete codification reappraisal and rigor.
• Code value whitethorn beryllium inconsistent.

Vibe coding has go nan caller must-do successful exertion shops. The word and methodology were first coined by Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI, successful February 2025. "I conscionable spot stuff, opportunity stuff, tally stuff, and copy-paste stuff, and it mostly works," he said astatine nan time. 

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"Unlike accepted AI-assisted coding aliases brace programming, vibe coding intends you picture what you want successful plain English," according to a report from v0. It besides enables some master and national developers to "let AI suggestions guideline projects pinch small aliases nary codification review." One tin moreover "trust nan AI to grip dense lifts for illustration syntax, structure, and implementation. This displacement transforms coding from a method accomplishment requiring years of training into a conversational interface that anyone tin maestro successful hours."

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's genitor company, revenge an April 2025 suit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights successful training and operating its AI systems.)

'Businesses don't tally connected vibes'

Early 2025 information show that 25% of Y Combinator startups had complete 95% AI-generated code, commented Varun Badhwar, laminitis and CEO astatine Endor Labs. Vibe coding has emerged arsenic nan go-to attack to quickly building and processing caller products. 

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Is vibe coding excessively bully to beryllium true? 

Veteran manufacture watcher David Linthicum thinks it is, particularly astatine nan endeavor level. "Vibe coding whitethorn activity for individual projects aliases hackathons, but nan existent world demands thing much substantial," he said successful a caller LinkedIn post. "Businesses don't tally connected vibes -- they tally connected reliability, scalability, and maintainability. The longer an endeavor indulges successful vibe coding, nan harder and much costly it becomes to standardize, refactor, and unafraid their systems."

The deficiency of standards that travel pinch vibe coding "means that codification value is wildly inconsistent," Linthicum besides pointed out. "Features implemented 1 week are duplicative aliases incompatible pinch codification written nan next." And since vibe coding is simply a shortcut, it racks up method debt. The costs of cleaning up aft vibe coding is huge. What whitethorn commencement arsenic 'move accelerated and break things' excessively often becomes move accelerated and break everything, past walk a luck rebuilding it." 

Vibe coding apps "keep hitting vulnerabilities: exposing secrets, entree misconfigurations, hardcoded credentials," according to v0.

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For startups and smaller businesses, nan consequence grows. "As bad actors turn much blase and find caller ways to execute distant codification execution, nan stakes are going to turn for amateur vibe coders," Badhwar cautioned. The smaller nan organization, nan much difficult and costly it is to retrieve from a breach. "Basing products wholly disconnected AI-generated codification is risky."

How vibe coding tin amplify quality coding issues

In immoderate ways, vibe coding whitethorn amplify and standard issues pinch quality coding. "People don't do codification reviews enough," Brandon Evans, elder Instructor astatine SANS Institute, told ZDNET. "This is accelerated by vibe coding. We person been neglecting nan reviewing of human-written codification arsenic well."  

Vibe coding, powered by GitHub Copilot aliases immoderate AI tool, "helps successful generating responses quickly but often skips champion practices, documentation, and system design," agreed Naga Santhosh Reddy Vootukuri, main package engineering head astatine Microsoft and writer of Vibe Coding pinch GitHub Copilot. "You request to iterate aggregate times aliases walk successful correct discourse a correct prompts to execute your desired results."

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Vootukuri identifies nan superior dangers of vibe coding arsenic "security vulnerabilities, accelerated method debt, fragmented architectures, and codification cipher understands aliases tin maintain." Security is simply a worrisome issue, arsenic "AI-generated suggestions whitethorn look functional but hide subtle bugs aliases moreover create caller onslaught vectors," he added. "Security oversight and heavy expertise are captious successful avoiding "time and effort successful rewriting, support headaches, and unreliable software,"   

Code procreation devices aren't caller

At nan aforesaid time, nan issues pinch vibe coding aren't needfully new. "Code procreation devices aren't new," said Louis Landry, main exertion serviceman astatine Teradata. "We've had scaffolding, templates, and codification generators for decades. What's different now is nan scope of what's possible. It feels magical because it is. You tin quickly prototype and research experiences and integrations that would've taken excessively overmuch clip to warrant before. But nan fundamentals haven't changed: Dev teams are responsible for nan codification they ship, whether a quality aliases instrumentality wrote it. Code reappraisal is captious sloppy of nan source."

However, Landry continued, "the problem is erstwhile teams skip that reappraisal process because nan output looks polished. We're early successful nan maturity curve here. The exertion is powerful, but nan subject astir it hasn't caught up yet."  Landry besides cautioned against method indebtedness that whitethorn build up pinch vibe-coding shortcuts. 

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"Bridging velocity pinch subject is cardinal -- occurrence comes erstwhile teams merge AI-driven productivity pinch robust workflows and clear standards," said Vootukuri. "Treat AI outputs arsenic unsmooth drafts, ne'er production-ready code. Maintain rigorous reviews, tally fixed analysis, and travel strict coding standards. Document each usage of AI and ever cross-check security-especially connected thing customer-facing aliases sensitive. With acquisition and time, you tin amended connected nan prompts and inquire nan correct questions to LLMs, enforce mandatory adjacent reviews wrong your team, automate CI tests, and clear alignment pinch business goals, each thief guarantee that AI remains an accelerator, not a liability."