How vibe coding changed my development process

I've become a massive convert to vibe coding and the ability to build features without necessarily needing to know exactly all of the specific coding that's needed to get there.

This has been game-changing for quickly building prototypes where there's been a need to move fast and have an idea but not necessarily all of the expertise to build out the feature. For me, that's meant building a lot of things with React and slowly building up my knowledge of how components work while letting the language model, particularly Claude 3.7, do most of the heavy lifting.

Turbo-Charged Exploration

The thing that I found most impactful as a second-order consequence of Vibe Coding is the ability to quickly explore lots of different ways of going about something rather than having to crystallize and settle on a specific solution very early in the process. This means that rather than having one prototype, it's possible to have four or five and purposely take them in different directions.

One of the core values of prototyping in general is being able to put something substantiated and tangible into people's hands to get feedback. Now being able to do that early on to determine which way to take a particular project has become much more powerful, rather than having to put all your eggs in one basket early in the process. When I was building a new customer portal recently, I was able to mock up three completely different navigation approaches in a single afternoon – something that would have been unthinkable in my pre-Vibe workflow.

The End of the Sunk Cost Fallacy

The dramatic reduction in time and effort to generate new features by creating them much more quickly using Vibe coding means it's much more likely I'll actually remove features that turn out not to be as effective as initially expected. I remember countless instances where a feature took many hours of banging my head against a wall, and afterward, it wouldn't make its way out of a product for love nor money – simply because I'd invested too much time to admit it wasn't working.

With Vibe, I integrated a news information feed into the Insights dashboard I was developing. I completed the feature in a short amount of time, but after launching it, I realized the news information didn't add the value I initially expected. Without being emotionally attached to the feature, I was able to remove it effortlessly. This experience reinforced the psychological freedom from sunk costs, making my development process more agile and user-focused. ⁠

The Underestimated Cognitive Load

Because you're not actually typing code (or potentially even typing at all if you're using something like Willow Voice) and having to figure out exactly all the steps that are needed, it's very easy to underestimate the amount of cognitive effort that goes into building a feature or product using vibe coding.

At some point it will hit you that you've actually burned through a lot of thinking time – albeit with great output, but not at zero cost. I've found myself mentally exhausted after a productive day of Vibe coding, despite not having written a single line of traditional code. The mental effort shifts from syntax concerns to higher-level architecture and design decisions, which can be equally demanding but in different ways.

Minimum Viable Knowledge

Right now we're still in an area where it matters that you're able to understand at least something of what traditional software engineering entails. A good example of this is version control – putting your code into a repo using either GitHub or GitLab. This is something that's easy to skip entirely if you don't have awareness of its importance, ultimately leading you to troublesome situations where the feature you're building disappears due to something the language model decided to do down the line.

Understanding basic software architecture concepts, knowing how to evaluate the code you're receiving, and having enough context to ask the right questions are all still crucial skills. I've found that having at least a rudimentary understanding of React component structure helps me guide Claude toward better solutions rather than accepting whatever it first suggests.

The Unexpected Learning Acceleration

What I didn't anticipate was how quickly I'd actually learn proper coding techniques through this process. By seeing patterns in Claude's solutions and asking questions about why certain approaches were taken, I've absorbed far more practical knowledge than I did with traditional tutorials.

I've always been a fan of learning by doing and Vibe Coding has taken that to the next level. When something breaks, I can ask for explanations that are tailored exactly to my level of understanding. This has accelerated my learning in ways that wouldn't have been possible through traditional means.

The Collaboration Conundrum

Working with traditional development teams while using Vibe coding creates interesting dynamics. Some developers are initially skeptical of AI-generated code, while others embrace the productivity boost. I've found the most success by being transparent about which parts were AI-assisted and maintaining a learning mindset where the team can improve the generated code together.

The most productive collaborations happen when everyone sees the language model as another team member with specific strengths and weaknesses, rather than as a threat or magical solution.

Where This Is All Heading

As these tools continue to improve, I believe we're heading toward a future where the technical barriers to software creation continue to drop dramatically. J

This doesn't mean developers will become obsolete – quite the opposite. Their role will likely shift more toward architecture, optimization, and solving novel problems while the rote implementation work decreases. For businesses, this means faster iteration, more experimentation, and ultimately better products built by cross-functional teams where technical knowledge is more evenly distributed.

The transition won't be without growing pains, but for someone who's always had ideas that exceeded their technical capabilities, it's an incredibly exciting time to be building software.