The Vibe Code Fallacy: Why Playing It Safe Is the Riskiest Strategy
I have tremendous respect for Steve Krouse and the Val Town team. They’ve built something genuinely innovative, a platform that makes coding more accessible and collaborative. But their recent piece “Vibe code is legacy code” embodies exactly the kind of thinking that will leave smart engineers behind in the AI transformation.
The piece argues for maintaining strict understanding and control over AI-generated code, using a “credit card debt” metaphor to describe the technical debt of code you don’t fully comprehend. Krouse advocates for “theory building” in programming, emphasizing deep understanding over rapid iteration. It’s a compelling argument that sounds prudent and responsible.
Krouse’s central premise rests on the idea that programming is fundamentally about “theory building”, that you must understand every line of code you deploy. He writes about keeping AI “on a tight leash” and warns against the dangers of “vibe coding” where you work with AI-generated code you don’t fully understand.
This sounds reasonable until you realize what it actually means: choosing the comfort of complete understanding over the necessity of rapid adaptation.
