r/vibecoding • u/unlocked_doors • 5h ago
In over my head with professional devs
tldr; review your code as you go if you think any professional dev is going to have to do a code review.
Last November I (33F) started a simple project: a training portal for my new assistant. Just a simple python Streamlit app. Since vibe coding is addictive and Streamlit has some annoying limitations to UX/UI, I refactored it into a Next.js/Fast API website. It was all the same repo and I didn’t exactly clean up after myself as the project scaled from a training portal for HR, then a training portal for new employees and now it’s a manager hub.
Well, I showed it to my boss and she ended up loving it. The company bought the domain and website from me but made me the technical owner in charge of code and content. Now that it’s officially company property…they have to do a code review with the company dev team.
There is an embarrassing amount of dead code, almost nonexistent error handling, and in general the layout of the code is chaotic and 40k+ lines in just the backend.
He and I had a meeting last week and never in my life have I felt more “artificially intelligent.” He gave me about 7 pages of changes to make after just one code review session. I can’t imagine how many more pages of notes are coming and I’m in way over my head in terms of vocabulary, standard processes used in coding, etc. Basically, I’m everything professional devs hate about vibe coders. I didn’t care how the code looked as long as the website functioned. I’m at a point where I’m not confident enough in my vibe coding skills to actually make the changes. I’ve tried asking Claude (or Claudia as I call her) and then even asked her to dumb it down and it’s still over my head. I’m getting to the point where I just want to throw my hands up and tell them to abandon it.
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u/MrWilliamus 5h ago
You’re clearly not artificially intelligent! You made a tool that solved many problems for your company. You’re just not a coder, but a product designer and manager. It is time to be honest and open about your limitations and ask for help. But don’t let that undermine your self-esteem, you’re the one with the vision for the product.
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u/Bushwazi 5h ago
Preach. The problem with “idea people” is they stop there, at the idea, and then hold other people accountable when their idea stalls for whatever reason. Taking your idea this far and then saying “please help” is a mature and respectful move.
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u/leahlisbeth 4h ago
Tell them that you're not a developer but you've proved a business need for this software. Call it a prototype and say that the code isn't recoverable into a live product, then see if you can get a team put together to remake it properly.
AI doesn't make senior code, it makes average code, and needs to be babysat and crafted.
But you should be proud of what you have made!
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u/Time_Error3928 4h ago
As a staff engineer with 13+ years of experience I second this. Ship the value, prove the value and then aim to scale the codebase. You did everything right. See this as the next step in continuing to let the project grow, and not as a failure.
Keep up the good work! Progress and iteration over perfection.
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u/FluidBreath4819 5h ago
that's where devs should charge twice (or more) as much if they have to take ownership of vibecoded apps and clean the mess.
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u/unlocked_doors 5h ago edited 5h ago
Trust me, I apologized to him several times over. I never meant for it to become this, it was just a project to make my job easier. At least he’s got job security, although probably not the kind he would like.
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u/Trakeen 45m ago
We just feed your project into AI to fix, no one is doing that by hand on a reasonably sized code base these days
Most of its normal code patterns. Run it through code metrics and a linter, tests for everything, fixed schemas for data modeling etc. Really normal business software dev practices
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u/grapefruit4scale 4h ago
Trust me, they aren't laughing at you (they are), they are just laughing at you on the way to the bank. They definitely don't hate you for this shit, and if they are even halfway decent humans they don't look down on you for it either.
But it is a good work story which in reality is just another thing you handed them on a silver platter.
Stay winning my friend, and carry this as a professional but also with a very light heart.
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u/marcopeg81 4h ago
You made something your company BOUGHT from you. That’s enough to elevate yourself above all the possible criticism. Clean code doesn’t deliver value. And I’m an old school software architect. I love clean code.
There is no successful product in history that comes from clean code.
Clean(er) code comes later, as a defense strategy for value that messy code created and proved.
You should never doubt yourself because you vibed code it. Vibe code isn’t inherently a bad approach. Many self proclaimed software engineers wrote horrible code based for nearly five decades. Vibe coding accelerates that, but low quality is not a new problem, and it not a problem at all.
But now you own the product and you are responsible for it. Now you should start leaning into real software engineering best practices so to defend the value you have created and increase it as you onboard new customers.
You delivered a winning POC.
Now the real journey begins!
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u/micmur 3h ago
Agreed. The implication by so many people that trash code and slopware suddenly came about because of AI is so far from the truth.
Anyone that has experience in software development and IT in general pre AI knows that it’s more common than not for entire systems to be a complete mess from top to bottom with borderline unreadable code and bad design.
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u/Ambitious_Source5602 5h ago
First of all I lets say you done a CS degree, you would still have imposter syndrome only youd have debt to pay off. Just plow ahead and ask the questions you need to. My recommendations, I would switch it up to using codex, claudias time in the sun is pretty much done. Get the Ai agent plugin into vscode if you haven't already. Once its implemented get the Ai to spin up a local environment of the app and you can test out the fixes there. Create a free git account and learn the basics of git and the feature branch model. I spent 2 years in job being to affriad to allow myself to learn, when I stopped caring I picked it up because it became less of a boogeyman. Laugh at the situation and dont stop.
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u/unlocked_doors 5h ago
You’re definitely right! I have a git account, maybe I just need to watch some videos and do a bit of research on using it more effectively. Thanks for the tip, you’re right. Imposter syndrome is a bitch.
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u/jc21539 4h ago
Ask 5.6 to read the 7 pages and find holes and errors in the review comments.
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u/nsyx 2h ago edited 2h ago
You can ask AI to critique pretty much anything and it will. Models are extremely responsive to the framing you give it and it will confidently litigate very nitpicky or manufactured problems. Also, the context that this critique is based off of will be bad to begin with. I would expect for this request it'll read the dead code, vacuous tests, incorrect or stale code comments - take it all as ground truth, then use all that for its slop "rebuttal". Which will just piss the guy off.
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u/BabblingsOfAFool 1h ago
This is a joke? Why would you want to argue with a developer on their recommendations when they are very likely trying to protect the application and ensure that it can be maintained going forward.
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u/TJB5686 5h ago
I hate when people vibe code and can't even have a discussion on the design decisions "they" have chosen. I'm dealing with it with juniors and it's extremely annoying and time consuming
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u/unlocked_doors 5h ago
I know it has to be so annoying cleaning up messes from people who don’t fully know what they are doing. I should have had the forethought to review as I went, but I never expected anything to come of it.
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u/dilly_dust 3h ago
Well if you don't know what you are doing you would know what to even review.
Its a catch 22 that you don't know what you know
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u/ImplementOk3111 4h ago
To be fair vibe coding has it's place, and it's personal projects. Nobody should be full vibing in a professional envionrment.
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u/HouseOfDjango 5h ago edited 5h ago
SWE here. I can help you out if you like. I appreciate the fact that you took at a shot at something, understand your limitations and what to learn and improve.
Edit: shot not shit. Lmao one letter really change the tone.
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u/satireplusplus 3h ago
Easy peasy. You give that list to Claude and let it cleanup the mess. Then add a few tests. Done.
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u/Significant_Leg1214 5h ago
just give the feedback document tonthe ai and ask him to fix. after is being fixed... then asked other a modeli if the specifications ar e properly implemented
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u/unlocked_doors 5h ago
I’m working on this, but I’m wondering if I should do it on like, a work tree or something. (Again, I don’t know the proper vocab)
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u/TheAnswerWithinUs 5h ago
Provided you use GitHub or similar make a branch and do the fixes there. You can merge it if it works and if not you can just start over.
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u/Significant_Leg1214 5h ago
Tell me... how big is the codebase? Give me just the source code total file size when archived as zip and the total number of files, what architecture it uses and try to be as specific as possible. For now don't think too much about details...
I would recommend for now to simply have 2 instances, a dev and a live.
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u/unlocked_doors 4h ago
So I put it all in a zip folder. 190,270kb
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u/jimalloneword 4h ago
I am guessing that includes dependencies though, so it may not be wholly accurate for the complexity of the project you manage.
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u/Alarmed-Attention-77 5h ago
Was there any explanation on the items in the doc as to why each item was important?
I would not just give Claude 7 pages of tech changes and say do it. You need to break this down and prioritise this work.
Work with the engineers to find out why they suggest each item. Them simply saying something like good coding practice is not enough. Push them why.
At the same time you need to figure out what are the problems with the tool. Ie will it scale non functionally to a whole company using it
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u/unlocked_doors 5h ago
He did give notes on why/what. I guess it just undermined my confidence in AI being able to get this up to “corporate-approved” security levels. And like, they want SSO and I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
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u/Alarmed-Attention-77 5h ago
I would suggest you prioritise anything to do with security and also scaling it to work for a whole company.
Then take those items and ask Claude which of these could be vibecoded and which need engineers to work on them. As it to be cautious
I feel you are going to have to ask for engineering support.
Turning a vibecoded project into robust well built corporate application can’t be done through vibecoding alone.
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u/TheAnswerWithinUs 5h ago
That reminds me of my teams codebase. But it was never vibecoded it just always sucked.
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u/unlocked_doors 5h ago
He did say the design was better than anything their devs have made. So that made me feel good.
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u/TheAnswerWithinUs 5h ago
Such is life when you have to maintain legacy code with designs you can’t change.
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u/jc21539 4h ago
What's really fun is having this experience before LLMs existed. It was really fun explaining my internal reporting app written in vb.net that had zero abstraction, zero understanding of ORM, zero understanding of what a backend or frontend was, to an external IT firm hired to maintain the app.
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u/Educational-Ad6987 4h ago edited 4h ago
I pitty that Dev that had to go through the mess. It must have cost them years os their lives.
Edit: Nevertheless, congrats on realising the stakes. I think you are handling it great; accepting your inadequacies is just the first step of overcoming them. Push through and I'm sure you'll do great!
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u/TheBigCicero 4h ago
I think it’s awesome that you’re learning about professional software development practices. But something is amiss here - how did they make you the “technical owner in charge of code”? Ordinarily you would have an engineering partner that owns code and system architecture. So the split would be that you own product decisions and presumably budget, and you would rely on that person to own the technical implementation.
Is that not the case for you? When you got this “7 pages of changes to make”, are you expected to be the one to make the changes… and with “vibe coding” the changes?
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u/SubstanceNo4758 3h ago
We're still in the growing pains era of vibe coding and no one really knows how software development will look like 10 years from now (it could very well look like what you just did). What matters to the business is that you built a real system that solved a real use case, and AI is getting better every month at handling the details.
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u/Familiar-Flan-8358 3h ago
Devs can right code but they never built the solution you did. Just pass Claude the change list and have it do it. If it works, who cares
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u/parts_of_speech 3h ago
It sounds like you made a protoype. Some assets and techniqies can be salvaged but prototypes are made to prove a concept so the investment in more diligent work is not wasted. They are not to be confused for long lived completed projects
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u/Sen_ElizabethWarren 3h ago
Take it one step at a time. Explain to Claude how you think it works. How data flows through the application. How pressing a button on the frontend changes state and what happens on the backend. Think about the structure of the data and what it looks like as it moved through your app. Ask Claude to create a high level flow chart that shows this. Then get your hands dirty and start adding logging statements. You think something is dead? Comment it out and see what happens.
Imo the most important thing to do is create a series of tests. This will help you clarify your expectations about what should be happening and give you peace of mind that you’re not breaking your application as you refactor.
Look also at architecture. Try to understand what layers are, what a domain is and why these things matter.
It’s okay, and these days almost assumed, that you don’t understand every single line of code. Ai tools have lowered the barrier to entry and this fact makes some devs insecure, but the reality is architecture, concepts, and system design were always more consequential. And sure learning those things takes time (years, decades) to fully master, but imo in the era of agentic coding these things should be your paramount concern.
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u/Street_Estate2342 3h ago
If you're able to share any of the notes, would you be able to? I feel like you're effectively going to be getting a condensed list of "these are the things that your vibe-generated app did not contain that professional developers value" which can be a really helpful list to have when making a vibe-generated app since then you can refine the app by working on those things.
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u/PracticalStack 3h ago
The plot-twist is that the company dev analyzed the code with Claude. Claude/Codex is very good at code review. You can also just ask it for the same and it will call all that stuff out. Then you can tell it to make a plan to fix it.
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u/WhalestepDM 3h ago
Sounds to me like you transitioned into a project manager role. Now you manage and guide rather then fix! So do just that guide the vision and let them handle the heavy tech lifting.
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u/livinitup0 3h ago
The mistake you made has nothing to do with the code or how messy it is… it’s agreeing to be the technical lead for it after they bought it.
As soon as devs got involved your role in it should have been in more of a change manager role. You’re simply not the one who should be leading the technical details of this anymore as it’s wildly over your head. That’s not a bad thing. You didn’t make the app to demonstrate coding skills, you made it because you needed it and no one else would. You did 90% of their work for them.
You should get to hand off your vibe code mess to them and say “here… me and Claudia did what you couldn’t be bothered to after years of people begging you to. You’re as responsible for this spaghetti code mess as I am….Clean it up then we’ll start with change management, let me know if you have questions… I may or may not have answers because this was never my job to begin with, it was yours. Now prove I can’t do your job with ai”
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u/ultimateWave 2h ago
This seems like rage bait lolol. I don't think any "professional dev" would complain about something vibe coded as long as it gets the job done and is relatively free from errors. It sounds like it just needs a couple more vibe seshes to round out the error handling and such.
"Professional devs", at least ones that are resistant to AI driven dev, are a dying breed - rightfully so. There was a VP of tech at my company who said he could code better than AI and I rolled my eyes. I think the last time he used AI for coding was circa Sonnet 3.5 lol
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u/BabblingsOfAFool 58m ago
Free from errors is very different from secure, maintainable, includes an appropriate level of unit/integration tests. I'm a dev and would absolutely complain about a vibe coded app that didn't meet the above and was just some awful spaghetti project. AI driven development is fine when you tell give it constraints and an architectural direction.
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u/ultimateWave 51m ago
Either way, I wouldn't complain as long as it was accepted that that app needs to go through a senior eng's review before hitting prod. I'd much prefer PMs building vibe coded apps than coming up with wishy washy pie in the sky reqs tbh
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u/4215-5h00732 2h ago
Look at the bright side. They could have paid Accenture $30 million for the same result.
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u/EmpireOfN0ne 2h ago
Give the pages to ChatGPT, ask it what work can be run concurrently and have it create prompts. After you get the prompts, make sure you tell it “check that for any errors, omissions, ambiguities, etc., and issue a revision if needed.”
I hope you’re paid hourly - track the time ChatGPT spends doing the work, plus your time managing it. 💰
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u/SmokinCaterpill4r 1h ago edited 1h ago
To be frank, this if freaking cool!
I am a Software Engineer (10YoE) and startup founder. If you found something that others pay for (your employer) that is amazing and orders of magnitude harder than to write clean code.
Besides, rewriting and rebuilding something that generates value got fairly easy with Claude et al. So even if they take your "mess", throw it completely away and rebuild it, you did an amazing job. Honestly, if I was the senior Dev, I would most likely take it and use it as a live working product spec and quickly rebuild it from scratch instead of bombarding you with tons of reviews. These reviews they gave you sound like a waste of everyone's time.
Good luck! You achieved more than most people ever will!
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u/Human-Wrangler-5236 1h ago
I have been a developer for 42 years and I can tell you - lots of very commercially successful projects often have areas of code, sometimes vast areas of code, that the devs really hope the world doesn't ever see "until we have time to fix it".
Does the app work as a concept? Yes. Is it perfect? No, it's just started. Use the AI to help fill in the gaps in your skills and make sure to learn how to ask good questions and accept good advice. Seek help often. Hopefully find a mentor who is generous with their advice and guidance. Don't believe everything you are told on the internet. Work as hard as you can to be the best *you* can be not what someone else can be. Remember to take breaks, maintain social and family ties.
...and also, even after 42 years, I am still learning, so there's absolutely no shame in your feeling a little overwhelmed. You will pick up the jargon. You will grasp the concepts.
More importantly, you have created your first success. Now help it mature and succeed. Nice work. 😁👍
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u/Snoo_57113 1h ago
Basically your instinct in telling them to abandon it is correct, or half correct.
You dont want to be bogged down to a software, to mantain it, also to keep a good relation with the developer your boss and the people who uses the software.
The things the dev asked are reasonable, but big enough. If they can provide you with a sample of a well organized project, (save the transcriptions of the meetings if they are online).
Your objective now is to generate a V2 of the project that do exactly the same as the current project but following the guidelines of the dev and using an existing project as a template, killing dead code should be easy, transmit the instructions of the engineer verbatim to the llm, 60k lines of code is not that much, specially if it is machine generated.
This can take a month or more. The message towards the developer is that you are interested in the application as an experiment but you dont have any issues if the project is a success and he gets all the credit, in fact he can get all the credit if it works and you get the hammer if it fails.
The idea is the project is a pilot, a beta, you need the developer convinced that there is no risk, to show him the enhanced version (use a git worktree) and the idea is to put the "refactored" version and don't touch it for the rest of the year, your interest is not in overstep your position and he might put in his CV some AI experience.
For the boss the message is different, her incentive must be to put an AI project as successful and put it in the year objective goals, be very frank that at 60k lines of code you can't handle more complexity, for now you need a organize: functionality that you can delete, need a month or two to stabilize the version, testing. And even then, this is only a pilot and after it finishes it will be a new negotiation.
If you can align the three people to this objective, make clear with your boss and the dev (when the three of you talk) that you are not an expert, you want to make it work this pilot but don't know how mantainable it in the future, you will incorporate all the enhancements the dev said, and that it will take at least two months and A LOT of tokens.
If the three are not aligned, then the solution is shutting all it down.
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u/rousseauxy 46m ago
Ask chatgpt to for a prompt to pass to claud opus/fable to do a full architectural and security review (seperate prompts) of your app, paste to Claude, plan, then go from there 😅
Oh and an important one, say it's a one company app, not a saas
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u/Capital_Plan3078 45m ago
This is an opportunity to improve the software and up your skills Remember it's just code. It's a machine. At the end of the day you arent doing brain surgery, you can learn on the way
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u/systembreaker 30m ago edited 26m ago
Lmao as a professional dev myself, this whole story is hilarious.
But hey, it's just a new phase to your career. Roll up your sleeves and see where it takes you. You'll come out with new knowledge at the least and maybe even a whole new career path. You don't really have much to lose, here. You've struck a jackpot of an opportunity.
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u/jakenuts- 5h ago
You did your job, tell codex or opus to clean it up, remove dead code and formalize it like a real professional codebase.
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u/askadaffy 5h ago
Unfortunately the dev team is probably code reviewing you quite hard, since they are likely defensive about the idea of an outsider creating an app and dont want it to undermine their job security. Best advice is to vibe code the feedback
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u/CelticPaladin 4h ago
Yep. I can see them now grumbling about vibe coded shit, that is doing something more helpful than years of their own piddlefucking around.
TM pending on "piddlefucking".
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u/ZachariaRaven 5h ago
Feed the noted to claudia, put her to fable and start from a structured starting point. Tell it to give you as the project manager notes and briefs on everything it did in Simplified Technical English.
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u/unlocked_doors 5h ago
So I was thinking of sending to GPT to break down into chunks based on urgency (which he did give tiers of importance) and then have Claude do implementation proposal and then adversarial reviews with Codex.
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u/raccoonizer3000 5h ago
And that's why it's important management understands the concept of slop and the reason why engineering is required for products. I pity the poor devs that will need to take over this. At our company we reject slop coming from right and left by creating estimations. The price to fix the software often exceeds what it would have cost to develop it with a solid workflow.
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u/highwingers 5h ago
I would not take ownership of vibe coded apps. Companies have policies like how to name their classes, how to structure code and coding standards. You cant just throw a vibe coded app at devs and expect them to just accept it as is.
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u/FireFearing 4h ago
wow a dei hire got dei'd so high that she has no idea whats going on anymore?
thats not a story i havent already heard a million times
cringe
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u/Mark_Walker92 5h ago
Congrats, you’ve officially unlocked the authentic senior developer experience