Detailed Notes
In this episode of Building Better Foundations, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche explore vibe coding β the emerging trend of using AI to code in real time. Learn how developers are blending human creativity with AI precision to build faster, smarter, and more efficiently.
Discover the pros, cons, and real-world tips for making vibe coding part of your workflow β without falling into the trap of technical debt or confirmation bias.
π Topics Covered: β’ What vibe coding really is β’ How AI speeds up software development β’ Using user stories and TDD with AI β’ Avoiding technical debt β’ Tips for smarter, cleaner coding
π§ Listen to the full Building Better Developers podcast at https://develpreneur.com/vibe-coding-is-changing-the-way-developers-build-software/
*Follow-us on:*
* [email protected] * https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/@develpreneur * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://x.com/develpreneur * https://www.linkedin.com/company/develpreneur/
βΈ» #VibeCoding #AICoding #SoftwareDevelopment #BuildingBetterDevelopers #Develpreneur
Transcript Text
record because this time I hit record. And welcome back everybody. We are not doing an interview this time around. We are doing foundational stuff and I have no clue what we want to do it on. Um, >> you didn't share that list you did last time, but we had uh we've done the no code, low code, uh, AI. Uh, we've had the interview about trust and reliability, marketing and remote hiring. >> Oh, I didn't uh Yeah, let's see. Um, >> done. That was podcast ideas. Uh uh that's an interview. Well, for foundational stuff, should we do maybe one on um like project planning? Maybe code, not so much code reviews, but like code repositories, code like keeping track of code. Just trying to throw some ideas out. >> Let me see. I'm trying to see. Let me see if I can get back what I had last done because we did talk about like foundational stuff. Let me pull up the blog for the We did no code, low code. >> Did we do vibe coding? >> Uh, I think we were maybe going to do that. We talked about it, but I don't think we got too far in detail on it. >> I don't think we did. Um, >> well, let's do one on vod coding then and go from there. Um, >> yeah, because we talked about AI because we just mentioned it, but we really didn't do it. So, let's dive into that. Um, and talk a little bit about foundational stuff on that and maybe how to do it right. Let me see. Make sure I've got everything lined up here. And then there, get myself over here. We're just going to go right into a three, two, there. That's a two, a one. Hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season where we are building better foundations. Actually though we are building better developers the developer podcast. I am one of the hosts. I am Rob Broadhead. I'm a founder of developer also a founder of RB Consulting where we help you do technology better. We have this thing called a technology assessment. It's sort of like a a checkup for your car or a financial audit or uh actually when I say audit, usually people don't like the a word, but more of a financial assessment that you might do with your advisor. Same thing. Think of us as your technology advisor. We sit down, help first understand what you do, what your business is, what are your visions, what are your goals, and then we walk through a process that allows us to create a technology roadmap for you. Talk about things that you can do better. And that may be simplifying, integrating, even innovating. We may even, you know, help you build something new or uh just migrating to new systems and upgrade upgrades, things of that nature. Take that big investment of technology and make it work for you. So now it is actually turnurning out revenue. We have that roadmap for success. You can check us out at rb-sns.com. Uh we've got a couple different products and projects and all kinds of little things going out there. So check it out and let us know what you think. Good thing, bad thing. Um, bad. Well, let's see. Boy, there's so many good things and bad things. So, good thing is, uh, modern flooring is not very hard to put together. If you get like the little snap in and stuff like that, it can look really good, really fast, uh, really professional. Bad thing is, because I've been working on this, one, I am not a DIY kind of person. I will go figure that stuff out, but I'm just I I don't do good jobs with stuff. I'm the person that's like not likely to, you know, get a nail hammered straight in often enough or uh, you know, getting an edge exactly, you know, measured correct and all that kind of stuff. And so dealing with things like this where you're like off by a millimeter and you notice it is a little bit frustrating for me. So that has been a bad thing. But it's going to get better because for the next little bit I'm going to be doing a podcast instead of working on flooring. And I'm going to allow you guys to be introduced to Michael on the other side. >> Hey everyone, my name is Mike Malash. I'm one of the co-founders building better developers, also known as developer. I'm also the founder and owner of Envision QA where we help businesses take control of their software by focusing on what matters and that is quality, reliability, and support that you can count on. Whether you're building something new or trying to fix what's broken, we combine custom development with thorough testing to make sure your systems actually work. This way before you get in in front of your customers and let them touch it. We make sure that it works for them. Uh at Envision QA, we don't just build software. We make sure it's solid, stable, and ready to support your business growth. Check us out at envisionqa.com. Uh good thing, bad thing. Uh I'll start with the bad thing. Um, of course, weather is getting colder and I get a call from my daughter this morning that their HVAC went out. So, yet again, another household thing has to be replaced that is not a low ticket item. Uh, good thing weather is getting cooler, trees are starting to change color, and we're starting to get into fall. So, I'm starting to love it. >> It is good. Uh, that is the nice thing about the areas that we live in that uh you get four seasons. So, you do actually get to see like the leaves change and stuff like that. Of course, that also stirs up allergies, but that's another discussion. Today, we're going to dive back into we talked about low code and no code as our foundational stuff and we wanted we touched on AI and vibe coding and I think we're going to do a little bit more of that uh today because we really didn't have the time to uh you know give it the proper uh attention essentially. Now vibe coding uh let's start with the idea of vibe coding is that you are working through uh solving a problem and you're using AI to generate some code and give you and basically allowing AI to sort of code as you go and there's there are a lot of apps that are I guess apps we'll put quotes around those there's a lot of things that have been built out there a lot of people I've seen that are uh essentially putting together MVPs minimally viable products of some sort using vibe coding Now the problem with vibe coding is that there is also a huge amount of technology debt that ends up involved there because AI is not going to have that cohesive thought that you need as far as as building software. So from a foundational point of view I want to talk about so you know if if vibe coding is in itself maybe not good um then how do we find a way to make it good enough so that it can help us be more productive and that's where I want to focus in in my discussion is finding is like anything else and this goes back to what I've said before um I got from somebody else actually is that when you're dealing with AI think about it as dealing with a very junior maybe mid-level, you know, in this case developer. That means you have to be very specific. So if you're building an app, let's say using vibe coding, it can be very efficient. A good example is if you build a page that is part of your application and it g it has a look and a feel and a a style and a structure and u you know the backend infrastructure and architecture is sort of there or actually not even sort of is there and now you're just building on top of it then AI can be very good as long as you say given this architecture given this style given this look and feel I need you to build me a page that does X and it's not going to be 100% but it can get you very quickly to a lot of the code that you normally would be like you know maybe copy and pasting or you're like just typing the stuff that you've typed a thousand times before and if it's and the more you can refine and define your request the better it's going to be. So there's a lot of times that I will, you know, if I want to build a page very quickly, like a new page for an application, I can, I guess we'll call it vibe code, but basically I'm going to use AI and say here's my CSS. Here's a page that's almost exactly what I want. Here's the data model. These are the fields that I want to display. This is how I want to display them. You know, this is the general look and feel. Then it will spit something back out fairly quickly. you know, maybe in minutes it will give me something that it would have taken me maybe 20 or 30 minutes or longer to code out. Particularly if it's something complex, if it's something where you've got a lot of of of lists or a lot of very repetitive things where you can say, "Oh, hey, I want this page." And it's going to have 10 sections in it, it can throw up that page very quickly. And especially if you just need like that uh that skeleton essentially that you're going to then flesh out. And that actually is the next thing that I would say is like keep your request small and maybe start with uh particularly in a conversation start with an outline. Start with something that you can start you know a skeleton that you can start putting the pieces together. So if you think of a page I'm give you an example before I pass this on to Michael and his thoughts. If you have a page let's start with like think of a web application you're going to have uh some sort of navigation. So, if you know what the navigation roughly looks like, you know, maybe you want to do a top menu, you want to do a side menu, maybe you want to do pop out menus, you want to do a menu off the right, the left, the bottom, however it is. Once you can describe that, you can say, "Hey, give me a menu that follows these that, you know, follows these points that actually hits these requirements." And it may not always give you all the requirements. It may not hit all of them, but it's going to give you something now that you can work with. And so what you could do is you could take that and maybe it doesn't and you say, "Oh, wait a minute. These two navigation items need to be a different color." And then you can specifically drill down into it and say, "Okay, let's make these a different color." And this is, I know, a very simple example, but this is a way that you can actually vibe code your way into being more productive. You have to start with a good foundation. Now, you can use the vibe piece to start to put those pieces together for the foundation, but if you don't want to have a lot of technical debt, you're going to have to go back and clean it up as you go and make sure that it is, you know, what you what you are producing is clean and then also give it back clean because usually if you give it back, if you give it something in a certain style that follows certain standards, you're going to see something that is similar to those standards. And then be careful to make sure that if it kicks back more than you ask for that you don't pull in that extra croft basically because a lot of times it's going to end up being some sort of technical debt. That's like I know that was more of a soap box than an intro. Uh but I will step off my soap box and then toss that over to you Michael your thoughts. >> Yeah so typically I look at vibe coding. So given my background with testing and you know the focus of what I've been doing for the last 10 years is more test-driven development vibe coding to me can be very successful especially if you come at it from a testers perspective or at least a user story perspective. So like you said you got to be very descriptive. You have to kind of walk AI through what it is that you want. The thing is if you actually walk it through with clear user stories like hey as a user I need to uh log into an application. I need a login page and you walk through kind of the requirements that you need for the page and then AI can generate. Now you can be very kind of clean and straightforward like you said like here add a button here and things like that. But if you walk through it through requirements focus through the actual user story, you actually can get better clarification with AI as far as feedback. The other thing I found is as you go through the interaction with AI to build the application from a user story perspective, you can actually start out by saying, "Hey, write me a test case to do this." And it'll build you a test case. And then you can kind of then walk from the test case into the application like okay build me a test case to test a login page. Okay now build me a login page for this test case now and then you copy paste this into your application. What I find that's really useful with these user stories especially with coding and for vibe coding is you can eliminate a lot of that boilerplate or at least the structural understanding of code. So, if you're not a coder and you don't really know a language, you can just start out with, hey, how do I build a website? What do I need to build a website? And it will say, okay, well, you need X, Y, and Z. Okay, I don't understand that. Ask it. Okay, what how do I set this up? And really, AI can get you almost there. There are times where it will get you off the rails. You may need to go find another AI engine or just jump out to Google and search. Okay, AI tell me I need to build a web server. All right, it's giving me some steps, but I'm having problems. AI is not quite getting me there. So, take where you're struggling and drop it out into Google. Yes, Google still does some AI as well, but you might get some better results through Google to help you unplug some of those issues. So, V coding can get you mostly there, especially if you don't know anything about coding. But getting it to build you something that you want or help you understand what you want. It is better to go at it from a to me go at better from a user story perspective and walk it through what you want like be very clear because user stories really translate to requirements and if you can explain it to AI clearly and flush it out the confusion it has I think you're going to get your a better result of vibe coding with AI than if you don't. I agree that there I think that's that is probably the key is getting the user stories right. Um the problem with those or I guess the challenge with that when you do this is to make sure that you also take those to the right uh the right level. uh it's very easy uh and this is a lot of what we do in requirements gathering and I think that'll probably be maybe the next episode is we'll talk about that a little bit is we tend to we start with a big story usually like I love to use you know the ATM example of like I just want an ATM where I have an automated teller well cool but then what does that teller do what are the features are going to be available okay I want to be able to deposit money and I want to be able to withdraw money okay well is it for one account? Is it for multiple accounts? Is it how would you do that? Because before an AP ATM, it's like, well, nobody had an ATM card. So, how would that work? What happens? And then there's the all the questions around like, what happens if I try to withdraw money and there's no money in the machine or if I don't have enough money in my account or what if I try to deposit money and I don't actually deposit the cash or I don't deposit the check. How do I validate that check? How do I validate the cash? How do I count the thing? There's there's a lot of these things that goes on and on and on. And so when you're building your stories is it works again great to start from like sort of the high level but then you need to build it into a much more detailed outline. it is and you have to you have to sort of check yourself because I have found too often that people say like and I've had those conversations with customers not AI but just actually human beings human eye um where it's you know saying well this is what I want and as you have a conversation you realize that what they said they want is not actually what they want um there's a lot lot of people will hear things like uh CRM or ERP or uh EMR or all these other like tools and systems that are out there and they'll say like so and so said I need this I need an HR system and you find out that it's a somebody that somebody that has zero employees and like uh I don't know if you really need a HR system. What do you actually what problem are you actually trying to solve? And I think too often we start with the story instead of the problem. I think if you take it back a step and say this is the problem. This is the description of what I think the solution looks like then a lot of times then you'll be able to get some stuff back that says well you'll maybe AI will ask you question say well what about this or what about that or it may say that sounds like this kind of a solution. Should I look up some more about that? Should I educate you on that? And those are the ways that I think that you can step into uh AI and vibe coding and help yourself get to a solution that is actually a little more useful with a little less uh overhead and some of the extra stuff that you might have to clean up after the fact. I think we will I'll give you one more because we're we don't want to go too long because we're going to actually spoiler alert we're going to spill into some of this in the next episode. Thoughts? >> So I I kind of want to touch on the negatives of this a little bit. So if you're going into AI and you you're asking those things or you you have a problem but you haven't really defined the problem, be careful with AI vibe coding or even asking AI for too much input into what you need really to go talk to your customer about because you could get what's called confirmation bias. You could essentially go down a track of AI is telling you what you think you need and you're basically feeding AI. Oh, okay. Tell me more about and you're going down the wrong rabbit hole and you're actually going away from the problem or you're going away from the correct requirement. So, make sure that you do kind of check yourself as you're going through this and even check with the customer to make sure that you've got the right requirement before you go too far down building a system. That's a good Yeah, it's uh when in doubt, check yourself. Particularly when you're in an area where you don't um you don't have domain knowledge, where you're not really sure what you're doing. There's too often uh this goes back to and you then we'll wrap this one up. I think the thought is like there's been a lot of times that we've had customers, we've complained about this where or potential customers, prospects that have said, "Hey, I want to build um their project definition. I want to build eBay for uh honey or something like that or I want to be the Amazon for uh flower delivery or something like that and that's it. That's like their story. That's not going to cut it. Those kinds of things like you need to really spend some time researching and thinking about what it is you're getting into. And a lot of times I think you really need to go look when you get those answers. Do not take those answers because AI is still based on the internet basically. Don't take those answers as gospel because there's a lot of times you're going to get an answer and when you really start looking at it um you're going to find out that it's wrong. Uh I don't know how many times I've I've corrected AI and it's like oh yeah you're right. I didn't think about that or I wasn't using that or I was thinking this or you know I was focusing on this other thing sometimes just like human beings. But the direct is always going to be the best way. things like send us an email at infoddeveloper.com and let us know your thoughts. What do you what are your thoughts? I I would love to hear like low code no code vibe coding stories. Uh I know a lot of people are big on I see a lot of people that are projects out there that are potential customers like we want to use this, we want to no code this and low code that and vibe code that other thing. And I'd like to see some people that are like particularly that have been successful that have taken one of those systems completely to production and served, you know, more than five people at a time or something like that. And I've seen some, I'm not saying they don't exist. I've built a couple of things that are in these realms that have done that. But I would love to hear some other stories because it seems like they are few and far between. Most of them seem like they are things where people are like, "Okay, we built this thing in low no code. We vibe coded it. now we have to rewrite it completely in something else because they really didn't get they just got a like a play solution and not something that was production ready which is often the case with uh code generation tools. I digress again but uh check us out developer.com you can leave us comments there. We've got plenty and plenty of content there. The YouTube channel developer YouTube channel we've got all of like multiple seasons of episodes not to mention a lot of other stuff out there. Um, you can check us out on X. We are at Developer. We have a Facebook page. We're all of those good things. So, wherever you wherever you subscribe to podcast, leave us a review, leave us some feedback. We would love to hear it and uh help you out wherever we can with new, you know, new seasons, new episodes, new topics that are the ones that you requested because we're here for you. That being said, I have said too much. Go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Uh, bonus materials. You got to see the genesis of this this episode. So, we're going to keep this one a little bit short because you know what? You can't always have bonus. It's not Christmas every day. You don't get bonus after every episode. And depending on how this next one goes, you may get a lot of bonus stuff. Thank you so much for your time. We do appreciate you. Appreciate you guys hanging out here. uh all the ways I said give us the feedback you know it's all the feels it's all the feeds all the feedbacks uh let us know and we would be love love love to hear from you if you want to be a you know on the show let us know uh we're open to discussions with a lot of different people for our conversations our interviews and uh we're more than happy to bring people of all stripes because that is what makes us all better go out and have yourself a great Today,
Transcript Segments
record because
this time I hit record. And welcome back
everybody. We are not doing an interview
this time around.
We are doing foundational stuff and I
have no clue what we want to do it on.
Um,
>> you didn't share that list you did last
time, but we had uh we've done the no
code, low code, uh, AI.
Uh, we've had the interview about trust
and reliability, marketing and remote
hiring.
>> Oh, I didn't uh Yeah, let's see. Um,
>> done. That was podcast ideas.
Uh
uh that's an interview.
Well, for foundational stuff, should we
do maybe one on um like project
planning? Maybe code, not so much code
reviews, but like code repositories,
code like keeping track of code.
Just trying to throw some ideas out.
>> Let me see. I'm trying to see.
Let me see if I can get back what I had
last done because we did talk about like
foundational stuff.
Let me pull up the blog for the We did
no code, low code.
>> Did we do vibe coding?
>> Uh, I think we were maybe going to do
that. We talked about it, but I don't
think we got too far in detail on it.
>> I don't think
we did.
Um,
>> well, let's do one on vod coding then
and go from there. Um,
>> yeah, because we talked about AI because
we just mentioned it, but we really
didn't do it. So, let's dive into that.
Um, and talk a little bit about
foundational stuff on that
and maybe how to do it right. Let me
see. Make sure I've got everything lined
up here.
And then there, get myself over here.
We're just going to go right into a
three, two, there. That's a two, a one.
Hello and welcome back. We are
continuing our season where we are
building better foundations. Actually
though we are building better developers
the developer podcast. I am one of the
hosts. I am Rob Broadhead. I'm a founder
of developer also a founder of RB
Consulting where we help you do
technology better. We have this thing
called a technology assessment. It's
sort of like a a checkup for your car or
a financial audit or uh actually when I
say audit, usually people don't like the
a word, but more of a financial
assessment that you might do with your
advisor. Same thing. Think of us as your
technology advisor. We sit down, help
first understand what you do, what your
business is, what are your visions, what
are your goals, and then we walk through
a process that allows us to create a
technology roadmap for you. Talk about
things that you can do better. And that
may be simplifying, integrating, even
innovating. We may even, you know, help
you build something new or uh just
migrating to new systems and upgrade
upgrades, things of that nature. Take
that big investment of technology and
make it work for you. So now it is
actually turnurning out revenue. We have
that roadmap for success. You can check
us out at rb-sns.com.
Uh we've got a couple different products
and projects and all kinds of little
things going out there. So check it out
and let us know what you think. Good
thing, bad thing. Um,
bad. Well, let's see. Boy, there's so
many good things and bad things. So,
good thing is, uh, modern flooring is
not very hard to put together. If you
get like the little snap in and stuff
like that, it can look really good,
really fast, uh, really professional.
Bad thing is, because I've been working
on this, one, I am not a DIY kind of
person. I will go figure that stuff out,
but I'm just I I don't do good jobs with
stuff. I'm the person that's like not
likely to, you know, get a nail hammered
straight in often enough or uh, you
know, getting an edge exactly, you know,
measured correct and all that kind of
stuff. And so dealing with things like
this where you're like off by a
millimeter and you notice it is a little
bit frustrating for me. So that has been
a bad thing. But it's going to get
better because for the next little bit
I'm going to be doing a podcast instead
of working on flooring. And I'm going to
allow you guys to be introduced to
Michael on the other side.
>> Hey everyone, my name is Mike Malash.
I'm one of the co-founders building
better developers, also known as
developer. I'm also the founder and
owner of Envision QA where we help
businesses take control of their
software by focusing on what matters and
that is quality, reliability, and
support that you can count on. Whether
you're building something new or trying
to fix what's broken, we combine custom
development with thorough testing to
make sure your systems actually work.
This way before you get in in front of
your customers and let them touch it. We
make sure that it works for them. Uh at
Envision QA, we don't just build
software. We make sure it's solid,
stable, and ready to support your
business growth. Check us out at
envisionqa.com.
Uh good thing, bad thing. Uh I'll start
with the bad thing. Um, of course,
weather is getting colder and I get a
call from my daughter this morning that
their HVAC went out. So, yet again,
another household thing has to be
replaced that is not a low ticket item.
Uh, good thing weather is getting
cooler, trees are starting to change
color, and we're starting to get into
fall. So, I'm starting to love it.
>> It is good. Uh, that is the nice thing
about the areas that we live in that uh
you get four seasons. So, you do
actually get to see like the leaves
change and stuff like that. Of course,
that also stirs up allergies, but that's
another discussion. Today, we're going
to dive back into we talked about low
code and no code as our foundational
stuff and we wanted we touched on AI and
vibe coding and I think we're going to
do a little bit more of that uh today
because we really didn't have the time
to uh you know give it the proper uh
attention essentially.
Now vibe coding uh let's start with the
idea of vibe coding is that you are
working through uh solving a problem and
you're using AI to generate some code
and give you and basically allowing AI
to sort of code as you go and there's
there are a lot of apps that are I guess
apps we'll put quotes around those
there's a lot of things that have been
built out there a lot of people I've
seen that are uh essentially putting
together MVPs minimally viable products
of some sort using vibe coding Now the
problem with vibe coding is that there
is also a huge amount of technology debt
that ends up involved there because AI
is not going to have that cohesive
thought that you need as far as as
building software. So from a
foundational point of view I want to
talk about so you know if if vibe coding
is in itself maybe not good um then how
do we find a way to make it good enough
so that it can help us be more
productive and that's where I want to
focus in in my discussion is
finding is like anything else and this
goes back to what I've said before um I
got from somebody else actually is that
when you're dealing with AI think about
it as dealing with a very junior maybe
mid-level, you know, in this case
developer. That means you have to be
very specific.
So if you're building an app, let's say
using vibe coding, it can be very
efficient. A good example is if you
build a page that is part of your
application and it g it has a look and a
feel and a a style and a structure and u
you know the backend infrastructure and
architecture is sort of there or
actually not even sort of is there and
now you're just building on top of it
then AI can be very good as long as you
say given this architecture given this
style given this look and feel I need
you to build me a page that does X and
it's not going to be 100% but it can get
you very quickly to a lot of the code
that you normally would be like you know
maybe copy and pasting or you're like
just typing the stuff that you've typed
a thousand times before
and if it's and the more you can refine
and define your request the better it's
going to be. So there's a lot of times
that I will, you know, if I want to
build a page very quickly, like a new
page for an application, I can, I guess
we'll call it vibe code, but basically
I'm going to use AI and say here's my
CSS. Here's a page that's almost exactly
what I want. Here's the data model.
These are the fields that I want to
display. This is how I want to display
them. You know, this is the general look
and feel. Then it will spit something
back out fairly quickly. you know, maybe
in minutes it will give me something
that it would have taken me maybe 20 or
30 minutes or longer to code out.
Particularly if it's something complex,
if it's something where you've got a lot
of of of lists or a lot of very
repetitive things where you can say,
"Oh, hey, I want this page." And it's
going to have 10 sections in it, it can
throw up that page very quickly. And
especially if you just need like that uh
that skeleton essentially that you're
going to then flesh out. And that
actually is the next thing that I would
say is like keep your request small and
maybe start with uh particularly in a
conversation start with an outline.
Start with something that you can start
you know a skeleton that you can start
putting the pieces together. So if you
think of a page I'm give you an example
before I pass this on to Michael and his
thoughts. If you have a page let's start
with like think of a web application
you're going to have uh some sort of
navigation. So, if you know what the
navigation roughly looks like, you know,
maybe you want to do a top menu, you
want to do a side menu, maybe you want
to do pop out menus, you want to do a
menu off the right, the left, the
bottom, however it is.
Once you can describe that,
you can say, "Hey, give me a menu that
follows these that, you know, follows
these points that actually hits these
requirements." And it may not always
give you all the requirements. It may
not hit all of them, but it's going to
give you something now that you can work
with. And so what you could do is you
could take that and maybe it doesn't and
you say, "Oh, wait a minute. These two
navigation items need to be a different
color." And then you can specifically
drill down into it and say, "Okay, let's
make these a different color." And this
is, I know, a very simple example, but
this is a way that you can actually vibe
code your way into being more
productive. You have to start with a
good foundation. Now, you can use the
vibe piece to start to put those pieces
together for the foundation, but if you
don't want to have a lot of technical
debt, you're going to have to go back
and clean it up as you go and make sure
that it is, you know, what you what you
are producing is clean and then also
give it back clean because usually if
you give it back, if you give it
something in a certain style that
follows certain standards, you're going
to see something that is similar to
those standards. And then be careful to
make sure that if it kicks back more
than you ask for that you don't pull in
that extra croft basically because a lot
of times it's going to end up being some
sort of technical debt. That's like I
know that was more of a soap box than an
intro. Uh but I will step off my soap
box and then toss that over to you
Michael your thoughts.
>> Yeah so typically I look at vibe coding.
So given my background with testing and
you know the focus of what I've been
doing for the last 10 years is more
test-driven development vibe coding to
me can be very successful especially if
you come at it from a testers
perspective or at least a user story
perspective. So like you said you got to
be very descriptive. You have to kind of
walk AI through what it is that you
want. The thing is if you actually walk
it through with clear user stories like
hey as a user I need to uh log into an
application. I need a login page and you
walk through kind of the requirements
that you need for the page and then AI
can generate. Now you can be very kind
of clean and straightforward like you
said like here add a button here and
things like that. But if you walk
through it through requirements focus
through the actual user story, you
actually can get better clarification
with AI as far as feedback. The other
thing I found is as you go through the
interaction with AI to build the
application from a user story
perspective,
you can actually start out by saying,
"Hey, write me a test case to do this."
And it'll build you a test case. And
then you can kind of then walk from the
test case into the application like okay
build me a test case to test a login
page. Okay now build me a login page for
this test case now and then you copy
paste this into your application. What I
find that's really useful with these
user stories especially with coding and
for vibe coding is you can eliminate a
lot of that boilerplate or at least the
structural understanding of code. So, if
you're not a coder and you don't really
know a language, you can just start out
with, hey, how do I build a website?
What do I need to build a website? And
it will say, okay, well, you need X, Y,
and Z. Okay, I don't understand that.
Ask it. Okay, what how do I set this up?
And
really,
AI can get you almost there.
There are times where it will get you
off the rails. You may need to go find
another AI engine or just jump out to
Google and search. Okay, AI tell me I
need to build a web server. All right,
it's giving me some steps, but I'm
having problems. AI is not quite getting
me there. So, take where you're
struggling and drop it out into Google.
Yes, Google still does some AI as well,
but you might get some better results
through Google to help you unplug some
of those issues. So, V coding can get
you mostly there, especially if you
don't know anything about coding. But
getting it to build you something that
you want or help you understand what you
want. It is better to go at it from a to
me go at better from a user story
perspective and walk it through what you
want like be very clear because user
stories really translate to requirements
and if you can explain it to AI clearly
and flush it out the confusion it has I
think you're going to get your a better
result of vibe coding with AI than if
you don't.
I agree that there I think that's that
is probably the key is getting the user
stories right. Um the problem with those
or I guess the challenge with that when
you do this is to make sure that you
also take those to the right uh the
right level. uh it's very easy uh and
this is a lot of what we do in
requirements gathering and I think
that'll probably be maybe the next
episode is we'll talk about that a
little bit
is we tend to we start with a big story
usually like I love to use you know the
ATM example of like I just want an ATM
where I have an automated teller well
cool but then what does that teller do
what are the features are going to be
available okay I want to be able to
deposit money and I want to be able to
withdraw money okay well is it for one
account? Is it for multiple accounts? Is
it how would you do that? Because before
an AP ATM, it's like, well, nobody had
an ATM card. So, how would that work?
What happens? And then there's the all
the questions around like, what happens
if I try to withdraw money and there's
no money in the machine or if I don't
have enough money in my account or what
if I try to deposit money and I don't
actually deposit the cash or I don't
deposit the check. How do I validate
that check? How do I validate the cash?
How do I count the thing? There's
there's a lot of these things that goes
on and on and on. And so when you're
building your stories is
it works again great to start from like
sort of the high level but then you need
to build it into a much more detailed
outline. it is and you have to
you have to sort of check yourself
because I have found too often that
people say like and I've had those
conversations with customers not AI but
just actually
human beings human eye um where it's you
know saying well this is what I want and
as you have a conversation you realize
that what they said they want is not
actually what they want um there's a lot
lot of people will hear things like uh
CRM or ERP or uh EMR or all these other
like tools and systems that are out
there and they'll say like so and so
said I need this I need an HR system and
you find out that it's a somebody that
somebody that has zero employees and
like uh I don't know if you really need
a HR system. What do you actually what
problem are you actually trying to
solve? And I think too often we start
with the story instead of the problem. I
think if you take it back a step and say
this is the problem. This is the
description of what I think the solution
looks like then a lot of times then
you'll be able to get some stuff back
that says well you'll maybe AI will ask
you question say well what about this or
what about that or it may say that
sounds like this kind of a solution.
Should I look up some more about that?
Should I educate you on that? And those
are the ways that I think that you can
step into uh AI and vibe coding and help
yourself get to a solution that is
actually a little more useful with a
little less uh overhead and some of the
extra stuff that you might have to clean
up after the fact.
I think we will I'll give you one more
because we're we don't want to go too
long because we're going to actually
spoiler alert we're going to spill into
some of this in the next episode.
Thoughts?
>> So I I kind of want to touch on the
negatives of this a little bit. So if
you're going into AI and you you're
asking those things or you you have a
problem but you haven't really defined
the problem, be careful with AI vibe
coding or even asking AI for too much
input into what you need really to go
talk to your customer about because you
could get what's called confirmation
bias. You could essentially go down a
track of AI is telling you what you
think you need and you're basically
feeding AI. Oh, okay. Tell me more about
and you're going down the wrong rabbit
hole and you're actually going away from
the problem or you're going away from
the correct requirement. So, make sure
that you do kind of check yourself as
you're going through this and even check
with the customer to make sure that
you've got the right requirement before
you go too far down building a system.
That's a good Yeah, it's uh when in
doubt, check yourself. Particularly when
you're in an area where you don't um you
don't have domain knowledge, where
you're not really sure what you're
doing. There's too often uh this goes
back to and you then we'll wrap this one
up. I think the thought is like there's
been a lot of times that we've had
customers, we've complained about this
where or potential customers, prospects
that have said, "Hey, I want to build um
their project definition. I want to
build eBay for uh honey or something
like that or I want to be the Amazon for
uh flower delivery or something like
that and that's it. That's like their
story. That's not going to cut it. Those
kinds of things like you need to really
spend some time researching and thinking
about what it is you're getting into.
And a lot of times I think you really
need to go look when you get those
answers. Do not take those answers
because AI is still based on the
internet basically. Don't take those
answers as gospel because there's a lot
of times you're going to get an answer
and when you really start looking at it
um you're going to find out that it's
wrong. Uh I don't know how many times
I've I've corrected AI and it's like oh
yeah you're right. I didn't think about
that or I wasn't using that or I was
thinking this or you know I was focusing
on this other thing sometimes just like
human beings.
But the direct is always going to be the
best way. things like send us an email
at infoddeveloper.com and let us know
your thoughts. What do you what are your
thoughts? I I would love to hear like
low code no code vibe coding stories. Uh
I know a lot of people are big on I see
a lot of people that are projects out
there that are potential customers like
we want to use this, we want to no code
this and low code that and vibe code
that other thing. And I'd like to see
some people that are like particularly
that have been successful that have
taken one of those systems completely to
production and served, you know, more
than five people at a time or something
like that. And I've seen some, I'm not
saying they don't exist. I've built a
couple of things that are in these
realms that have done that. But I would
love to hear some other stories because
it seems like they are few and far
between. Most of them seem like they are
things where people are like, "Okay, we
built this thing in low no code. We vibe
coded it. now we have to rewrite it
completely in something else because
they really didn't get they just got a
like a play solution and not something
that was production ready which is often
the case with uh code generation tools.
I digress again but uh check us out
developer.com you can leave us comments
there. We've got plenty and plenty of
content there. The YouTube channel
developer YouTube channel we've got all
of like multiple seasons of episodes not
to mention a lot of other stuff out
there.
Um, you can check us out on X. We are at
Developer. We have a Facebook page.
We're all of those good things. So,
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new, you know, new seasons, new
episodes, new topics that are the ones
that you requested because we're here
for you. That being said, I have said
too much. Go out there and have yourself
a great day, a great week, and we will
talk to you next time.
Uh, bonus materials. You got to see the
genesis of this this episode. So, we're
going to keep this one a little bit
short because
you know what? You can't always have
bonus. It's not Christmas every day. You
don't get bonus after every episode. And
depending on how this next one goes, you
may get a lot of bonus stuff. Thank you
so much for your time. We do appreciate
you. Appreciate you guys hanging out
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go out and have yourself a great Today,