r/PinoyProgrammer • u/Popular-Tip2880 • 2d ago
discussion Full Stack Web dev VS Claude Vibe Coder
I'm developing a large-scale enterprise operations system, carefully handling authentication, authorization, RBAC, database design, business logic, security, and actual organizational requirements. I'm currently around 25% done.
Then someone presented a similar system, claiming to have completed it in just a month. The presentation looked impressive at first, but during the demo, I noticed UI flaws, such as text overflowing its containers. The overall design also had that obvious AI-generated look. And the management is now discussing the nationwide operation of this system.
I talked to her, and she openly admitted to using Claude AI for practically everything through prompting.
I use AI too, and I have nothing against it. But there's a difference between generating an impressive-looking prototype and engineering a reliable enterprise system.
It got me thinking: Can strong presentation skills and AI prompting overshadow actual web development skills, even when the resulting software falls short of industry standards? Will AI-assisted coding eventually replace developers, or will solid engineering skills still matter in the long run?
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u/beklog 2d ago
We HAVE/MUST adapt for AI..
As an old school programmer prang nde na uso hardcore developer kc AI is great tool for coding let's give them that... then the developer's role ngaun is to guide the AI to use the standard and review their work
Guiding and reviewing their work requires our basic engineering/technical skills so nde pa rin mawawala un
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u/TemporaryExciting977 2d ago edited 2d ago
Solid engineering skills still matter in the long run, especially when engineers responsibly leverage AI to their advantage. The main issue with relying solely on AI-generated architecture is that new feature requests or modifications can easily break existing processes. If you aren't thoroughly familiar with the overall system, you'll ultimately end up with poorly developed software when those challenges arise. This is particularly true for enterprise software products, where complexity and large scale are inevitable.
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u/jdg2896 2d ago
I’ll just post this.
Personally, you should be somewhere in between. Not fully “vibe coded”, where you don’t understand anything, but also not pre-AI way, where you just use AI as replacement for google search/stack overflow.
AI-assisted, or the current AI agents won’t replace developers, and solid computer science and software engineering fundamentals will always be relevant. But it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
A great engineer with solid fundamentals that can also leverage AI agent workflows, will always be better than an engineer who doesn’t.
The work for those who’ve adopted AI agents now moved towards verification to make sure the software AI agents deliver works according to the specifications. At the volume and pace AI agents can deliver code (24/7), it’s not practical to read every line of code, so the challenge is being selective, review the critical parts, and build the testing and verification independently of AI.
For mission-critical software, sure you still need to read every line. But for most software engineering work, it’s not always necessary. If you have the luxury of time, sure it wouldn’t hurt to read every line, especially if scope of work is well-defined.
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u/baguiochips 2d ago
Lol. What good is your well-designed, well-architected app if you can’t ship it? You basically have the same tools but the vibe coder actually delivered something 4x faster than you. You do realize that shit app can still improve over time right?
One thing people fail to realize is that startups apps are shitty in their own right but they manage to capture the market. Presentation skills is what gets you to the door. Always is, always was. In software engineering, perfection is the enemy of progress.
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u/simple_explorer1 8h ago
Gone are the days when an "app" could woo the users. Apps are raining left and right after the explosion in use of AI
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u/Popular-Tip2880 2d ago
Meaning I should move from understanding code base, well engineered well architectured app to vibe coded applications for the delivery purposes?
I am not arguing, I am asking legit question. Because I want to plan my next move as a web developer.
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u/burongtalangka 2d ago
The two are not mutually exclusive. You can still vibe code and review the code.
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u/Sad_Camel_4710 1d ago
This is the correct answer. Review the code generated from vibe coding, make sure to understand it. If it has flaws in engineering design, then ask AI to refactor it the way you see how it should be, rather than being a plain hardcore dogmatic developer.
The only difference between sloppy coding versus providing sloppy AI prompts is that the latter is faster.
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u/baguiochips 2d ago
Nope. Instead of understanding code bases and structure, you should understand requirements and functionality. Like for example, you said you developed careful handling of authentication, authorization, rbac. Those are basically simple auth that okta/keycloak can do. For databae just use the simplest schemas and build from there. you wont need them all at once. Crafting business logic and capturing org requirements to the dot is a battle you wont win. It will change and trust me, it will change.
Right now, developers shouldn’t be focusing on technical side of things, you should be focusing on a functional side of things. That text overflows you noticed, could have taken you hours just correct it the way you like it. But this is something that really doesnt affect functionality
Didnt you have a project where you are in too deep that the codebase is full of bugs and the quickest way for it a sa rewrite? It’s basically the same thing. Understanding the technside make it a whole lot easier to fix
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u/GenerationalMidClass 2d ago
If management is asking for an MVP or a prototype as a proof of concept and get budget, a perfect architecture is not really gonna be different from a vibe coded solution. There should be varying levels of effort for different stages of the product roadmap. Plus, how sure are you that your perfectly architectured app wont go through changes once users test out the tool?
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u/Dangerous_Trade_4027 2d ago
Very wrong analogy. You separate yourself from vibe coders by using AI to do the heavy lifting and be in control of what should be done.
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u/Popular-Tip2880 2d ago
I would like to thank everyone who gives their opinions and advices, now I understand where I am lacking and I know what I need to do now. Thanks
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u/koomaag 2d ago edited 2d ago
Think about this. Every major leap in technology has faced resistance from those who mistook the tool for the craft. When electronic computers first arrived, mathematicians who relied on pen and paper argued that automated calculation was cheating or taking away true rigor. When developers moved from raw assembly to high-level languages like FORTRAN or C, traditional engineers claimed that "real coders" wrote in assembly and that high-level abstractions were making developers lazy. Later, when modern frameworks and libraries emerged, "purist" software engineers insisted that building from scratch was the only legitimate way to write software.
Now here you are...
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u/Popular-Tip2880 2d ago
So, are you suggesting that we developers should move away from managing everything from security to business logic and just prompt AI to do everything, without even understanding a single line of code it generates? Like I can move to JAVA without fundamentals just say to AI that I want it to build this application using java etc,
I'm not arguing; this is a genuine question because, based on this scenario, this is exactly what happened with the presenter I'm referring to. She doesnt understand any line of code.
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u/koomaag 2d ago
im not suggesting anything. im just genuinely saying. think about what i said.
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u/simple_explorer1 8h ago
You can't even answer OP's basic question. It is you who need to think about what you couldn't even say
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u/Popular-Tip2880 2d ago
If I could ask for your suggestion or atleast advice. Do you think moving on prompt software engineering is the best move today?
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u/mythe01 2d ago
Put yourself in your client's shoes.
Would it be okay to wait for several months just to see a prototype pero mas maayos yung code?
Or would it be better na in weeks time lang, may working prototype na kahit sabihin pa nating AI slop yun?
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u/Mission-Cricket-3216 20h ago
To be fair, it's not "slop" if it looks good and is working. Most of what AI generated in previous years were "slop." It's a lot less today that it was then.
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u/Content-Conference25 2d ago
I think the lesson you should be focusing is how can someone with less technical skills be able to ship faster than you can who's technically proficient.
This isn't a question whether either of you can deliver results out of your products kase that's a different metric na.
The thing in question here is the speed.
So what does this mean to you? It means that you can (if you want to) use AI to speed-up your development by a fraction of the time it used to take you to build it manually. Your then skills and knowledge from knowing the codebase allows you to understand where the bugs are coming from, therfore giving you the edge to prompt the AI according to your diagnosis.
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u/Opening-Memory4300 2d ago
“carefully handling authentication, authorization, RBAC, database design, business logic, security, and actual organizational requirements”
This can be done by someone who uses claude as well. They just need to know what they are doing.
Also, how are you sure that your Authentication and Authorization and RBAC is secure? This is hard to implement from scratch, and is much better to reuse existing solutions.
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u/solidad29 2d ago
I also prefer hand-written code. Pero imagine having a good set of properly tuned ai agents to do the brunt work in the hands of a seasoned developer. Imagine the progress noon under a month (also how less token they burned through proper planning).
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u/derpinot 2d ago
To be honest clients don't give a shit on how you did it, as long at it fits all the requirements.
The best-case scenario is an experienced developer augmented by AI
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u/CorsPolicyError404 1d ago
Nothing is wrong yes, but wait till the time the system will product bugs esp on financial related side. By that time, that's the time they will realize that they need the actual skilled and knowledge to engineering to deal this kind of cases.
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u/feedmesomedata Moderator 1d ago
If you know how to prompt even an ugly looking app made by AI can be enhanced to look beautiful by the same AI. You do know that Facebook looked really ugly in the first few versions of it and a far cry from what it is now.
A year ago we create test cases by hand to simulate customer issues like crashes, corruptions, etc. Now we just prompt it and give as much context to AI and wait for less time. Usually it takes us hours or days to create a reproducible test case, but now it takes less than an hour.
We've also made our own set of tools that solves a lot of the pain points we've been dealing. We're not software developers so this was not possible before.
We've replaced a few small apps that we pay by subscriptions and made our own alternatives hosted on our own approved platforms. I believe this is happening in other companies as well so the small SaaS companies would be affected. Large ones like Atlassian, ServiceNow, Salesforce of the world are likely not going to be affected in the short term.
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u/_clapclapclap 2d ago
As a software engineer myself I'd choose your work, but for someone who has no idea, they'd choose something "completed" and they can use. Homecooking vs fast food.
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u/DioBranDoggo 2d ago
The homecooking vs fast food hits.
Speed is the most important thing for business owners. They dont care that much if well engineered ang app mo. Also, to think as well, they got a working prototype, which will eventually be a well engineered app afterwards.
I think we need to think on how to enhance their workflow and that's when we get the client's attention. In this case, OP's opp found the same opportunity but struck first.
In my exp, manghang mangha sila kasi natapos na daw kaagad yung app na pinagawa sa akin in few hours vs pinagawa sa akin na mga 3 weeks in na ako since iniisip ko din ang mga engineering stuff nun, testing the APIs and UI/UX and configuring stuff. Was I slow? I don't think so since pinlano ko yung architecture ng maayos pero natalo pa din ako sa nag 1 shot at natapos daw talaga yun. I was like okay. I felt disrespected since detalyado yun na work and sinabi nilang tapos na kaagad. When I checked the website, madami pa akong nakitang flaws and not to hate, easily spotted mistake talaga. Pero I learned na to use AI to build fast, refine later. I believe because they need to test the idea first, reliability 2nd.
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u/jegtugado 2d ago
Good developers who can point LLMs in the right direction will matter in the long run. Any decent team will stray far from AI slop, but the advantages of AI in software development is real.
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u/treblemdp 2d ago
Prompt engineering is the new programming.
Developers will spend more time planning, designing, architecting, and solving problems rather than writing code.
I think hardcore coding will eventually become less relevant as AI continues to improve. What will matter most is understanding the requirements, knowing how systems should work, and making the right technical decisions.
At the end of the day, your output will only be as good as your understanding of the problem and how well you communicate it through your prompts.
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u/watson_full_scale 2d ago
Make it work. Make it right. Make it fast.
This hasn't changed, even with AI.
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u/jellythekat 2d ago
Exactly! Moving from engineering to the business side of stuff made me realize that at the end of the day, most use cases of SWE is going to be for business. And if you can't deliver the business needs - then who the hell cares if the thing you're building scales for a million concurrent users.
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u/Dangerous_Trade_4027 2d ago
Why not use Claude? Your advantage is your skills and your experience. Claude will help you cut dev time. You can help Claude remove the flaws you mentioned.
Devs that keep pushing AI away from their workflow will lose their jobs. At my company right now, I can notice devs that rely on their own skills alone and devs that maximize AI. The former are very slow and can't keep up. The latter produce valuable outputs for the company.
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u/thelegend13x 2d ago
Who care as long as the project makes them revenue thats what clients care about lol. Programmers are such cry babies 🤣🤣🤣
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u/LaidBackDev 2d ago
No need to waste you time asking in this sub. It has been taken over by vibe coders. Look at a lot of the past few posts.
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u/Apprehensive-Onion18 2d ago
Continue your work. Wait till they actually ship the AI generated product. 😂😂😂
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u/markilabot 2d ago
The only bad thing here is that you cannot outpace someone who is purely a vibe coder. Perhaps harnessing and distillation are the next steps to explore. This way, you can catch up in speed while staying ahead in quality.
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u/Race-Proof 2d ago
If you're confident with your engineering skills, you could have questioned the architectural design, the scalability, and it's reliability. Don lalabas ang understanding mo in analysing vibe coded app
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u/Apart-Palpitation619 1d ago
As you said so yourself, it still is a prototype. Yung mga UI flaws that you noticed can be addressed before launching. Ganyan din naman noon kahit wala pang Vibe code. You will not expect a prototype to be clean and ship straight to prod. Sa prototyping naman, velocity is a factor. Para mai-demo agad, maipakita ano ang value, and so on.
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u/ChillingHub 23h ago
Actually they follow principle, that it doesnt needs to be perfect.
Pabilisan ang labanan ngayun
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u/codebloodev 20h ago
I will always choose and be a full stack developer who know how to vibe code. Sabi nga ng boss ko dati, Fail fast, learn fast. Execution is the key. Nobody remembers the best app, usually the first.
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u/bulbulito-bayagyag 2d ago
You can actually create good apps with vibe coding alone but it requires proper knowledge in testing and architecture to create great applications.
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u/Worried-Champion4704 2d ago
Full stack dev, pwedeng corporate at freelance. Stable ang job. Ung salary naka depende sa company at kung indemand ung stack mo.
Claude viber coder - usually freelance. USD. Malaki kita pero mahirap makahanap client. Anytime pwede ka i-endo ng client, so hindi stable.
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u/ongamenight 2d ago
The craft is already dead. There's no such thing as "vibe coded" if one knows how to use AI in dev workflow.
That's why there's a lot of layoffs "globally" in the IT industry. Just go to r/ExperiencedDevs and r/Layoffs and you'll see. In fact, look at job openings.
Right now, the most important skill as a dev is learn how to use AI efficiently (less token usage), more context, etc. Humans only enter on the dev loop on all "decision-making" but all coding is done through agents, sometimes multiple agents simultaneously.
Anyone saying differently is just in denial.
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u/Both-Fondant-4801 2d ago
A prototype is meant for presentation, for a proof of concept, for gathering initial feedback and stirring up interest before actually investing time into actual software engineering. Business stakeholders do not need a working software upfront with auth, db, etc... but they do want to hear a proposal for a solution to an existing business problem. And that is where she had a first-mover advantage (thanks to AI).
Can strong presentation skills and AI prompting overshadow actual web development skills? If you are pitching a solution to the business.. yes, presentation matters more. If you are delivering the system.. no, software engineering matters more.
Will AI-assisted coding eventually replace developers, or will solid engineering skills still matter in the long run? The current trend is that engineering teams are already adapting spec driven development and integrating AI workflow into software engineering. However, i think it might be that engineering teams will be leaner in the future.. i.e. a software engineer will also be an architect and QA running multiple agents developing on all facets of the software - frontend, backend, infra...
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u/peopleslaughter 1d ago
The way i see it this is not a "real" dev vs vibe coder issue...
If the game's selling something, yes. Strong presentation skills can beat and overshadow actual skills or yung behind the scenes mo AI man or not.
Also, most non-technical audiences don't have have the same trained keen eyes / intuition that programmers tend to have from experience. You can build the most efficient and bug free system in the world, pero pag hindi huli yung kiliti ng costumer sa presentation at "meta-presentation" mo mahirap din.