When I was completing my degree at MIT many years ago, one of our software development lecturers had a saying that’s stuck with me: the illusion of success. He used this phrase when talking about tools that could automatically generate code for us. On the surface, everything looked great and the code seemed well-structured. But because we didn’t write it ourselves, we often had no idea how it worked or how to fix it if something broke.
Fast-forward to today, and I see parallels with what I call the vibe coding revolution. Vibe coding is all about quickly spinning up features, often relying on tools like AI code generators. And while there’s a ton of energy and optimism, I can’t help but worry: are we just setting ourselves up for an illusion of success?
The Security Hazard Hiding in Plain Sight
My biggest concern with vibe coding is security. It’s scary easy to write insecure code. If that code is being automatically generated without the checks, balances, and reviews you’d get in a standard software development lifecycle then we risk building a whole generation of apps with security holes you could drive a truck through.
A Real-World Example
Let’s make this more concrete.
Say I ask ChatGPT to write me an IAM policy for an API that needs access to an S3 bucket. A typical vibe coding prompt might look like:
“Write me an S3 IAM policy to allow my developer full access to a bucket.”
Here’s the kind of output you’d get from ChatGPT:
On the surface, this looks fine, and for the vibe coder, it “just works.” But in reality, this isn’t anywhere near appropriate for a production environment. If the access keys attached to this policy were ever leaked, your entire S3 bucket and everything in it would be completely compromised.
A more experienced developer might instead prompt:
“Write me an S3 IAM policy for read-only access, limited to my VPC or my developer’s IP address x.x.x.x.”
(Please note that the policy ChatGPT produced above is actually wrong and wouldn't work on a VPC. The 'Allow' logic needs to be split into two separate statements. This highlights that a 'vibe coder' might just look for a policy that 'just works' rather than trying to troubleshoot the real issue.)
This policy would be much safer by design, reducing risk even in the event of a key leak.
The Takeaway
Vibe coding makes you feel productive. It can help you move fast and build new things. But it can also leave you with brittle code, hidden security flaws, and a false sense of success.
My advice? Enjoy the productivity boost, but don’t skip the fundamentals especially when it comes to security. Review auto-generated code, understand what it’s doing, and always design for safety, not just speed.