There is an elephant in the room, and it’s giving corporate IT leaders an uneasy feeling. A “bad vibe”, if you will.
For those unfamiliar, vibe coding is a phenomenon that is steadily gaining online popularity. This style of software development uses AI to generate code via a prompt, leveraging the Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities of LLMs. Thanks to NLP computation, users communicate the general idea, or “vibe”, of their application to an LLM.
Vibe coding garners appeal due to the use of natural language, as opposed to programming language, to generate software, applications, or website designs quickly. Both technical and non-technical users highly revere its ease of use, zero barrier to entry, and speed. Since gaining mainstream notoriety, the term has entered the vernacular of many an IT department and beyond.
Creating applications without traditional coding practices has been available for decades. The ancestral line can be traced back to as far as 1985, when Microsoft launched Excel. No-code and low-code platforms started offering drag-and-drop app builders to reduce the need for proficiency in Excel. One can argue that vibe coding is the next generation in the evolutionary tree of democratizing software development to non-technical users.
As lucrative as building apps with speech is, there is not nearly enough focus on the potential risks of vibe coding when practiced in an enterprise setting.
In the hands of a developer, vibe coding is a powerful weapon
Nowadays, anyone can do anything without ever having spent a second learning how to do it, thanks to AI. Sure, the vibes are there. But is the software integrity there?
Often, foundational coding practices are overlooked when unregulated AI-assisted programming is involved. Without the involvement of IT leaders, apps are built with little to no regard for software security or adherence to best practices. Code reviews, quality assurance checks, and security audits are vital parts of the software development lifecycle.
When corporate IT is undermined, vibe coding without technical expertise can create more challenges than it resolves. Applications built solely on “vibes” can cause a deluge of issues for technical departments, including large volumes of unvetted code, avoidable security risks, and overall performance issues. The resulting time spent on maintenance causes IT backlogs to be severely overwhelmed.
These pitfalls pose no concern when encountered in personal projects, but can go awry when experienced in a business setting. Enterprises should take special care to ensure that people with the right know-how create business applications. The last thing they want to do is accumulate years of technical debt in a short amount of time, resulting from untrained staff misusing generative AI tools.
For enterprises to effectively adopt vibe coding as a means of creating software, oversight is needed from developers. The people who have gone through the motions of writing code, testing, and debugging long enough to understand how to maintain complex enterprise IT architectures.
Vibe coding is not bad. Businesses just need guardrails
Vibe coding is not inherently evil. It’s the lack of processes that is cause for concern for IT leaders. The core value is not about building many apps quickly; it’s about building the right apps. Regardless of whether high-coding, low-coding, or vibe coding is used to create software, IT oversight is necessary to ensure that the right software is developed.
For those with no programming experience, citizen development platforms remain best practice. However, not all of them offer a citizen developer framework that is compatible with generative AI. Having proper guardrails in place, such as governance and permission management, is a requirement for enterprise-grade coding.
Here at Betty Blocks, we want to empower everyone to develop custom software solutions that enhance their business. That’s why we introduced our bespoke platform-native AI model: Betty Genius, our answer to secure vibe coding for enterprises.
Here’s how Betty Blocks opens up enterprises for the future of vibe coding:
- Establish unified business logic using the AI BPMN generator.
- Quickly generate UI designs with AI to showcase a proof of concept to stakeholders.
- Use Betty Blocks as an innovation sandbox where business users can create apps without accidentally venturing into unregulated channels.
- Define governance configurations and permission roles to mitigate security risks associated with shadow IT.
- AI-generated app components are native to the Betty Blocks platform. Business users can quickly develop a working prototype before handing it over to a low-code developer for refinement.
- When complex business logic is needed, experienced engineers export and import Wasm-based components for refinement.
- Deploy your application on the Betty Blocks platform once the application has been approved for production.
- Rapidly scale your applications using pre-built components from the Block Store or build a custom component for instant reusability.
- Create a Master Template to maintain multiple apps at once from a single source.
It’s time to vibe code smarter with Betty Blocks
Stop playing prompt roulette with your business on the line. Use Betty Blocks to create enterprise applications using AI the right way. Don't believe us? Watch the video below to learn how to generate UI designs with AI.
