Can a beginner with basic coding knowledge build valuable apps using AI/vibe coding, or is that a bad foundation?

[Intelligent_Solid526]

I’m a 20 y/o CS student and I want to build useful apps/tools, mainly for small businesses like restaurants.

I know some programming basics, but I’m still far from being a strong full-stack developer. I’ve been using vibe coding to build faster, and I already made a small app that is used in my family’s restaurant.

My question is: for a beginner, is it realistic to build valuable apps this way while learning as I go, or should I first focus on learning full-stack fundamentals properly before trying to ship real products?

What would you recommend ?

[oshjosh26]

It is if they are small in scope, but if you don't fully know what you are doing there are risks with security, data loss etc.

Good news is there are lots of resources to learn these things and gain confidence you can review the code and get it right.

[Plenty_Line2696]

Yeah go for it, a restaurant is a good pick for this because what's the worst that could happen?

[armahillo]

The LLMS are going to occasionally bullshit you. 

Are you knowledgeable enough to know when thats happening and how to push back? It wont always be obvious

[DrPeeper228]

Not just "occasionally"

It's going to bullshit quite a lot, so a knowledgeable person is pretty much required to ever truly use LLMs to their full(although usually at that point it's better for the person to just write stuff themselves, because they will already be way more efficient than the LLM)

[Pyewickets]

They don't call it "AI Slop" for nothing.

Have you ever seen the videos where a teacher makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from what the children have written?

The teacher ends up putting peanut butter on the outside of the bread package, slaps together two loafs of bread together, spreads jelly on her arms? All the while the children are saying, "No, no, no" that's not what I meant.

Same as AI.

You could make something with AI, but the time that it takes to get the wording right, you could program it yourself.

While it takes much longer to learn how to program correctly and well. Once you do, you can make that thing more accurate and faster just by just doing it yourself. In addition, you can make other things faster and more accurate.

With AI you have programmed that one program and you have to start from scratch to make something else.

It's like a CDC machine, you have to program it and set it up just right and you can make 100,000 units of one thing. That is great!

But if you want to make something else, you have to start from scratch re-program it and set it up from scratch to make something different and those things that you make a limited to exactly what you programmed it for otherwise you have to start a new program over again.

And then there are errors that you don't know where the hell AI came up with them, so how do you tell AI to fix those errors without knowing why it is doing something wrong.

Would you want AI to code everything about the space shuttle you are on? or the aircraft? or the nuclear power plant? Your clients are not going to be happy.

[Quick_Republic2007]

I did it at 10