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The Hidden Dangers of “Vibe Coding” (and Why SMEs Pay the Price)

Published on 3 Dec 2025 by New Media Aid — bespoke SME app development since the year 2000

Vibe Coding Technical Debt SME Software Legacy Systems Web Development Best Practices .NET

“Vibe coding” has become a popular joke among developers — the idea of writing software by instinct, guessing your way through problems and hoping for the best. But inside SMEs, vibe coding is not funny. It’s one of the biggest contributors to technical debt, unstable systems and spiralling long-term costs.

In this article, we look at what vibe coding actually is, why it happens so often in SMEs and the real-world consequences businesses face when critical systems are built without proper design or engineering discipline.

What Is “Vibe Coding”?

Vibe coding is the practice of building software by:

  • Guessing rather than understanding
  • Copy-pasting code from StackOverflow or ChatGPT without context
  • Skipping architecture, design and testing
  • “Just trying things until it works”
  • Relying on luck rather than engineering

Sometimes it comes from inexperience. Sometimes from unrealistic deadlines. Sometimes from the belief that software development is simply “typing fast”. And in 2025, with AI-assisted code generation, vibe coding is easier than ever.

The result: systems that work just enough on day one, but collapse under real-world pressure.

Why Is Vibe Coding So Common in SMEs?

In small and medium businesses, software often grows organically over years. Typical factors include:

  • No dedicated technical leadership (no CTO, no architecture oversight)
  • One junior developer building the whole system
  • Developers hired cheaply rather than hired based on experience
  • Pressure to deliver features quickly instead of building them properly
  • Legacy codebases held together with duct tape
  • AI tools encouraging “code first, understand later” behaviour

None of these issues are malicious. They’re simply the reality for many SMEs who are trying to move fast with limited resources. But the long-term consequences can be severe.

Real-World Examples of Vibe Coding Gone Wrong

1. The “One Stored Procedure to Rule Them All” Problem

A developer once built a system where a single 4,000-line SQL stored procedure handled:

  • login authentication,
  • job creation,
  • invoice generation,
  • report data,
  • and customer notifications.

If anything broke in one section, everything broke. Debugging was nearly impossible. Performance got worse every year. When the company grew, the system simply couldn’t cope.

2. The Copy-Paste Cascade

Another SME had a web app with 14 different pages that all had the same 500 lines of copy-pasted C# — each version slightly different, each containing different bugs. Fixing one meant manually fixing 13 others.

When the system started slowing down, nobody could work out why — because the logic was duplicated everywhere and diverged over time.

3. The AI-Generated “House of Cards”

With AI tools, vibe coding has evolved. In one case, an inexperienced developer used ChatGPT to generate entire classes and SQL queries without understanding them. On the surface, everything looked great:

  • Lots of code, written quickly
  • No compiler errors
  • Pages worked in basic testing

But under the hood:

  • No SQL parameterisation (SQL injection risk)
  • N+1 query patterns everywhere (slow database)
  • No consideration for concurrency
  • No validation or error handling

The system worked fine with 100 records. At 10,000 records it fell apart.

Hidden Costs SMEs Pay for Vibe-Built Systems

Vibe coding saves time in the first 4–8 weeks — and then costs money every month for the next 5–10 years.

1. Slow Performance as Data Grows

Without indexes, query optimisation, caching or proper data structures, performance degrades steadily until staff begin complaining that “the system is slow every afternoon”.

2. Stability and Reliability Issues

Vibe-coded systems often crash when:

  • users increase,
  • data grows,
  • or slightly unusual inputs appear.

This leads to business disruption and expensive emergency fixes.

3. High Long-Term Maintenance Costs

What seems cheap initially becomes expensive later:

  • Every change requires digging through fragile code
  • Adding new features becomes slow and risky
  • Refactoring becomes a major project

4. Developer Lock-In

When systems are poorly structured, only the original developer understands the mess — and often only in their head.

If they leave, the business is exposed.

5. Security Vulnerabilities

Vibe coding almost always includes:

  • insecure SQL queries,
  • weak password handling,
  • missing validation,
  • no audit logging,
  • and unsafe file uploads.

These risks rarely surface early — but when they do, they can be catastrophic.

Signs Your System Has Been “Vibe Coded”

Common symptoms include:

  • Pages taking 1–3 seconds to load
  • SQL queries without indexes
  • Random errors that nobody can reproduce
  • Features that break when unrelated changes are made
  • Thousands of lines of code in a single file
  • Copy-pasted logic across multiple pages
  • No documentation or comments
  • A system that “only one person can change safely”

If any of these look familiar, vibe coding has likely happened somewhere in your application’s past.

How to Fix or Avoid Vibe Coding

You don’t need a huge team or Silicon Valley budget — just the right approach.

1. Introduce Structure and Separation of Concerns

Move logic out of UI files and into:

  • services,
  • repositories,
  • utilities,
  • background workers.

This makes the system easier to reason about and modify.

2. Improve the Database Layer

  • Add the right indexes
  • Fix slow queries
  • Use parameterised SQL
  • Eliminate duplicated logic

3. Introduce Logging and Monitoring

Vibe code hides bugs. Logging exposes them.

4. Refactor the High-Pain Areas First

Good refactoring is incremental — not a full rewrite.

5. Add Automated Testing for Critical Workflows

You don’t need 100% coverage — just enough to stop regressions.

How I Help SMEs Fix Vibe-Built Systems

I specialise in:

  • Auditing unstable or slow-running systems
  • Refactoring legacy codebases
  • Optimising SQL Server for performance
  • Rebuilding fragile workflows in .NET Core
  • Reducing long-term maintenance costs
  • Replacing guesswork with solid engineering

The goal isn’t to blame — it’s to stabilise, modernise and future-proof your system so you can grow confidently.

Concerned Your System Was “Vibe Coded”?

If your SME software feels fragile, slow or unpredictable, I’m happy to take a look and provide practical guidance on where improvements can be made.

Email: ab@newma.co.uk
Phone: +44 7967 219288

No pressure — just honest, experience-based advice.