There’s something happening right now that feels like progress.

But isn’t.

AI makes it easy to produce work that looks competent.

You can generate code that compiles.. spins up an app that runs and lets you "ship" something that appears functional.

And when it runs, you feel capable.

That’s the trap.

There’s a concept in psychology called the Dunning–Kruger effect.

Early in a learning curve, confidence spikes before real competence develops.

You don’t yet know enough to recognize what you’re missing.

AI amplifies that phase.

It gives you output before you’ve built the internal model required to judge it.

And nowhere is that more obvious than in vibe-coded software.

Most vibe-coded apps are flimsy toys.

They’re fine in a demo.
They’ll do for a week.
They’re alright.. under ideal conditions.

Then something small shifts.

A webhook fires twice.
Bad data gets in the DB.
Traffic spikes.
An edge case hits.
A dependency slows down.

And the whole thing feels.. fragile.

Because it is.

The issue isn’t that AI wrote the code.

The issue is that the builder never built the mental map.

They don’t know where state lives or how persistence works.
They don’t know how failures propagate or have signals into when failures even occur.
They don’t know which assumptions are embedded in the architecture or how different LLMs have littered the code base with different styles and made a mess for the next robot.
They don’t know what “correct” means for the business process.

So when something deviates from the happy path, they’re screwed.

Just guessing.

To be clear, AI is extraordinary.

I use it constantly.. specifically to code.

It accelerates execution in ways that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

But acceleration isn’t substitution.

Right now, the builders who will last are the ones who use AI as leverage on top of real understanding.

Not instead of it.

Because the test still comes.

And when it does, confidence based on vibes collapses quickly.

AI didn’t eliminate the skill curve.

It just made the early slope feel steeper than it actually is.

The fundamentals still matter.

They’re just quieter now.

🚀

​- James