The Vibe Coding Dilemma: Security vs. Innovation
MVPs Were Always Messy
There is a new tension in tech. On one side, the rise of Vibe Coding: building apps without deep programming knowledge, using prompts, AI, and visual tools. On the other side, senior developers who look at this with suspicion.
The most common critique? Many of these apps are weak on security. They can be hacked, they are fragile, and they don’t scale. All true. But here’s the reality: this is the worst that Vibe Coding will ever be. From here, it only gets better.
My own MVPs were fragile too
At Global66, our first MVP was nothing more than a landing page, a Google Sheet, and Zapier connecting it all. It wasn’t secure. It didn’t follow any standards. But it answered the real question: is there water in the pool? Do people care about this problem?
Same story at Cabify. Many prototypes were far from robust. What mattered was validating a hypothesis, finding product–market fit, and proving we could solve a problem quickly. Security and scale only became relevant once we knew there was something worth building.
This fear is nothing new
Every breakthrough technology goes through the same cycle. Experts in the old system focus on weaknesses of the new one and miss its exponential improvement curve.
Fax users said the internet would never replace it. Too slow. Not reliable enough for business.
BlackBerry fans dismissed the iPhone. Too insecure. No keyboard. Not for real work.
Professional photographers laughed at early digital cameras. The quality was terrible. Now film is niche.
IT managers resisted the cloud. Putting company data on someone else’s server? Impossible. Today it’s the standard.
Academics mocked Wikipedia. “Anyone can edit it, so it can’t be trusted.” Today it’s the world’s go-to reference.
History repeats. What looks insecure and limited at the start becomes the default.
The market doesn’t wait for perfect standards
Look around. There are tens of thousands of SaaS products that are objectively bad. Weak code. No updates in years. Zero modern security. And yet, they make millions because they solve one specific problem.
Think about basic scheduling tools for dentists or niche vertical SaaS built by a solo dev. They don’t meet any “best practices.” But they work.
The irony is that with tools like Lovable, a vibe coder can now build something more solid than many of those legacy products that still make money today.
Tools are evolving fast
And this “security gap” is not permanent.
Lovable already includes built-in security checks and connects frontend and backend with fewer vulnerabilities.
Platforms like Replit make it easy to spin up full environments, deploy, and collaborate.
Each new release raises the floor. Security and architecture improve by default.
What looks fragile today will soon be safer than much of what was built manually just a few years ago.
The real skill: validation
The most valuable skill right now is not becoming a cybersecurity expert from day one. It is learning how to validate ideas in the real market with real users.
Vibe Coding makes smoke tests easier than ever. You can launch in days, watch how users react, and decide if the idea deserves more investment. That muscle of validation is what builders should be training.
The real risk isn’t that your MVP is insecure. The real risk is never testing if your solution matters to anyone.
Vibe Coding is not anti-code
Another misconception is that vibe coders want to replace programming entirely. Not true.
What changes is the entry point. You no longer need to master a language from scratch to build something meaningful. If you can read code, make small changes, and understand basic logic, you can go far.
WordPress worked the same way. Millions started with templates and plugins, and many ended up learning HTML, CSS, and even full web development. Vibe Coding can play the same role for this generation.
The future is not no-code vs. code. It is builders who combine prompts, product thinking, and enough coding literacy to push further.
The real dilemma
The question is not “is Vibe Coding secure enough today?” The question is whether you are willing to build even when things aren’t perfect.
Because history shows us one thing: the fragile tools of today become the standards of tomorrow.
Stopping Vibe Coding out of fear of insecurity would be as absurd as banning Zapier + Google Sheets MVPs in 2020.