It's eigth in the evening, the kids are asleep and I'm watching a crime series with my wife. Suddenly, my phone rings. It's my cousin.

"Brent, I have a problem."

He goes on explaining how he built this web application a year ago for his local basketball club, and that two days from now they have an important game. One problem: their app stopped working; and without it, the game can't be played — or something along those lines, I'm not sure about the details because my mind was still with the murderer in the series I was watching.

"Did you… vibe code it?? I asked.

Yes. Yes he did. And no, he had no clue how to fix it, and his prompts to fix it also didn't work. I'm not sure what he was hoping for, but there was no way I was going to debug a random vibe-coded webapp on a time crunch. The only advice I could give was to continue down the path he already went, and hope another agent could solve his problem.

I realized that only now we'll begin to see how much vibe-coded technical debt non-programmers have been accumulating over the past two years when their apps start falling apart. I'm not against using AI as a rule, I think it's a powerful tool when used by skilled people, just like any other powertool in any other sector is helpful to trained professionals. But in the hands of untrained people?

I remember how my family used to call me to fix their broken printers. Now they'll call me to fix their broken vibe coded apps. Don't get me wrong: I love them and I'm happy to help, but I have to draw a line somewhere. No thank you, I'll pass.