Master the fundamentals before relying on vibe coding tools.
- Vibe coding without foundational knowledge is ineffective and can lead to confusion. - Mastering basic commands and understanding core concepts like Git and debugging is essential for success. - True automation and effective use of tools require clarity of thought and the ability to describe processes accurately.
1. Beginner Developers 2. Entrepreneurs Automating Business Processes 3. Non-Technical Product Managers
5 min
Everyone’s hyped on “vibe coding” — drag-and-drop tools, AI prompts, and no-code demos.
But here’s the truth: vibe coding is useless if you don’t have the fundamentals.
We’ve seen it firsthand. A guy drops out of a live session because the instructor typed git checkout -b feature/new-thing from memory. That’s all it took. Why? Because most people don’t even know what they don’t know.
Here’s the fix:
- Learn 5 CLI commands. That’s 80% of what you’ll ever need.
cd,ls,git add,git commit,git push. Done. - Understand Git branches. Not because it’s cool, but because it saves your ass when shit breaks.
- Know how to debug. That means reading logs, inspecting network calls, understanding errors — not refreshing the page and praying.
- Learn how a product works under the hood. If you want to automate a business, you better understand how that business runs — and what the code behind it is doing.
- Know what serverless means and what’s actually happening behind that “magic” function.
Vibe coding is not a shortcut.
It’s a compressed interface to real dev work.
If you skip the foundation, you’re building castles on Jell-O.
Prompting is another broken pillar. Most people can’t prompt well because they can’t describe anything clearly. We’re a generation trained to tap buttons, not explain processes.
Good prompting requires:
- Clear mental models
- Process awareness
- Language precision
You can't automate what you can't describe. And agents? They only do what you tell them. If your input is vague, the output will be trash.
So what’s the stack for real builders today?
- Automation tools (Make, Lovable, Zapier)
- LLMs for leverage (ChatGPT, Mistral, Claude)
- Vibe coding tools (like Cursor, or Lovable again)
- Fundamentals (CLI, Git, architecture, product logic)
You don’t need to be a rockstar engineer. But you must be technically fluent.
Vibe coding is powerful — once you’ve earned the right to use it.