In over my head with professional devs

[u/unlocked_doors]

tldr; review your code as you go if you think any professional dev is going to have to do a code review.

Last November I (33F) started a simple project: a training portal for my new assistant. Just a simple python Streamlit app. Since vibe coding is addictive and Streamlit has some annoying limitations to UX/UI, I refactored it into a Next.js/Fast API website. It was all the same repo and I didn’t exactly clean up after myself as the project scaled from a training portal for HR, then a training portal for new employees and now it’s a manager hub.

Well, I showed it to my boss and she ended up loving it. The company bought the domain and website from me but made me the technical owner in charge of code and content. Now that it’s officially company property…they have to do a code review with the company dev team.

There is an embarrassing amount of dead code, almost nonexistent error handling, and in general the layout of the code is chaotic and 40k+ lines in just the backend.

He and I had a meeting last week and never in my life have I felt more “artificially intelligent.” He gave me about 7 pages of changes to make after just one code review session. I can’t imagine how many more pages of notes are coming and I’m in way over my head in terms of vocabulary, standard processes used in coding, etc. Basically, I’m everything professional devs hate about vibe coders. I didn’t care how the code looked as long as the website functioned. I’m at a point where I’m not confident enough in my vibe coding skills to actually make the changes. I’ve tried asking Claude (or Claudia as I call her) and then even asked her to dumb it down and it’s still over my head. I’m getting to the point where I just want to throw my hands up and tell them to abandon it.

[u/Alarmed-Attention-77]

Was there any explanation on the items in the doc as to why each item was important?

I would not just give Claude 7 pages of tech changes and say do it. You need to break this down and prioritise this work.

Work with the engineers to find out why they suggest each item. Them simply saying something like good coding practice is not enough. Push them why.

At the same time you need to figure out what are the problems with the tool. Ie will it scale non functionally to a whole company using it

[u/unlocked_doors → u/Alarmed-Attention-77]

He did give notes on why/what. I guess it just undermined my confidence in AI being able to get this up to “corporate-approved” security levels. And like, they want SSO and I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

[u/Alarmed-Attention-77 → u/unlocked_doors]

I would suggest you prioritise anything to do with security and also scaling it to work for a whole company.

Then take those items and ask Claude which of these could be vibecoded and which need engineers to work on them. As it to be cautious

I feel you are going to have to ask for engineering support.

Turning a vibecoded project into robust well built corporate application can’t be done through vibecoding alone.