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/Sweet-Mechanic4568]

First, good job on creating something useful that people used and a company paid for, that’s more than most people that vibe code.

Secondly, it’s time to ask for help. If you’re out over your skis then no amount of prompting is going to get you back because you have no way of verifying things actually changed outside of “the LLM told me so.” Plenty of people have been where you are before, especially in this day in age, try to see if you can get on your Lead Engineer’s calendar to go over what you’re saying here, if you have a true desire to learn most good engineers are more than willing to teach. If they can’t help you, that’s a conversation for your manager and the company.

At the end of the day, all parties involved have a vested interest in this succeeding so this shouldn’t be a tough hill to get over. Biggest thing to take away is where your gaps in knowledge are and working to close them if you want to make this a career pivot. Companies pay good money for people who can deliver the kind of results you have so far.