Claude and I aren't vibing at all

Dev.to / 4/23/2026

💬 OpinionIdeas & Deep AnalysisTools & Practical Usage

Key Points

  • The author tried Claude Code in VS Code for 24 hours and concluded it is optimized for “vibe coding,” producing working outputs even when they conflict with best practices.
  • They observed sloppy implementation choices, such as hardcoding values and inappropriately merging changes that should have stayed in separate, well-structured files.
  • While generating API-related code (e.g., Calendly), Claude Code sometimes invented concepts that looked plausible but failed during manual testing.
  • The author also claims Claude Code’s rate limits are very restrictive compared with Codex and Copilot, requiring more than a Pro plan for sustained work.
  • Overall, the author expects the codebase quality to degrade over time and suggests the tool may require lots of prompting/skills to follow instructions reliably.

I really enjoyed working with Opus 4.6 in Copilot, especially for tasks that required a bit of creativity (e.g. it was much better at building a landing page compared to GPT-5.3-Codex), but I never got a Claude subscription. I finally did, at last.

After spending 24 hours with Claude Code in VS Code, I've come to the conclusion that it is focused entirely on "vibe coding". It will absolutely do anything to get you to a working solution, even if it isn't best practice.

The code is pretty sloppy. It hardcodes things it should have created configs or constants for. When I asked it to update some sidebar design, along with a change that impacted a common element used globally, I expected it to respect my structure. I have things neatly organized in __sidebar.scss and __global.css, but instead of using each for its own purpose, it stuffed everything into the sidebar file.

It readily fills in the blanks for API calls. For example, while working with the Calendly API, it invented a couple of concepts that looked legit only until I tested them manually and they failed.

Also, the rate limits are insane; you can't just work off a Pro account. Compare this to the fact that I never hit my rate limits on Codex (not even close) or on Copilot, which I was using exclusively just a couple of months ago. People coding entirely on vibes would ask for even the tiniest of things using AI, so it makes sense to extract as much value from them.

Since the code is sloppy, I can imagine the state of the code in a few months. Even if you wanted to maintain it, you would need to ask AI to handle the smallest of tasks because it would be too tiring to comprehend such code.

I also understand now why people need so many prompt files (skills) and whatnot with Claude. It needs a lot of prodding and prompting and has difficulty working off clear instructions at once.

I will still continue giving a piece of my time to it for the next few days, but it seems to have not gotten off to a good start.