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Dalibor Jovic

Vibe Coding is Dead - Long Live Spec Driven Development

Published 4 months ago • 1 min read

The Applicable Bytes

Career & Growth, Technical leadership & AI for developers

Most developers still treat code as the source of truth.

Not the documentation. Not the architecture diagram. Not the specification.

The code.

Code was not just code

And for a long time, that made sense.

If the documentation was wrong, we changed the documentation. If the diagram was old, we ignored the diagram. If the business rule was unclear, we opened the code and checked what the system actually did.

Code was not just code.

It became the documentation, the business logic, the decision log, and the final authority, all at once.

The problem is that AI changes this.

Not because engineering is suddenly easy, but because producing code that looks correct is now fast.

And sometimes fast enough to be dangerous.

Most teams are still stuck in the old belief: code is precious.

So they use AI as autocomplete.

AI makes code cheap

AI writes a function. AI explains a file.
AI helps with a small refactor.

But the big decisions still live somewhere else: in old code, half-finished documentation, and the developer’s head.

And honestly, I understand why.

If code is the source of truth, letting AI rewrite it feels terrifying. You still own every line. You still need to review it, understand it, fix it, and maybe even like it.

Very romantic. Also a bit painful.

This belief creates three problems:

  • We ask AI to understand old code from weak documentation, then act surprised when it misses context.
  • We let AI write small pieces, but keep the system design hidden.
  • We protect code that should be disposable because our decisions were never written down anywhere better.

Here’s the uncomfortable part:

If AI makes code cheap, the thing worth protecting is no longer the code.

It is the specification.

The belief is flawed because code is no longer the expensive part

Read the more on my blog if you want

You can also watch the longer video:

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Dalibor Jovic

Director of AI, Tech Lead & Developer

I help lonely developers, technical and AI leaders with their career and with AI adoption. Once every few weeks I send an email about AI adoption, good coding practices and personal development.

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