Glide Expert Gideon Lahav has built over 100 Glide apps for more than 70 clients. In his series of guest posts, he shares what he has learned about building high-performing business software for yourself or others.
There’s a lot to like about vibe coding.
Tools like Lovable, Base44, and others make software feel more accessible. You can describe an idea in plain language and get back something that looks surprisingly complete. For prototypes, mockups, and early experimentation, that kind of speed is exciting. AI engineering lowers the barrier to entry and helps more people move from idea to product.
I understand the appeal.
But after working with businesses that need apps for real operations, I’ve come to see the same pattern again and again: the first build is not the hard part. The hard part is what comes next.
- Can you maintain it?
- Can you safely change it?
- Can you trust it?
- Can you understand it well enough to rely on it?
That’s where Glide still has a major advantage.
What is vibe coding?
Read about AI developmentGlide is built for businesses that need to understand what they’re building
What I’ve always appreciated about Glide is that it gives non-technical builders a genuine way into software creation without hiding the supporting structure completely.
You still need to think through your app. You still need to understand your data, your workflow, your users, and your logic. But Glide presents those things in a way that is learnable. It helps people build real skills, not just produce a result.
That matters.
Because in my experience, there’s a big difference between a tool that helps you build and a tool that helps you generate. Vibe coding often gives people a fast output. Glide gives people a system they can actually work with.
That’s a much more valuable kind of no-code.
AI engineering feels simple until the app needs to change
This is the point where I think the difference becomes obvious.
With vibe coding, things often go well right at the beginning. You ask for a page, a workflow, a feature, or a redesign, and the AI gives you something useful. That can be enough for an MVP or an internal proof of concept.
But eventually, the app stops being a rough idea and starts becoming software.
- Now a client wants a change.
- Now a workflow has exceptions.
- Now permissions need to be more precise.
- Now the data model needs to be cleaned up.
- Now a small fix creates a problem somewhere else.
At that moment, you’re no longer just prompting. You’re maintaining a system.
And that’s where a lot of AI-first experiences start to break down. You still need to understand the structure underneath. You still need to know how the logic connects. You still need enough technical confidence to tell whether the AI changed the right thing or just changed something.
So while vibe coding looks like no-code on the surface, it often becomes something else over time: AI-assisted development that still requires technical judgment.
Glide is different because the structure is there for you to see.
In Glide, you can iterate on your apps with visibility and control
This is one of the most practical advantages of Glide, and it becomes even more important as the app grows.
If I want to change something in Glide, I can usually find the specific place where that change belongs. I can go to the data. I can inspect the logic. I can update the workflow. I can test the result.
That level of control is hard to overstate.
In a vibe coding workflow, you’re often asking the AI to interpret your intent and make the right change across a system it generated. Sometimes it does that well. Sometimes it fixes the visible issue, but affects something else. Sometimes it changes more than you wanted. Sometimes it leaves the deeper structural problem in place.
That’s not because the tools are bad. It’s because AI is still working as an interpreter, not as a fully reliable owner of your app’s architecture.
Glide gives builders a more direct relationship with the app itself. That makes changes more intentional, debugging more manageable, and long-term ownership much more realistic.
Security is one of the clearest differences between no-code and AI-assisted coding
Security is another area where the contrast becomes hard to ignore.
With Glide, there’s a sense that the platform is already carrying a lot of the heavy lifting for you. That doesn’t mean builders can ignore permissions or data access. They absolutely shouldn’t. But the environment itself is designed to support secure app building from the start.
With vibe coding, much more of that responsibility shifts back to the builder.
Authentication, authorization, backend access, data exposure, API behavior, deployment choices…even if AI helps generate those layers, somebody still needs to understand them well enough to trust them. And in many cases, that means you need someone with a stronger technical background to review or fix what was created.
That’s where the “no-code” promise starts to blur.
If the app only becomes safe after a developer or security professional steps in, then it may still be a useful workflow, but it’s not really the same kind of accessibility that Glide offers.
Glide gives non-technical users a much safer starting point, and for many businesses, that matters more than raw speed.
The long-term question is the maintainability of AI-developed software
I think this is where many people make the wrong comparison.
They compare how fast a tool can generate an app.
I care more about how well that app holds up after real use begins.
Most business apps are not one-time projects. They evolve. Teams grow. Processes change. Features get added. Exceptions appear. New people take over. What looked simple in the beginning becomes more complicated because the business itself becomes more complicated.
That’s normal.
So the real question is not just “Can this tool build an app?”
It’s “Can this app still be understood and maintained later?”
Glide tends to do much better here. The structure is visible. The logic is readable. The data model can be followed. Someone else can step in and understand what’s happening without having to reconstruct a long history of prompts, patches, and AI-generated decisions.
That’s one of the reasons I trust Glide more for real business use.
Vibe coding is exciting, but Glide is more dependable
What are the best uses for vibe coding?
Read the guideI don’t think this needs to be framed as one tool winning and the other losing.
Vibe coding absolutely has value. It’s fast. It’s creative. It’s a great way to explore ideas and reduce friction at the start of the process. I can see why so many people are drawn to it.
But I also think it’s important to be honest about where it becomes fragile.
If your goal is to experiment, AI-first tools can be fantastic.
If your goal is to build something your business will actually depend on, I still believe Glide is the better path for most people. Not because it removes all complexity, but because it organizes complexity in a way that people can learn, control, and manage.
That’s the difference.
To me, true no-code is not about avoiding structure. It’s about making structure accessible.
And that’s exactly what Glide does well.
