I've been thinking about this a bit in the context of a current, very complex and challenging side project. When I first began, I tried vibe coding the backend

I've been thinking about this a bit in the context of a current, very complex and challenging side project. When I first began, I tried vibe coding the backend, but found the feeling of disconnect from "my" code too uncomfortable so abandoned that approach. I've been relying pretty heavily on ChatGPT to help me learn unfamiliar technologies, but perhaps because of its fallibility with DuckDB, I've been spending a lot of time in the documentation and writing my own queries, and I think I'm going through enough cognitive difficulty to be learning properly. There was one time when I'd spent probably at least a day trying to optimise a query in Postgres (yes, two database technologies, don't ask) without much success, and ChatGPT completely solved it in about 10 minutes. Incredible result, helped me learn some useful techniques. There are so many rabbit holes on this project it's nice not to have to go down every single one by myself. On HN there's often this split between anti-AI and AI evangelists but there really is a lot of space in the middle: judicious use of AI for specific purposes, managing the risks and benefits, etc. (Side note...did the OP really mention the highly discredited broken windows theory?)