You Ask, I Answer: Building ERP Systems With Vibe Coding

In today's episode, a par APAR? I don't know how to pronounce that. I'm sorry, I apologize. Asks, how can a non-codered data scientist use vibe coding tools to architect and build a custom full ERP system from scratch? It says, I'm a data scientist with zero traditional coding knowledge, but I've been bitten by the vibe coding bug.

I'm trying to build a custom ERP system. I know what each I want each module to do, but I need an AI part to handle the actual architecture and heavy lifting. How do I do this? The idea of a non-coding data scientist, that that's breaking my brain a little bit because every data scientist I know can do at least a little something in Python. But okay.

Um you're doing software development. Welcome to software development. Vibe coding does not change good development practices. Sorry. Um, it relieves you of the duty to type, but you still have to think, and you still have to know what good software development is.

So you're on the right track. You need a spec, you need a requirements document, you need gathered requirements, you need design patterns, you need anti-patterns, you need to do an inventory of modules and things out there in the language of your choice that exists so that you don't reinvent the wheel. You should definitely spend some time reading up on what good QA is for software. And then once you've done all of that homework, then and only then are you ready to start building and vibe coding. If you want the thing to succeed, if you don't want the thing to not be a flaming hot mess the moment you deploy it.

One of the big problems with vibe coding, and I'm not trying to sound like an elitist jerk here. Uh, I'm really not, because I'm not a great coder to begin with either, but I am reasonably good at understanding systems. Coding is a system. Coding is a system, and it is a system that requires you to follow very clear procedures if you want your code to succeed. Now, if you don't care about the quality of your code, that's a different story.

But if you're building an ERP system, which by the way is not a light lift, ERP systems, there's a reason why companies like SAP charge millions of dollars for their software. It's not because it's not solely because they're greedy. Um it is because ERP systems are nightmarishly complex. So once you've learned the basics of software, and you don't have to write code to learn how coding works. You can you can just do the book learning because what you need is vocabulary, right?

You need the good the vocabulary of how to build great software, what goes into the construction of great software. You need a vocabulary around specs, you need a vocabulary around test-driven development and test-driven debugging, you need vocabulary around systematic debugging, you need vocabulary around unit testing and end-to-end integration testing. You need a vocabulary around the language that you're going to be using and the deterministic code quality tools that are in that language. Because even if you're using vibe coding, you are still going to be doing directing the AI of about what to do. You know, like what kinds of, for example, class and object structure you're going to be using.

Depending on the language you're working in, the answer may vary wildly, right? Some languages are really good at things, um, like memory management things, other languages, not so much. Some languages are compiled languages, some languages are scripted languages. If you're building an ERP system, I'm gonna guess you want it to not be slow. Um, so you should probably be thinking about things like Rust as a very high-speed modern language.

Uh, I would not suggest something like COBOL or Pascal. I mean, technically, those are relatively easy languages to learn, but they are they're not particularly modern. Scripted languages like Python, as much as I love Python as and as prevalent as it is, and I'm sure you run into it as a data scientist. Um, Python is not a great language for building binaries at in because it's it's a scripted compiled language, it's it's a high higher level language. So you can absolutely do like an MVP in Python, get all the bugs worked out, and then hand that off to an AI tool and say, now rebuild this in Rust.

Um it depends on the environment you're working in. Are you building it for a certain operating system that will dictate? You know, if you're if you're building something that is purely gonna be used on Mac, you should probably build it in Swift, right? Because Swift is Apple's modern operating system. There's a lot that goes into what you're talking about here.

There's also there's a ton that goes into how do you make this sucker work? But to begin with, if I had to say here is where to start. Where to start is with a good spec. That is the starting point. Build that first, and then everything else flows from that.

Without a good spec, you're toast. That's gonna do it for today's episode. Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you on the next one. If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button.

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