Written by
Cayu
Published on
Nov 16, 2025
The 80/20 trap with Lovable.
The first prompt feels magical.
I describe what I want, and in seconds, Lovable builds a slick UI that looks production-ready.
For a moment, I feel unstoppable, that instant dopamine hit every builder knows too well.
Then reality kicks in.
The app looks done, but it isn’t.
I spend hours, sometimes days, wiring up buttons, workflows, KPIs, and business logic just to make it functional.
And it’s not just time.
80% of my credits, real $$$, disappear trying to make the backend catch up to what the frontend promised.
Even as someone deeply technical, I keep hitting the same wall: 20% of effort gives me something that looks complete, while the remaining 80% is the painful, invisible grind.
It’s become a pattern I now call the "Vibe coding: 80/20 Trap". Fast dopamine, slow production.
But look closer. What you’re seeing is the 80% that’s visible — the frontend. The missing 20% — the backend — is where production actually lives:
Business logic
Auth & access control
Background jobs
Data integrity
Compliance
That 20% isn’t small. It’s everything.
On Reddit, users say the same thing:
“You can’t connect real workflows — everything breaks after two dynamic components.” “I spent more time fixing backend logic than building the whole UI.”
Here’s the irony: You spend 20% of your tokens building the frontend… then 80% more money, compute, and time trying to make the backend behave like a real system.
It’s the reverse of what it should be.
This is the R vs Python moment for AI development. R was great for exploration. Python won production.
Lovable is today’s R — fast, visual, and fragile. The next generation will be Python for software — structured, unified, and production-ready from the start.
Because the future of AI development isn’t about writing UI faster — it’s about making backend complexity disappear.
Original article is on LinkedIn
