What is Vibe Coding?

So you’ve heard about Vibe-Coding and are now here wondering what it’s all about. Is it an end to developer jobs? Is it the next greatest tool to help? Will I need 10 years of experience with it to get a Junior Developer position at a company? We are going to delve into the new world of Vibe-Coding and what it means for the industry (or well, my point of view/rambling of the situation).

What is Vibe-Coding?

Vibe-Coding is using AI to generate code for you. It is now that simple. It is a relatively new evolution of the AI trend that has been making headlines. Starting to make headlines in February 2025 when the term was first coined by Andrej Karpathy on X and since has become the hot new thing.

The goal of this is to make development easier, by entering a few sentences into an AI prompt you can save time by automatically creating more tedious aspects of an application. Things you’ve written a thousand times before, if something else can write that instead wouldn’t you want that? Being able to code these parts of projects has proven that there is potential for AI to do more and a bigger impact on development.

More development tools have been integrating more AI Assistants so couldn’t most code being created be considered Vibe code? No, it is just a tool like anything else, where the line is drawn between AI-assisted and Vibe-Coding, which will be determined by you. Some purists will say that all the code will have to be written by the developer while others will argue.

There have been more articles, and more videos with titles like “I Vibe Coded some app without Development experience”. This may initially sound scary to think that the industry is heading towards a dramatic change, worried that what we have learned or are currently learning will become obsolete (For those of us who use JS frameworks this is now commonplace). What we need to remember is that this is something new and with anything new, there is potential to make money off it. With these types of articles it’s important to take it with a grain of salt as let's not forget being first to get these articles out brings out incentives such as links and more traffic as people start searching the topic and clickbait titles are well, clickbait.

Effects / Potential uses in the industry

Like anything within the industry, it will have its place where using it will be beneficial rather than not. If we take the example of website builders like WordPress and Wix, they have their place in the industry alongside bespoke-built websites. Does this mean that bespoke websites and web developers need to pack up and find a new job, it may seem like it but that is certainly not the case. Website builders are great for new companies or where you just need a space online to give information to potential clients. Where the website isn’t the main focus for available funds. Over time, with constant new extensions being added and more complex behavior being introduced, the overhead of working with the site becomes too much and the company needs a new bespoke website that is suitable for them. This is where a dedicated website is better to be implemented. As you see each has its own space in the online ecosystem that benefits each other.

A serious contender for use in startups

Just like websites, Vibe-Coding can certainly be used to great effect as building mockups or initial visions for products for startups is far cheaper and quicker than a team of people making and editing the product. The agile ability of Vibe-Coding lends itself well to a startup where having something to show and being able to make changes quickly from responses can mean the difference between success and failure.

Where money is an issue and getting your product out faster than your competitor is not just a worry but a requirement, the advantages of having someone who can Vibe code start appealing more.

Get people interested in programming / educating children into development

The education sector is already pivoting to new tools to help children learn the basics of development. Depending on the age of the reader, you may remember little games at school where you’ve got to get a character to the end of the page by giving commands such as move right, move down, etc. Now imagine a lesson where children vibe code to make small simple silly games. This could introduce lifelong interest and help nurture the next generation of developers.

Lots of spam and low-quality applications

As with any industry, a tool that can allow people to create applications quickly and simply will result in a lot of slop and low-quality applications. We will likely find ourselves in a sea of “free” rip-off applications of existing tools that are nowhere near the quality you would expect. We see this with games, if you take a look at the Steam game platform, when a new game comes out, plenty of rip-off/asset flip games similar to the new game are released hoping to get some money from the popularity of the newly released game.

How are we supposed to know the difference between a vibe-coded application and a regular application?

Well, we have to think about it, if the application works and doesn’t break, does it matter if it is Vibe-coded? In this article, I’ve inferred that Vibe coding equals badly broken applications but this isn’t necessarily the case. Developers with knowledge of how to code can check and fix any issues that the AI spits out.

Instead of determining if an app is vibe-coded, you should check the reviews. This is the best way we have currently to determine if the application is in a good functional state and at the end of the day, that’s what is most important.

Future of Vibe-Coding / AI Assistated Code

So where is all this going? Do we need to start looking for jobs in new sectors? The simple answer is no, you don’t need to worry about it. If you have been in the industry for a while, there is always something coming along to "disrupt" the industry that will make developers obsolete. Why have web developers with WordPress and Wix? Why build a website when AI can do it? Being able to do it and do it are two different things and if we throw in things like SEO optimization, that is a whole other behemoth itself.

Where are AI Models going?

I see AI Models going down one of two routes:

• The AI models become more intelligent and interpret what the user wants. If this becomes the case there will be new dedicated software editors that encapsulate the Vibe-Coding interpret the results and show the results in real time. AI Assistants are already becoming the norm in applications like GitHub CoPilot on Visual Studio Code or Cursor AI. I see the next stage is taking the code out of the equation and providing more visualised responses to the prompts.
• The AI continually learns from code created by the AI. Errors and bugs that are picked up by the AI compound bad code resulting in the next generation being worse off. Resulting in worse applications. We have already seen this happening with ChatGPT which was trained on selected model sets but after being released to the public and learning from its responses it became less reliable and “dumber”

We will likely see a surge in startups and new products that were Vibe coded, however, the Vibe Code and non-developers will make a hefty amount of tech debt. There will reach a point where the AI will not be able to fix issues without causing far more issues. At this point, developers who have industry knowledge will be in high demand, as businesses will need people to be able to fix their products. This knowledge is and will always be the developer's greatest asset and if multiple businesses need such a developer, will come at a premium.

The education industry could potentially lean more towards Vibe-Coding to enable children to make use of the prompts to create small projects that will facilitate their learning. How? By combining being creative, creating something fun, and learning the fundamentals of Maths, Science, and English by being helped to code. I certainly would have loved this as a kid.

Should developers be worried?

You hear all this and you may think should I be worried? Are the new generation of developers going to take my job with Vibe-Coding?

No, you don’t need to be worried, every few years a new "disruptive" technology is introduced and is hyped as the next big thing. But once the hype has died down we will finally see what it is for what it is, a tool like all others that will have its benefits of being used and will see a use in certain areas of the industry but not take over everything.

Just a gimmick?

The most important thing is time, to see where this goes. Right now it is new, hot, fire, lit, and other newer slang. This is pushing it more to the light where people can see it but this doesn’t mean that it is heavily being used. Once things cool off a bit and we take a step back, we will likely see Vibe-Coding as a gimmick or at best a tool rather than a dedicated way to work.

Most early adopters of Vibe-Coding are people with development knowledge already, so issues and bugs can be fixed during development. Once it comes to people without that knowledge how will they debug? Fixing issues will become a big headache without that fundamental knowledge. What shall they do? Have an AI look and debug the first AI’s code. Or describe what they want their code to do but better? Fellow developers you should know how difficult it is getting what the client wants so from that one statement you should know we are safe in our jobs.

Context is king

Context is a big part of the prompt-driven nature of Vibe-Coding. Context allows AI to accurately determine what the user is asking for. Both in and in between the lines of the description. This understanding is paramount for an AI to be successful in its task. Context with AI is stored in the “Chat Memory”. If this chat is lost so is the context therefore the AI won’t have any reference to what has been asked previously. Depending on the type of application this can have dangerous implications that could potentially break the app.

Malicious Code

Security will be another big factor in whether Vibe-Coding will be considered successful as without proper knowledge of what is being created, malicious code could be introduced. There is potential for code that the AI believes is necessary but is in actuality causes issues and at worst steals data and information. Without understanding basic development strategies this will be difficult to avoid.

Disclaimer: This article was not vibe-written but was written with a vibe.