Vibe Coding

Vibe coding, a term popularized by Andrej Karpathy, refers to the ability to modify or create applications using plain text instructions instead of writing traditional code. This is powered by LLMs and represents a fundamental shift in software development, lowering the barrier to entry for building applications. While some people (myself included) have been doing this for a while, the concept has only recently been given a name.

What makes vibe coding significant is that it introduces a new skill set—the ability to describe an application in precise terms to generate a functional output through an AI model. This dramatically speeds up prototyping and innovation, making it easier for non-programmers to build SaaS applications or software in general. Instead of writing code, developers focus on describing it; instead of debugging manually, they use LLMs to identify and fix issues conversationally. Even code reading shifts towards discussing architecture with an AI assistant. This changes the learning curve—where traditionally, people learned coding first and architecture later, now they will likely learn architecture first, with code generation being handled by AI.