A definition of “vibe coding,” or: how AI is turning everyone into a software developer
10-minute plays + the magic of taking things apart (Issue #296)
In issue #282, we featured a story by product designer Ben Snyder, who used AI to build a rudimentary game in which you (an ostrich) must jump over a barrage of obstacles, and if you don’t you die. Snyder and his kids built the game with Replit and v0, two apps that let you “blink software into reality,” as Pete Sena describes it on Medium. You can ask either app to “build a game where you have to jump to avoid monsters,” and they’ll do so instantly.
The term for this style of on-command software development is “vibe coding” — Andrej Karpathy, cofounder of OpenAI, coined it last month and it instantly caught on. The idea: Instead of developers writing literal lines of code, anyone can direct AI to build based on a prompt… and tweak from there. In Kaprathy’s words: “it’s not really coding — I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.”
Vibe coding is a mindset more than a method. It’s about giving into AI’s potential — giving into the vibe of AI-driven development — rather than fighting it.
Sena views vibe coding as simply the latest development in the Great Democratization Cycle of every technology. We saw this happen to photography (goodbye darkrooms, hello digital photos), publishing (goodbye printing press, hello blogging), even video and music production. Technology always cheapens the means of production, increasing productivity (the amount of photos taken, stories told, code written…) and making truly innovative work that much more valuable.
In the world vibe coding is creating, expertise still matters, but it’s a different type of expertise. Now that the gap between ideas and execution has been reduced to basically zero, we’ll place even more of a premium on great ideas and elegant execution.
And, when anyone (even me, a non-engineer) can generate a working prototype in seconds, we’ll probably see tech jobs become less specialized. Sena predicts a world where:
1. Product managers can’t hide behind documents and wireframes — they’ll need to generate working prototypes
2. Designers can’t simply hand off mockups — they’ll need to implement their designs
3. Marketers can’t request custom tools — they’ll build their own analytics dashboards
4. Executives can’t claim technical ignorance — they’ll need to understand the systems they oversee
AI-written code is certainly not a panacea, because good software doesn’t just work — it’s also maintainable. Sena writes, AI “can produce code that works initially but falls apart under pressure,” and only a good developer knows how to turn an AI’s output into something that stands the test of time.
Still, “the bottleneck is no longer development speed, it’s knowing which problems are worth solving.”
What else we’re reading
- Population growth is decelerating yet life feels more crowded than ever — because, over the last 20 years (a) people moved from suburbs to cities, and (b) public spaces were replaced by commercial ones. (Cleo Ashbee)
- “In a world that pits diversity, equity and inclusion against merit, I’m here to tell you that my success is due to both.” — Joshunda Sanders
- A brief list of storytelling plots via David K. Farkas, who’s written over 100 ten-minute plays. “From a highly generalized point of view,” he believes, “it can be said that human beings tell a limited number of stories over and over again,” and each one is some combination of the following:
🔧 Your daily dose of practical wisdom
“The next time something breaks in your home, don’t rush to throw it away. Hand it to your child and see where their curiosity takes them. You might be surprised by the magic that unfolds.” — Oscar Delgadillo on letting his kids dismantle old clock radios and coffee makers as a way to teach them patience, attention to detail, and how to use their hands (as opposed to screens)
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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