The advent of vibe coding

VIBE CODING LETS NON-CODERS SET FOOT IN A WORLD PREVIOUSLY UNACCESSIBLE

- SIDDHARTH PAI

THERE WAS A time when learning to code felt like acquiring a second language, one you had to practice for years before you could build anything meaningful.

You needed to understand logic structures, syntax peculiarities, and the unique grammar of whatever language you were working in. And even after all that, translating an idea in your head into working software still required hours of debugging, testing, and Googling obscure error messages. That world hasn't vanished entirely, but it's now been joined by a parallel one. In this new world, people who have never written a single line of code can summon working programs with a well-worded prompt and a little patience-welcome to the world of vibe coding.

Vibe coding is when someone uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools or other large language models to create software simply by describing what they want. The user doesn't know how to write code and sometimes doesn't even know what coding language would be best for the job. But they can explain, in plain English, that they want a web app to keep track of their workout routine, or a tool that reminds them to drink water every hour, or a piece of software that organises files by date and content. The AI takes that description and writes code that does what the user described, or something very close to it.

What makes this possible is the way these AI models have been trained. Systems like ChatGPT and Gemini have consumed vast amounts of code from public repositories, documentation sites, Q&A forums like Stack Overflow, and textbooks. They've seen everything from basic "Hello, World" programs to complex machine learning models written in multiple programming languages. When you describe a task to them, they aren't writing code from scratch in the same way a human programmer would. Instead, they're synthesising patterns they've seen before, stringing together code fragments, filling in gaps, and choosing likely solutions that match your request.