Software at the speed of chat

WITH THE RIGHT SCRUTINY AND SECURITY GUARDRAILS, UNDERLYING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE AWAITS CAPTURE

- ANIL NAIR Founder, ThinkStreet

HAT IS VIBE coding? It’s artificial intelligence (AI) assisted programming, where those seeking to code describe their intention and creative direction in natural language, and AI tools do the rest. This includes figuring the architecture and project structure, generating code and doing the debugging, to create working software.

The term “vibe coding” was coined by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, as AI acts as an active collaborator. Advanced versions use AI agents to collaborate more deeply—writing and running self-tests, or executing multi-file editing across the codebase, enabling rapid prototyping and quick deployment.

The popular tools for vibe coding include Cursor (for professional developers who want an integrated development environment that combines various tools into a single graphical user interface), Replit Agent for beginners, Windsurf/Cline for agentic support, Google AI Studio which leverages Gemini, and the popular Claude Code from Anthropic.

Educational and other imperatives

Considering the developments in making AI tools easier to use, one could argue that structured learning isn’t essential. What’s clearer is that mastery over all tools is a long shot, considering their abundance, and because that type of proficiency is transient. An education grounded in enduring principles is more durable. Like conceptual data flows, precision in semantics, skills to audit code, and enduring clarity of thought.

With AI handling all the grunt work, such a curriculum also signals the shift—from needing more entry level coders to more experienced orchestrators.

Investors are beginning to value product visioning, the scale and depth of the problem being solved, and market timing, more than before.