Andrej Karpathy, Co-Founder of OpenAI (ChatGPT) and former Tesla AI-lead introduced the term “vibe coding” in February 2025 to describe a new approach to software development. “It refers to coding with support from large language models (LLMs) that generates code instead of writing it manually. He described this method as “not really coding” but rather envisioning, instructing, and executing code.
Put simply: you don’t need to learn to code for years. AI will write the code for you which makes sense because AI is backed with LLMs (large language models) and probably one of the most powerful language groups is the group of “programming languages”. Which means LLMs should work more accurate than humans in respecting all language rules and syntax to generate good working code.
I first tried it out when my company introduced a new time tracking tool for projects. And I thought this is not very complicated, even for me as a “hobby developer”, you need a start- and stop button, you need a connection to existing projects, a timestamp to track the actual time and a storage for the data. In best case an user id to follow up the working capacities of individuals, if you like. But with a lack of time I typed this into GPT and got a well working solution based on python with sqlite3 database in the back and TKinter GUI (simple but functional). I played around with this idea and two questions were raised in my head. The first one was -> is this really coding? And the second one was -> how do professional developers perceive these new opportunities?
The target is to create software, the target is not to write code for hours.
It was good to hear from a friend who is head of engineer in a mid-sized organization for software engineering that he expecting his team to use this new way of working. His opinion is that engineers who don’t use vibe coding will be left behind.
We agreed that the coding work will change. You invest more time in creating solutions, managing your (software) product instead of sitting in front of your laptop and writing manual code for hours. And we align with some big-tech CEOs like Satya Nadella (Microsoft) who said that Microsoft has already a share of 30% vibe coding in all new projects. Mark Zuckerberg said in a podcast that he is expecting that AI can replace a “mid-level engineer”.
Isn’t the backside that all people start creating software and flooding the app stores and internet with nonsense? My opinion is -> I don’t think so. There will be a higher number of nonsense “software” available, but it is not just about sending one single and simple prompt to AI and you get back a finished solution.
I believe that you..
– still need to understand at least the fundamentals of coding
– need to know how to prompt aka interact with AI (and it is not the same like searching for something in google)
– need to have a good idea and a (project) plan. If not, it will be probably a ton of Tetris game revivals or another “I am rich” App but nothing that becomes benefitial for long-term use
– need to work even more structured in your project management to achive what you are aiming for especially with documentations
All in all, I no longer feel guilty about using AI for writing code. It’s more about increasing efficiency than cheating…. I wish I’d had this sentence when I was at school.