Are you vibe coding yet?
Are you vibe coding yet? If you're not familiar, it's the idea that AI now lets you "think about code" rather than having to actually write it.
Still not sure? Give vibe coding a go right now… ask Claude to make an interactive game of snake, or an interactive flocking simulation like I did in this demo video - now you're vibing!
Andrej Karpathy, one of the world's top AI developers, coined the term recently, describing it as a new software development approach where you "fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists."
What I find interesting is how polarising this concept has become so quickly. On one hand, Y Combinator (the Silicon Valley startup factory) surveyed their latest batch and found that 25% of startups reported over 95% of their codebase was AI-generated. That's extraordinary. As one founder put it, "Human taste is now more important than ever as code tools make everyone a 10x engineer."
But not everyone's convinced. Brendan Humphreys, CTO at Canva, recently pushed back hard on LinkedIn: "No, you won't be vibe coding your way to production. Not if you prioritise quality, safety, security, and long-term maintainability at scale."
So where's the middle ground? I see vibe coding as revolutionary for prototyping and proof of concepts. This is how we’re vibing at Time Under Tension. Popular tools like Cursor (which has achieved a 9,900% year-over-year increase in revenue) and Replit's AI Agent are genuinely changing how people build software. They're letting non-engineers like me create working prototypes in hours rather than weeks.
This is the most exciting aspect. How it democratises software development. Suddenly, product managers, marketers, and non-technical founders can prototype their own tools without waiting for engineering resources. It's still early days, but this truly feels like a transformative moment.
I've experimented myself using Replit Agents, Claude 3.7 and Cursor to write code that would normally take a developer days, in just a few hours. The feeling is liberating - describing what you want rather than having to write every line.
It can also be frustrating, as these tools are not perfect, and patience is required to help the bot debug its own code. To be honest, that can kill the vibe - but these apps are improving every day.
Like all AI tools, context matters. I wouldn't use it for production-ready systems yet. That's where Canva's Humphreys has a point. Expert human oversight remains essential, even for enthusiastic vibe coders.
I've always been fascinated by how technology can lower barriers. Vibe coding is another step in that direction - turning ideas into working software with dramatically less friction.
To quote the famous line from The Castle “In summing up it's the constitution, it's Mabo, it's justice, it's law, it's the Vibe and, no that's it, it's the vibe. I rest my case.”