Vibe Coding: When Software Writes Itself

Code is becoming a conversation, not a craft.

Author

Iwo Szapar
March 23, 2025

Aloha,

I am sending good vibes your way from Łeba at the Polish seaside, where I am enjoying some “good, old remote work 😎 “.

It's also a perfect place for VIBE CODING - our today's topic…

Here's a controversial thought that's been keeping me up at night…

What if the next wave of billion-dollar companies won't need engineers at all?

Or that anyone can build software… starting from today?

I know, I know. It sounds ridiculous. But hear me out...

Morning vibe walk with Luna

✌️ Vibe Coding: When Software Writes Itself

❝

The next coding revolution won't come from better programmers – it will come from people who can't code at all.

While Silicon Valley talks about AI replacing developers, the real transformation is already underway: vibe coding is democratizing software creation for millions who've never written a line of code, fundamentally inverting who holds technological power in our economy.

This shift raises a crucial question: Will the democratization of software development through vibe coding unleash unprecedented innovation across society, or will it create a dangerous divide between quick-but-messy solutions and the robust engineering needed for critical systems?

For two years, I was a vibe coding skeptic. My early attempts were frustrating exercises in failure. I tried ChatGPT, Github Copilot, and various AI coding assistants, but the outputs were buggy, the process was clunky, and the results were far from production-ready. Like many founders, I dismissed it as yet another overhyped AI trend.

Then something changed. The release of more sophisticated models like Claude Sonnet 3.5 and lately 3.7 alongside with specialized coding tools like Cursor was a game changer. Suddenly, the barrier between imagination and implementation virtually disappeared. What used to take weeks of back-and-forth with developers could now happen in a single focused session.

What is Vibe Coding?

Vibe coding lets humans describe software in plain language while AI writes the code. The approach gained prominence through Andrej Karpathy's observation:

Users describe what they want, AI generates the code, and humans refine the results:

"Just type in what you need in plain English. The system understands your intent and writes the code for you. You refine it with small tweaks, customize details, or adjust logic if needed. Then run it and iterate – AI suggests improvements and helps debug issues in real time."

Think of it as having an expert developer who can read your mind, but works at the speed of thought rather than the speed of typing.

The Reality in Practice: My Journey from Skeptic to Believer

My vibe coding journey has been a series of increasingly ambitious experiments. First, it was small utilities – scripts to automate repetitive tasks. Then internal tools that would have taken weeks to spec out for contractors. Finally, customer-facing features that traditionally required specialized expertise.

The most striking aspect isn't just the speed – it's the ability to pivot instantly when something isn't working. Traditional development requires carefully considering each change to avoid wasting developer time. With vibe coding, you can explore multiple approaches in parallel, keeping what works and discarding what doesn't.

This transformation is accelerating faster than even industry insiders anticipated. As one YC founder reported: "Six to one month ago was a 10x speed up. One month ago to now is a 100x speed up. It's exponential acceleration." What began as an experiment has become the dominant development approach for many startups.

Screenshot from my Cursor app - trying to fix some bugs AI produced

The Cultural Shift in Software Creation

Vibe coding is fundamentally reshaping who builds it. Just as smartphones democratized photography and social media democratized publishing, vibe coding is democratizing software creation. For you, this shift has profound implications:

  • Youth-Driven Innovation: Like social media before it, software creation will increasingly be driven by young creators who are time-rich but money-poor. The next revolutionary app might come from a teenager's bedroom, not a venture-backed startup. I've witnessed this firsthand seeing Cal AI hit $12M ARR with just 4 people and a 17-year-old CEO!

  • Software as Expression: We'll see the emergence of "software memes" – quick, disposable applications built for cultural expression rather than utility. Software will become a creative medium like video or images.

  • Post-Modern Interfaces: As new creators ignore traditional UX conventions, we'll see experimental interfaces that break from established patterns. The rigid design patterns you're familiar with will give way to something wilder and more diverse.

The rise of what I call "AI coding natives" – developers who learned to code in an era where AI assistants already existed – represents a fundamental shift. These developers can become highly productive programmers without traditional computer science training. They're the vanguard of a new technical class that thinks differently about software creation.

Impact on the Future of Entrepreneurship

The End of the Technical Co-Founder?

Here's a contrarian take that's making waves in Silicon Valley: the traditional venture capital model, built on technical co-founders and large engineering teams, might be becoming obsolete. When a non-technical founder can build and iterate on complex software products independently, the entire funding landscape shifts.

The implications are profound:

  • Solo founders can validate ideas without technical dependencies

  • Early-stage capital needs decrease dramatically

  • The "technical co-founder hunt" becomes optional rather than mandatory

  • Product iterations can happen at the speed of customer feedback

This shift challenges the traditional venture capital thesis. When small teams can rapidly build, test, and scale software products without significant upfront investment, do they really need to trade large equity stakes for capital? The next wave of successful startups might look more like bootstrapped micro-unicorns than venture-backed behemoths.

Accelerated Development Cycles

I've heard from various founders "vibe coding is accelerating development cycles, with some projects seeing up to 10x faster completion times." This speed advantage applies not just to initial development but also to iteration and feature expansion – creating a compounding advantage for nimble teams.

The impact on time-to-market cannot be overstated. As demonstrated in a livestream by Lovable and Supabase, a team "built a complete event management app" in just over an hour using vibe coding techniques. This kind of rapid development was previously unimaginable and represents a step-change in how quickly entrepreneurs can bring their ideas to life – dramatically reducing the risk of building the wrong thing.

New Business Models and Opportunities

The proliferation of vibe coding is creating entirely new business models and market opportunities – an ecosystem I call the "intention economy." A vibrant ecosystem of specialized tools and platforms has emerged to support different aspects of the vibe coding workflow:

  • AI app builders like Lovable, Bolt.new, and Vercel's v0

  • AI-powered IDEs like Cursor and Codeium's Windsurf

  • Underlying infrastructure components like Supabase (database), Vercel (deployment), and Stripe (payments)

The New Competitive Landscape

As vibe coding makes software creation accessible to you and millions like you, competitive advantage shifts from technical execution to four new areas:

  1. Consistent Creativity: Anyone can build an app, but sustained innovation will distinguish leaders

  2. Distribution Power: First-movers won't win – those who build network effects will

  3. Edge Case Management: Managing complex business logic and security implications becomes the key challenge

  4. Quality Assurance: While building is easy, ensuring reliability and security requires expertise

Your ability to excel in these areas will determine your success in a vibe-coded world.

The Zero-to-One vs. One-to-Many Divide

A critical distinction is emerging between two phases of development: zero-to-one (initial creation) and one-to-many (scaling systems). YC partners note that vibe coding excels at rapid initial development but faces challenges when scaling to millions of users.

The historical parallel of Twitter's "fail whale" moments illustrates this tension perfectly. Companies like Facebook that initially built with rapid but imperfect tools (PHP) eventually needed to invest in custom compilers and infrastructure to scale effectively. Similarly, vibe-coded applications may require architectural reimagining as they scale.

This creates two distinct talent needs: "vibe coders" who excel at rapid prototyping and systems architects who can solve complex scaling problems. As your projects grow, recognize when you're crossing this critical threshold.

The Quality-Speed Tradeoff

Despite enthusiasm surrounding vibe coding, there remains a fundamental tension between speed and quality – what I call the "vibe coder's dilemma." A senior Microsoft software engineer told Business Insider that vibe coding is "a little overhyped" because AI often generates "messy, hard-to-manage code."

The UX Collective captures this tension with their concept of the "creation-maintenance divide," noting that "vibe coding excels at creation but struggles with maintenance. This creates a fundamental split." They suggest that organizations should use "rapid vibe coding for prototyping and proof-of-concepts, alongside rigorous engineering practices for production systems."

Other concerns include security vulnerabilities, as "AI-generated code can introduce vulnerabilities. If you don't carefully review it, hackers could exploit weaknesses in your app."[6] These limitations suggest that while vibe coding is transforming innovation speed, traditional software engineering practices remain vital for building sustainable, secure systems that you and your users can trust.

Impact on the Future of Innovation

Unprecedented Speed of Development

Vibe coding enables what I call "imagination-velocity matching" – an unprecedented acceleration in innovation by compressing development cycles. With the ability to translate ideas into working software in hours rather than weeks or months, more concepts can be explored, tested, and refined in less time.

This acceleration is particularly valuable for rapid prototyping. Vibe coding is "perfect for prototyping – great for startups and product teams that need to move fast."[1] The reduced cost of failure encourages more experimentation and potentially more ambitious innovation attempts – you can try ten approaches in the time it previously took to try one.

Expansion of Who Can Innovate

Perhaps the most profound impact of vibe coding on innovation is the expansion of who can participate in software creation. As Lovable notes, vibe coding "changes the whole game of software development" by making it accessible to non-developers – including you, regardless of your technical background.

This democratization means that domain experts across industries can directly implement their ideas without technical intermediaries. Andrew Chen predicts this will "accelerate software eating random long tail industries" because "previously, you couldn't have gotten high-end software engineers excited about small/boring/slow-growth industries but now people within those industries will vibe code their way to greatness."

Cross-Industry Transformation

As vibe coding capabilities spread beyond the technology sector, we're likely to see digital transformation accelerate across traditionally underserved industries. Domain experts like you can now create customized software solutions tailored to your specific industry needs without waiting for tech companies to enter your space.

This dynamic could lead to a proliferation of highly specialized applications that address niche problems in ways that general-purpose software never could. The long tail of software needs may finally be served as the barriers to creation continue to fall.

Beyond Static Software

Imagine software that evolves based on user behavior rather than developer input – what I call "intent-responsive systems." Instead of specifying exact behaviors, you could define desired outcomes like "make the signup process easier" and let AI automatically adjust the implementation based on user interaction data.

This shift from prescriptive to outcome-based development could revolutionize how we think about software evolution and maintenance. However, this future brings new challenges that you should prepare for:

  • Security vulnerabilities in AI-generated code

  • Balance between speed and stability

  • Need for robust testing frameworks

  • Governance of self-modifying systems

Your ability to navigate these challenges will determine your success in implementing next-generation systems.

The Picasso Principle

YC partners draw an illuminating parallel to Pablo Picasso's artistic journey that perfectly captures the future of technical mastery. Before creating his revolutionary abstract works, Picasso mastered traditional, realistic painting techniques. His ability to distill forms to their essence came from deep understanding of fundamentals.

Similarly, the most successful vibe coders may be those who understand the underlying principles of software development. As one YC partner observed: "The best in the world, the founders that become outliers, are going to need to put in the deliberate practice."

This suggests that while vibe coding makes software creation more accessible to you, mastery still requires understanding fundamentals – even if those fundamentals are learned through different paths than traditional computer science education.

Three Predictions for the Vibe Coding Future

Here are my confident predictions about where vibe coding is taking us:

  1. The Death of Traditional Software Development

    • By 2026, the title "software developer" will be as quaint as "computer operator" or my fav term “software composer”

    • Technical interviews will test prompt engineering and system design rather than coding syntax

    • The most valuable engineers will be those who can architect systems that seamlessly blend human and AI capabilities

  2. The Rise of Teenage Tech Empires

    • The next billion-dollar app will be created by someone under 18

    • Just as TikTok creators disrupted traditional media, teenage vibe coders will disrupt traditional software companies

    • We'll see a new generation of founders who've never written traditional code

  3. The Visual Revolution

    • Text-based prompting will give way to visual software composition

    • Traditional UX patterns will be replaced by AI-generated, context-aware interfaces

    • Software will evolve automatically based on user behavior, not developer input

The Future is Conversational

The rise of vibe coding represents a fundamental democratization of digital creation power. The question isn't whether traditional coding will disappear, but how you'll harness these new capabilities to solve problems that previously seemed impossible.

The future of coding is not about syntax – it's about vision and the ability to articulate solutions clearly. In this new world, your ideas and ability to express them become more valuable than technical implementation skills.

As you navigate this transition, remember that early adopters of paradigm-shifting technologies have always secured disproportionate advantages.

The time to embrace vibe coding is already here.

PS. Want to experience the power of vibe coding yourself? Here's how to begin:

The key is to begin with a clear problem you want to solve, rather than getting caught up in the technology. Remember, vibe coding is about outcomes, not code.

Appendix A: Technical Implementation Guide

My AI Coding Process: A Systematic Approach

Beyond the general framework, here's my specific step-by-step process that I've refined while building our AI Maturity Index platform:

Phase 1: Planning and Requirements

  1. Create a PRD for the Specific Feature

    • Give as many details as possible about functionality, user flow, and business objectives

    • Attach context from your existing codebase (architecture diagrams, related files, etc.)

    • Include explicit constraints and requirements (performance, security, etc.)

  2. Iteratively Improve the PRD

    • Ask the AI to identify gaps or ambiguities in your requirements

    • Add more details from your codebase to provide richer context

    • Repeat refinement until the PRD is comprehensive and specific

Phase 2: Development Execution

  1. Break Down Implementation into Batches

    • Take one section from the PRD and ask to write detailed tasks

    • Create a documentation file (.md) with tasks to do

    • Implement a systematic approach to track progress

  2. Execute the First Batch of Tasks

    • Have the AI implement one batch of tasks at a time

    • Review code continuously as it's generated

    • Identify and address issues immediately

  3. Validate Implementation with Rigorous Checks

    • Verify database schema compatibility

    • Confirm route structures and naming conventions

    • Validate API endpoints for consistency and security

    • Perform targeted security vulnerability assessment

Phase 3: Testing and Documentation

  1. Implement Comprehensive Testing

    • Add appropriate tests for new functionality

    • Run tests and resolve any failures

    • Validate edge cases and error handling

  2. Update Documentation

    • Ensure documentation reflects the implemented features

    • Include any discovered limitations or considerations

    • Document any decisions made during implementation

Phase 4: Iteration

  1. Start Fresh with New Context

    • Begin a new chat to clear the context and prevent confusion

    • Add the PRD .md file to provide clear requirements

    • Create a list of tasks for the next batch of features

    • Repeat the process until all requirements are implemented

This structured approach has allowed me to build complex features efficiently even with limited technical background. The key is maintaining rigorous organization and documentation throughout the process.

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Happy vibing,

Iwo

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