What is vibe coding?

Vibe coding is the art of prompting AI — describing in plain language what you want — to write code to build products. Vibe coding tends to be looked down upon by software engineers who prefer to write code by hand. However, look at it from the product’s point of view. Whatever the input — a prompt to AI, or code typed by hand — that code is turned into machine code, the instructions the computer actually runs. Most software engineers never look at machine code either. So what matters is being able to provide meaningful inputs to produce the expected output: a running program. In essence, vibe coding allows a non-programmer with a good definition of the product they want to build to produce a running program without a team of engineers.

Of course, this is not to dismiss the software engineer’s experience and knowledge: understanding how software is built is an invaluable head start when it comes to vibe coding, so to become a proficient vibe coder, expect to learn about software engineering along the way. The amazing part about AI is that it’s not just there to do the work for you; it’s also an effective tutor for those curious and willing to learn and ask the right questions.

So let’s dive into it.