Vibe coding: two camps
The conversation around ‘vibe coding’ split into two clear takes — some industry leaders say it can replace weakly engineered companies, while developers warn it often produces brittle, hard‑to‑maintain results (businessinsider.com) (dev.to). Affirm CEO Max Levchin argued vibe coding could supplant firms with poor software foundations, while a DEV Community essay described AI app building as a ‘muddy trench war’ rather than a magical shortcut (businessinsider.com) (dev.to).
“Vibe coding” has split the software world into two camps: executives see a way to wipe out weak products, while developers describe a bug-filled grind. (businessinsider.com) (dev.to) The term means building software by telling an artificial intelligence tool what you want in plain language and letting it generate the code. Andrej Karpathy, an OpenAI cofounder and former Tesla artificial intelligence leader, said in a February 2025 post that vibe coding means you “forget that the code even exists.” (technologyreview.com) By April 14, 2026, Affirm chief executive Max Levchin was arguing that this style of coding threatens a specific kind of business: companies with weak software and no strong proprietary data. Business Insider reported that he pointed to firms with shallow technical foundations as the most exposed. (businessinsider.com) Levchin drew a line between fragile software shops and companies whose code is tied to complex operations. Business Insider said he cited DoorDash as an example of a business whose software is harder to displace because it is bound up with logistics and real-world execution. (businessinsider.com) Developers pushing back are describing a very different workflow. In an April 13, 2026 essay on DEV Community, a writer using the name saca killer said artificial intelligence tools often “hallucinate” features, delete unrelated code during fixes, and leave users hunting through thousands of lines for what broke. (dev.to) That essay framed the process as dependence, not automation. The author said he kept using artificial intelligence because it let him build a cross-platform media app he could not have written from scratch, even as the tool introduced new bugs and rewrote working features. (dev.to) The argument has moved fast because the tools have moved fast. MIT Technology Review reported in April 2025 that products such as Cursor Chat and GitHub Copilot had advanced from completing single lines to rewriting whole files and creating new components for users. (technologyreview.com) The phrase also spread beyond developer slang. Merriam-Webster lists “vibe coding” as a slang entry updated March 12, 2026, defining it as creating apps or code by telling an artificial intelligence system what to build without needing to understand how the code works. (merriam-webster.com) What is separating the two camps is less the tool than the target. For weak, template-like software, executives increasingly see a shortcut; for anything that has to stay stable after the first demo, developers are still describing trench work. (businessinsider.com) (dev.to)
