At the start of the decade, software engineering was a battle of attrition against semicolons and memory leaks. Today, the most valuable skill in Silicon Valley isn’t mastery of C++ or Rust — it’s the ability to hold a “vibe.” Vibe Coding is the practice of building complex software by describing high-level intentions to AI agents rather than writing manual lines of code. This term has moved from a niche hobbyist trend to the industry standard. It has effectively turned the keyboard into a conductor’s baton.
From logic to language
The transition began when Large Language Models (LLMs) crossed a critical threshold of reasoning. Developers realised they no longer needed to act as ‘translators’ between human ideas and machine logic.
This shift has given birth to a new professional class – the Vibe Architect. These individuals are often more akin to product managers or creative directors than traditional programmers. They spend their days:
- Linking multiple AI agents to handle different layers of a stack simultaneously.
- Correcting system behaviour by adjusting the “persona” or “constraints” of the AI.
- Building MVP (Minimum Viable Product) apps in hours that used to take teams months.
The result is a more human-centric software. Because the barrier to creation is so low, apps are becoming more specialised, more aesthetic, and more experimental.
The economic ripple effect
The business world has been turned upside down. In 2025, the “Software Engineer” title has seen a massive bifurcation.
While some feared the total automation of the workforce, the reality has been a surge in “Solopreneurship.” In 2025, a single person with a strong vision can maintain a platform that serves millions, delegating the “toil” to a fleet of autonomous coding agents.
Can you trust a vibe coder?
Sridhar Vembu, the co-founder and Chief Scientist of Zoho, has emerged as a prominent voice of “cautious optimism” regarding the AI coding revolution in 2025. While he acknowledges the staggering productivity gains, noting that experienced engineers at Zoho are now shipping features in a single day that previously required three weeks, he has publicly clashed with Silicon Valley’s “vibe coding” enthusiasts. Vembu argues that building software through natural-language prompts alone, without deep technical oversight, risks creating “unsustainable technical debt” and security vulnerabilities. He maintains that while AI can “flesh out the details” of 90% of boilerplate code, human architects must still provide the underlying structure and take full responsibility for the final output.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, has become a leading evangelist for the “vibe coding” era, famously revealing in late 2024 and throughout 2025 that over 25% of all new code at Google is now generated by AI. Speaking on the Lex Fridman Podcast and during recent earnings calls, Pichai described this shift as a way to make software development “exciting again” and more “approachable” for everyone. Rather than seeing AI as a threat to jobs, he frames it as a “force multiplier” that increases engineering velocity—estimating a 10% boost in company-wide productivity.
What’s next?
As we look toward 2026, the term “coding” itself is starting to feel like an anachronism. We are moving toward a natural language OS, where the boundary between the user and the creator disappears entirely. In this new world, if you can describe it, and you can feel it, you can build it.
