University of Kwazulu-Natal

Vibe Coding The Revolutionary Ai Approach Happening In 2025

Bonisiwe Shabane
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vibe coding the revolutionary ai approach happening in 2025

Imagine telling your computer what you want to build—in plain English—and watching as it writes all the code for you. No programming languages to learn, no syntax errors to debugging, just describing your vision and seeing it come to life. This revolutionary approach, known as “vibe coding,” transforms how software gets created in 2025, making development accessible to everyone from seasoned programmers to creative professionals with zero coding experience. Vibe coding is an AI-dependent programming technique where people describe problems in natural language and artificial intelligence generates the code. Coined by renowned AI expert Andrej Karpathy in February 2025, the term quickly gained traction and was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary by March as a “slang & trending” term. Rather than writing code line by line, vibe coding shifts the programmer’s role to that of a director—guiding, testing, and refining AI-generated code.

It’s like having a tireless coding assistant who handles all the technical details while you focus on the creative vision. As Karpathy himself described it: “It’s not really coding – I just see things, say things, run things and copy-paste things, and it mostly works.” This casual approach—focusing on the “vibe” or general intention... At its heart, vibe coding represents a fundamental shift in how we approach software creation: 2025 marked a watershed moment in software development. What began as a bold experiment—using AI to generate code through natural language descriptions—exploded into a movement that fundamentally changed who could build software and how quickly they could do it. This was the year of vibe coding and its essential counterpart, vibe testing.

The term "vibe coding" was coined by Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI and former AI leader at Tesla, in February 2025. His concept described a coding approach that relies on large language models, allowing programmers to generate working code by providing natural language descriptions rather than manually writing it. By December 2025, the impact was undeniable: Y Combinator reported that 25% of startup companies in its Winter 2025 batch had codebases that were 95% AI-generated. Vibe coding represents a fundamental shift in how software is created. According to IBM's definition, vibe coding is a fresh approach where users express their intention using plain speech and the AI transforms that thinking into executable code. The philosophy, as Karpathy described it, is about "fully giv[ing] in to the vibes, embrac[ing] exponentials, and forget[ting] that the code even exists".

A critical distinction sets vibe coding apart from simply using AI as a coding assistant. A key part of the definition of vibe coding is that the user accepts AI-generated code without fully understanding it. Programmer Simon Willison clarified: If an LLM wrote every line of your code, but you've reviewed, tested, and understood it all, that's not vibe coding—that's using an LLM as a typing assistant. Vibe coding transformed the programmer's role from writing code to becoming a director of AI-generated output. Developers now focus on: Picture this: you sit down at your computer, describe what you want your app to do in plain English, and watch as fully functional code appears on your screen.

No syntax errors, no debugging marathons, no Stack Overflow deep dives at 2 AM. This isn’t science fiction—it’s vibe coding, and it’s transforming how developers work in 2025. Introduced by renowned computer scientist Andrej Karpathy in February 2025, vibe coding was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as a “slang & trending” term within just one month. But what started as a playful concept has become a genuine paradigm shift that’s reshaping the entire software development landscape. Vibe coding is an AI-assisted software development technique where programmers write natural language prompts—simple problem descriptions—and allow large language models to generate source code. Instead of worrying about syntax, developers describe what they want in everyday language, and AI generates the required code.

Think of it as having a conversation with your computer about what you want to build, and the computer actually understands and builds it for you. Instead of writing this traditional JavaScript: Since we’re entering the area where AI is going to be writing most of the code, let’s take a moment to celebrate some of the people who are on the forefront of moving the... First of all, it’s apparent that this is happening quickly. Various companies are talking about the proportions of their code that are currently written by AI, and these are increasing at a rapid clip. There’s a lot of job displacement already around this part of the tech world.

But certain personalities are basically becoming household names for their mastery of AI tools and processes, and their ability to see how this type of advancement shakes out. And some of these pioneers are also sort of prophetic – they are on record talking about their outlooks, and people are listening. Let’s go over some of what we’re hearing about the coding world in 2025 from these three innovators. On a 5K screen in Kirkland, Washington, four terminals blur with activity as artificial intelligence generates thousands of lines of code. Steve Yegge, a veteran software engineer who previously worked at Google and AWS, sits back to watch. “This one is running some tests, that one is coming up with a plan.

I am now coding on four different projects at once, although really I’m just burning tokens,” Yegge says, referring to the cost of generating chunks of text with a large language model (LLM). Learning to code has long been seen as the ticket to a lucrative, secure career in tech. Now, the release of advanced coding models from firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google threatens to upend that notion entirely. X and Bluesky are brimming with talk of companies downsizing their developer teams—or even eliminating them altogether. When ChatGPT debuted in late 2022, AI models were capable of autocompleting small portions of code—a helpful, if modest step forward that served to speed up software development. As models advanced and gained “agentic” skills that allow them to use software programs, manipulate files, and access online services, engineers and non-engineers alike started using the tools to build entire apps and websites.

Andrej Karpathy, a prominent AI researcher, coined the term “vibe coding” in February, to describe the process of developing software by prompting an AI model with text. The rapid progress has led to speculation—and even panic—among developers, who fear that most development work could soon be automated away, in what would amount to a job apocalypse for engineers. A new term is making waves in the software engineering world—“vibe coding.” It encapsulates a fast-rising trend where artificial intelligence, especially large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, takes on the heavy lifting of writing... Rather than requiring developers to painstakingly craft each function or debug every error line-by-line, vibe coding allows developers—and even non-coders—to describe what they want in natural language and get working code in return. The implications of this trend are enormous. From drastically increasing developer productivity to democratizing software creation for non-technical founders, vibe coding may be a glimpse into the future of software engineering.

But how far has the technology really come, and can it handle the complexities of enterprise-scale systems? Or is it still only suited for prototyping and simple projects? To understand what’s happening, let’s start by looking at one of the most powerful accelerators in the tech world: Y Combinator. Y Combinator (YC), one of the most prestigious startup incubators in the world, has backed giants like Airbnb, Stripe, DoorDash, and Dropbox. With over 5,000 companies funded and a combined valuation of over $600 billion, YC is an excellent bellwether for emerging tech trends. In its latest batch of startups, something remarkable happened: roughly 25% of the cohort reported using AI to write at least 95% of their code.

That’s not a minor assist—it’s nearly full codebase generation by artificial intelligence. In the fast-evolving landscape of software development, a paradigm shift is underway that's fundamentally changing how we build digital products. Welcome to the era of VIBE coding – Visual, Interactive, Bot-assisted Engineering – where developers and AI collaborate in real-time to create software through natural language conversation rather than manual typing of every line... VIBE coding represents a transformative approach to software development where programmers work side-by-side with AI assistants in a conversational, iterative way. Rather than manually crafting every line of code, developers describe their goals or needed fixes in natural language, and large language models (LLMs) generate or modify the code accordingly. This concept gained significant traction in early 2025 when AI researcher Andrej Karpathy popularized the idea of "fully giving in to the vibes" of AI-generated code.

In practice, VIBE coding shifts the human's role from syntax specialist to guide, tester, and refiner of AI-generated output. Large software companies and enterprises are actively integrating AI coding assistants into their development workflows: ANZ Bank (Australia) reported that approximately 7% of its code was AI-generated within a six-month period Picture this: It’s Monday morning, and a solo developer sits down with a cup of coffee and a bold idea. They open their terminal and type a single command: “Build a dashboard to track customer metrics across products.” There are no detailed specs, no wireframes, just a vision. By lunch, an AI agent had delivered a polished UI, a fully functional back-end, and a deployed prototype humming in the cloud.

Gone are the days of boilerplate code, sprint planning, and endless debugging. This is development distilled to its essence, intent turned into output. Welcome to Vibe Coding, a prompt-driven, AI-enhanced approach redefining software development. Introduced by Andrej Karpathy in early 2025, vibe coding transforms developers from syntax wranglers into strategic collaborators, guiding intelligent systems to bring ideas to life at breakneck speed. It’s a new way of thinking about creation rather than automation. With AI-native tools like Cursor and GitHub Copilot maturing, vibe coding has shifted from a quirky experiment to a core competency for engineers and a game-changer for tech leaders.

In Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch, 25% of startups built their products with 95% AI-generated code, a clear signal of what’s ahead. If you or your team is still coding the old way, it’s time to rethink your workflow. The future isn’t waiting. What if you could build software simply by describing what you want? No more battling syntax errors or endless debugging, just a clear expression of intent turned into functional code. This is vibe coding, a prompt-driven approach where developers use plain language to guide AI in crafting software.

Vibe coding flips traditional programming on its head: developers focus on what they want instead of wrestling with code line-by-line, and AI handles the how. Historically, Coding meant translating ideas into rigid syntax, a meticulous and often tedious process. Vibe coding shifts that burden. Developers now operate at a higher level, describing outcomes like “a real-time stock dashboard with custom filters” and collaborating with AI to bring it to life. The cycle is dynamic: you prompt, the AI generates, refine, and repeat until it’s perfect. It’s less about writing code and more about steering it into existence.

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