2026-01-05T10:55:01.223Z
Vibe coding has upended software engineering, strapping developers with a suite of new AI tools.
OpenAI and Tesla alum Andrej Karpathy, who coined the term, recently said he’s “never felt this much behind.”
Are you a software developer? Take our vibe-coding survey below.
Software engineering is changing — and we want to hear from those navigating the moment.
Programmers today find themselves with a whole new suite of AI tools, from Claude Code to Cursor to Codex. These editors enable engineers to generate entirely artificial lines of code or modify their handwritten code with the assistance of a large language model.
There’s a term for this type of AI-assisted programming: “vibe coding.”
Engineers from Meta to Google are embracing a vibe coding approach in their day-to-day work. Everyone, from teenagers to non-technical workers, suddenly seem to be building their own apps — or at least vibe-coding their way to a prototype.
It’s a whole new skill set for engineers to learn, though, one that can vary from tool to tool. (Replit is different from Lovable, which is different from Bolt, and the list goes on.) It’s also not clear, for the most experienced programmers, whether there are actually productivity gains.
Andrej Karpathy coined the famous term “vibe coding” early last year. He was a founding team member of OpenAI and led AI efforts at Tesla. In a recent X post reflecting on the field, Karpathy wrote that he had “never felt this much behind as a programmer.”
“I have a sense that I could be 10X more powerful if I just properly string together what has become available over the last ~year,” he wrote. “A failure to claim the boost feels decidedly like skill issue.”
Are you a programmer? Answer our vibe-coding survey below:
