Vibe Coding Is Not Good or Bad. It Is Natural.

In the debate about whether “vibe coding” is good or bad, my answer is simple: it is natural.

Let’s start with the term itself.

Vibe coding is a way to create software through natural human language. A person describes what they want in the way that feels natural to them, and the output is some kind of working product.

The main criticism I see around vibe coding is that the person no longer fully controls what is written in the code.

But this is not the first time software engineering has moved in this direction.

I already wrote about this in Losing Control of Code with AI and High-Level Abstractions. At some point in the history of IT, people stopped controlling the exact processor instructions that were sent to the CPU. They moved to high-level programming languages and started writing software much faster than before.

Then garbage collection appeared, and many more people entered the profession because one of the hardest problems for programmers, manual memory management, became less central to everyday work.

There are many examples like this.

Vibe coding is simply another stage in this long chain of abstraction. We understand even less about what happens not only at the machine-code level, but sometimes even at the level of the functional implementation of algorithms.

But the more important change is not technical.

The more important change is cultural.

As an engineer with many years of experience, I can say that among engineers there are many “doers”: people who are deeply focused on the process, the implementation, the code, the internal beauty of the system.

That can be valuable.

But when we talk about a final result, the most important question is different:

Did we get the product we wanted?

If the result matches the expected requirements, then the exact path to that result becomes less important. How many lines of code were written, which design patterns were used, and whether the code looks elegant in the traditional sense matters much less than whether the system solves the real problem.

This is where result-oriented people move to the front.

The people who always tried to define the goal, find the shortest path to it, and keep pushing in one direction until the result is achieved now receive a very powerful tool.

In this sense, I would rename vibe coding slightly.

A more accurate term is AI-assisted engineering.

That better describes the real process: a human sets the task, checks the output, gives corrections, and repeats the cycle until the result is good enough.

Why People See It Positively

1. Software Engineering Becomes More Accessible

Software becomes available to many more people for whom programming is not the profession of their life.

For them, software is simply a hammer.

They do not want to become professional toolmakers. They want to use the hammer to build a house.

2. Prototyping Becomes Much Faster

To test an idea, a business owner no longer always needs to hire a team, wait for specialists, and spend months before seeing the first version.

They can sketch the idea themselves and at least test whether the concept works.

3. The Entry Barrier Goes Down

A person still needs to understand operating systems, technologies, security, and product logic at some level.

But they no longer need years of experience in algorithms and programming before they can create their first product.

4. Roles Change

The person writing software is no longer only the author of code.

They become more like a director, product creator, or system operator.

They define the intention, guide the process, review the result, and decide whether the output satisfies the goal.

5. Business Impact Becomes Faster

Many businesses become less dependent on expensive development teams or outsourcing companies that monetize hours rather than outcomes.

This does not mean developers disappear.

It means the value moves closer to judgment, architecture, verification, security, and product thinking.

Why People See It Negatively

1. The Illusion of Simplicity

Many people do not want to understand how AI works or how to interact with it.

They see a text field and assume that anything written there should work like magic.

Unfortunately, it still does not work that way.

For AI to create the finished result the operator wants, the operator still needs to communicate in a way the system can use. Yes, this can be ordinary human language. But the quality of formulation still matters. The ability to ask correctly, define the task clearly, and evaluate the result remains just as important as it has always been in management.

2. Security Problems

If the operator does not pay attention to security while creating the product, there is no guarantee that AI will think through all the risks on their behalf.

The result may work and still be unsafe.

The Verge recently warned about exactly this risk in the context of vibe-coded apps: fast personal software can become dangerous when creators do not understand authentication, data exposure, threat modeling, or the responsibilities that appear once a tool handles real user data.

3. Technical Debt

Again, we return to communication.

If the operator gives AI full responsibility for code structure, architecture, documentation, and comments, the codebase can grow chaotically. Over time, it becomes harder and harder to maintain.

And if a human later has to understand that code manually, the problem becomes even worse.

Vibe coding does not eliminate engineering discipline.

It moves engineering discipline to another level.

Interesting Signals

Collins Dictionary named “vibe coding” its Word of the Year for 2025. That tells us something important: the concept is no longer a narrow engineering meme. It has become a cultural phenomenon.

The Verge also described vibe coding as part of a broader personal software revolution: a world where people can create small apps for themselves, tailored to their own workflows.

In a way, this echoes an old dream from the personal computer era.

There was a time when Bill Gates promoted the idea that a computer should be on every desk.

Now the new version may be: everyone can have software made for their own needs.

So Is Vibe Coding Good or Bad?

I do not think this is the right question.

Vibe coding is not good or bad by itself.

It is a natural next step in abstraction.

The real question is whether the person using it understands what role they are now playing.

If they think they are using magic, they will create fragile systems.

If they understand that they are doing AI-assisted engineering, the process becomes much healthier.

They define the goal. They guide the system. They verify the result. They think about security. They manage technical debt. They iterate until the output works.

The code matters.

But the result matters more.

And in the age of AI-assisted engineering, the people who win will not necessarily be those who can type code fastest.

They will be the people who can define the right outcome, communicate it clearly, verify it honestly, and keep iterating until the product actually works.