by Gene Michael Stover
created 2025 May 10
updated 2025 May 11
original at cybertiggyr.com/spln553.html
The term “vibe coding” is only a few months old, but it's already a major topic among programmers. Without endorsing or criticizing it, here's an observation that might help clarify vibe coding.
The classic program development loop looks like this:
In this process, a human programmer participates in every step. (In a team or company, the programmer may not personally edit the requirements, but some human does.)
Today, a programmer can consult an AI assistant at each of those steps. That can accelerate the cycle, but the human is still actively driving every part. (That's how I program these days, by the way.)
Vibe coding, as practiced through editor plugins & AI tools, removes the human from most of the loop. The human provides the requirements & decides whether the result is acceptable, but hands the intermediate steps to generative AI.
An unexpected effect of removing the human from those steps is that the development process feels like a conversation. The programmer describes what they want in broad terms, then iteratively refines that prompt. It's the same development loop, but it feels different.