wtf is vibe coding?

Gen Z devs are building apps they barely understand—and why that might not be a bad thing.

Author

Dev Shah
April 17, 2025

Let’s start with a confession.

I deployed an app last week. It works.
I have no idea why.

That, dear reader, is vibe coding.

No syntax checks. No deep-diving docs. Just vibes, GPT-4, and a vague sense of what I wanted. I prompted, copied, pasted—and boom. It shipped.

If that sounds chaotic… well, it is. But it’s also kind of brilliant. And if you’ve ever built a side project with one hand on ChatGPT and the other on your iced coffee, congrats—you’re one of us.

Where Did Vibe Coding Even Come From?

It didn’t exist a few years ago.

Back then, learning to code meant battling through Stack Overflow, debugging for hours, and building things line by painful line. You were expected to earn your code.

Then AI rolled in like a senior dev on too much caffeine.

Copilot started auto-completing entire functions. GPT-4 started writing backend logic from scratch. Cursor let you talk to your code like it was your friend. Suddenly, junior devs could ship features in hours—not weeks.

And somewhere along the way, a new generation of programmers decided:

❝

“Wait… what if I don’t read the code? What if I just… vibe?”

Thus, vibe coding was born.

🧑‍🎓 Why Students Love It

Let’s be real: learning to code can be overwhelming. The documentation is dense. The error messages are cryptic. The tutorials assume you know what “idempotent” means (you don’t). 

But vibe coding?
It’s fast.
It’s fun.

It works… most of the time.

There’s no pressure to be perfect. No shame if you don’t know the difference between a reducer and a middleware. You’re moving fast, building things, and getting that sweet dopamine hit every time something runs.

And honestly, it’s addictive.

☠️ Is It Dangerous?

Short answer: yes.
Longer answer: also yes, but kinda worth it.

Vibe coding is like driving with GPS in a foreign language. It gets you there—but if it breaks, you’re cooked.

If you copy-paste too much GPT code without understanding it, you risk:

  • Security issues

  • Bugs you can’t debug

  • Interview flops where you blank out when asked “So, how did you implement this?”

Also, AI sometimes just makes stuff up. (No, there is no “React.spaghetti()” method. Yet.)

So yeah—it’s risky. But it’s also real. And it's not going away.

The smart vibe coder learns to treat AI like a partner, not a crutch. You let it drive, sure—but you’re still watching the road.

Final Word

Vibe coding is the wild west of software engineering right now—and you're one of the cowboys.

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand every line. Just keep building. Keep learning. And if the code breaks?

Paste the error into GPT and whisper: “You got this, king.”

Want to share your best vibe-coded project?
Email us the repo right now or drop it in our Reddit community.

We’ll feature the best one next week.

Until then—keep shipping.
Even if you don’t know how it works.

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