Summary

Martin Fowler defines vibe coding as building software by prompting an LLM without ever examining the generated code, a technique coined by Andrej Karpathy in early 2025. He draws a sharp distinction between vibe coding and agentic programming, where developers still review and care about code quality. While vibe coding democratizes software creation for non-programmers, Fowler warns of serious limitations around security, maintainability, and correctness. He concludes that vibe-coded software is best treated as disposable, limited to personal use or small trusted groups who accept the inherent risks.

Key Insight

Vibe coding and agentic programming are fundamentally different practices with different consequences, and conflating them obscures the real risks of building software you never inspect.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 4

  Since the vibe coder doesn't look at the code, they don't need programming skills, so it's perfect for someone with no programming knowledge to build applications for their own use.

• 6

  Sadly the term 'vibe coding' really caught on, so many people use it to mean agentic programming. However I feel that despite this rapid Semantic Diffusion, it's worth trying to keep the concepts of vibe coding and agentic programming separate, as they are both different to use and different in their consequences.

• 4

  LLMs are inherently vulnerable as they provide a large attack surface for predators.

• 6

  With little attention to the code, vibed software can rapidly produce many lines of code of a very low quality. Such code makes it difficult, even for an LLM, to modify and enhance the software in the future.

• 5

  While it's possible that growing LLM capabilities will allow it to work with even the largest bowls of spaghetti software, thus far it seems clear that well-structured software makes life easier for LLMs too.

• 3

  We should thus treat LLM-generated software with skepticism, it can still be useful, but we need to be aware of the risks.

• 3

  Code that is more complex, more widely-used, and with more consequences to its risks should not be forgotten about.

Tone

measured, cautionary, taxonomic