Rise of Vibe Coders and Other Vibe Professions

It appears that anyone can be a programmer these days.

With all the different Al tools popping up every other week, any jack and jill can now easily build their dream app or website, with just words and vibes.

What is Vibe Coding Exactly?

Okay, so 'vibe coding' obviously isn't a formal term... yet.

It's a term to describe the practice of telling an Al what you want, and it magically spits out code. You're essentially giving it a 'vibe' of what you need, and the Al then does the heavy lifting.

Think of it like baking a cake by describing how it looks and tastes, instead of getting the ingredients and going through the recipe steps.

Vibe Coding Impact

• WAY faster development time: Speed is the new currency.
• Faster to launch product, faster to iterate: Rapid prototyping and deployment become the norm.
• The really good coders are now mostly hired by big tech companies. These people are at the forefront of innovation: These elite developers are pushing the boundaries of what's possible, they are the ones that engineered and make vibe coding even possible in the first place.
• But for the rest of the "Mid" coders- they are now being outpaced and challenged by Vibe Coders: The vast majority of average developers are now in danger of adapting and reinventing their role as Al-powered tools empower those with strong prompting skills, regardless of traditional coding expertise.
• Outside of highly specialized domains, the need for large, traditional development teams is diminishing: Agile, lean teams, augmented by Al, are becoming the new standard.

Soo... How Do You Vibe Code?

Well, there are 3 popular approaches:

• "Full experience", via Cursor: A growingly popular Al-first code editor designed almost specifically for vibe coding, offering seamless prompting and code generation within a unified workspace.
• "Some coding knowledge is needed", via VS Code + Copilot: Leverages existing industry-standard code editor familiarity with Al assistance; still requires basic understanding of coding principles for effective prompt refinement and code validation.
• "The free but slightly cumbersome way": A more flexible, cost-effective approach that relies on general-purpose Al models; copy pasting codes to ChatGPT (or DeepSeek or Gemini etc), going back and forth with any regular code editor.

You can also scribble away your app / website idea and get Al to generate a somewhat high-fidelity mock up design for you. You can then convert these designs to actual code by using either standard general-purpose Al or with a more specialised tool such as Builder.io.

The art here is mostly to be good with words (prompting). If you can think of it, you should be able to build it.

It's also worth mentioning that at the time of writing, Al code isn't always perfect and will require human review and refinement.

The Dark Side

Vibe Coders don't necessarily fully understand what they are doing and are always overly reliant on Al to figure things out.

This can be problematic - experts always question code quality, security and sustainability.

The rise of Vibe Coders certainly won't do any favours for this. It'll be scary to imagine vibe coding being applied to mission-critical systems someday.

There are on-going debates among professionals whether vibe coding is the future, some argue it is inevitably killing software engineering as we know it, while others are favouring it. The latter camp is expecting vibe coding to exponentially cultivate innovation at unprecedented levels.

What About Other Vibe Professions?

Everything that was written above so far slowly but surely applies to other professions too.

Vibe Designers, Vibe Writers, Vibe Consultants, Vibe Video Editors. You name it, Vibe + [insert role here].

The debate applies here as well, whether these "professions" will positively or negatively impact the professional world.

Thankfully it hasn't escalated to more "serious" jobs just yet, imagine having a Vibe Pilot or Vibe Engineer. Again, pretty scary to think of the prospect of having life / security critical vibe professions.

Are We Getting Dumber as a Species?

Well, yes and no.

Not too long ago, the invention of calculators, which most people now take for granted, pretty much eradicated the need to do "manual" math. We no longer need to count fingers or scribble numbers on paper to do math.

Ah and phone numbers. Most of us today will not even bother to memorize numbers. Why should we - your phone contacts app will take care of that way better than your memory can serve.

This same progression applies to programming, we don't really have to remember coding syntaxes anymore. Al can basically handle all the syntaxes for you now.

So are we getting dumber by relying on machines? Maybe.

The way we function as humans has fundamentally shifted. We should already look at Al and softwares in general as tools of productivity. We no longer need to memorize or do repetitive mundane things as much. We shouldn't. Machines are great at doing these kinds of things.

What us humans should be doing is to focus on our thinking rather than worrying too much about the output. We can do this by honing our thought process skills via concepts and strategies.

Us humans on one hand are somewhat 'dumber' because we don't remember a lot of things by heart these days, but we are a lot smarter in terms of pushing the envelope in doing things that matter.

We have historically been leveraging tools to do things better and faster. From calculators, to smart phones, to now Al.

Navigating the Al-Powered Shift

In 2025, it's less about what you produce, and more about how you think. Al can generate the outputs, but the concepts and strategies must come from you.

Don't outsource your thinking to Al. Instead, use it as a powerful tool to execute your vision whether that's code, visuals, or marketing materials.

Human super powers - creativity, nuance, and critical judgment - are more valuable than ever. They're the compass in this fast evolving world. That's where DOX Digital comes in. We bring these human expertise, combined with the modern tools, to help you navigate the complexities of modern marketing. From creative campaign ideation to designing MarTech solutions, we'll help you chart a course for success.

More reads :