If the “Nano Banana” trend was about turning yourself into a toy, the next trend is about turning yourself into a tech CEO.
Welcome to the era of “Vibe Coding” — the controversial, democratizing, and incredibly viral movement that is tearing the tech world apart in December 2025. It’s no longer about knowing Python or JavaScript; it’s about knowing what you want and having the “vibes” to describe it to an AI.
Here is the deep dive on the trend that has everyone from teenagers to venture capitalists arguing on X (formerly Twitter).
What is “Vibe Coding”?
Vibe Coding is the practice of writing software without actually writing code. Instead of typing out complex syntax, logic loops, and variable definitions, “vibe coders” use natural language (English) to describe the behavior and aesthetic of an app to an AI model (like Gemini 2.0 Pro or Claude 3.5 Sonnet).
The term was popularized by AI Andrej Karpathy and has since exploded into a movement. The core philosophy? “I don’t care how it works, I just want it to feel like this.”
Why It’s Trending Now (The Drama)
This isn’t just a tech upgrade; it’s a culture war. The trend went supernova this week after a viral clash between Silicon Valley elites and “traditional” developers.
The Spark: A clip went viral of a non-technical founder building a fully functional SaaS (Software as a Service) platform in 2 hours using only voice commands and “vibes” (vague descriptions like “make it pop more” or “give it that gloomy 2010s tumblr aesthetic”).
The Backlash: Senior engineers are calling it “reckless” and “unmaintainable spaghetti code.”
The Reality: It works. People who have never written a line of code are shipping apps, games, and tools that are making real money.
How to “Vibe Code” Your First App
You don’t need a text editor or a degree. You just need an idea.
Become a member
The Stack: Most vibe coders are using Cursor, Replit, or Google IDX — IDEs (coding environments) that have AI deeply integrated.
The “Vibe” Workflow:
The Brain Dump: Don’t think like a computer. Think like a product manager.
Bad Prompt: Create a function that iterates through an array of objects...
Vibe Prompt: “I want a dashboard that feels like a 90s cyberpunk hacker terminal. It needs to track my crypto portfolio but make it look like a video game health bar. If I lose money, make the screen shake.”
The Iteration (The Vibe Check): The AI will generate the app. It will probably look ugly or break.
Correction: “No, that’s too clean. Make it grittier. And the buttons are too small — make them huge and neon green.”
The “Fix It” Button: When you see an error, you don’t debug it. You just copy the error and say:
“It’s broken. Fix it.”
Why You Should Care
We are witnessing the death of the “Idea Guy” meme. For decades, having an “app idea” was worthless without the skills to build it. Vibe Coding flips this. Execution is now cheap; taste and vision are the new currency.
If you have good taste and can articulate a “vibe,” you are now technically a software engineer.
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