ARTICLE
Twenty years ago, the trendy language was Java. Today, the new programming language is... English.
Lucas del Corral
Building Manager
Sep 25, 2025
Two decades ago, if you wanted to be at the forefront of software development, you learned Java. Today, in 2025, the trending skill is quite different: being able to communicate in English using artificial intelligence. It's no joke: in the era of generative AI, programming often means describing in English what you want to happen, and letting the machine write the code for you.
This new way of software development is called vibe coding, and it is revolutionizing application creation. The term was coined by Andrej Karpathy (former AI director at Tesla) at the beginning of 2025, and within weeks vibe coding was already appearing in the Silicon Valley press as the new trendy term. Even the Merriam-Webster dictionary added the term that same year, classifying it as emerging tech slang - a sign of the rapid spread of this idea.
What is vibe coding?
Vibe coding is an emerging software development practice that uses Artificial Intelligence to generate code from natural language instructions, speeding up development and making app creation more accessible, especially for those with little programming experience.
Instead of writing code line by line, the developer or builder starts to guide an AI assistant using conversational instructions, refining and testing the result until arriving at the desired solution. In other words, the person focuses on describing what they want to achieve and the AI takes care of writing the code. The human role shifts from being a "code writer" to a conductor, validating and requesting improvements on the fly.
A key aspect of vibe coding is that it allows almost anyone to translate an idea into functional software without needing to master a traditional programming language. Journalist Kevin Roose, for example, without professional programming experience, created personal applications by describing what he needed in everyday language. One of these was LunchBox Buddy, which suggested lunches based on what was in his fridge.
From UX to DX and now to AX.
To understand why vibe coding matters, it's worth looking back: every technological wave has been marked by a shift in what experience we placed at the center. Over the last 20 years, we've gone through several waves around experience:
OX (Operational Experience): companies that grew by mastering efficiency in production and supply chain. Think of Toyota with Lean Manufacturing, the focus was on the process, not the person.
UX (User Experience): designing with the end user in mind. With Zappos in the early 2000s, the world saw that winning wasn't just about producing cheaply, but designing an unforgettable experience for the customer. Free returns, phone support without scripts, and ultra-fast shipping marked the beginning of the UX era. The same goes for Apple and the iPhone.
DX (Developer Experience): making developers' lives easier. Stripe understood that if you made developers' lives easy, companies would choose it over more established alternatives like PayPal. A couple of lines of code were enough to process global payments: thus, Developer Experience was born as a competitive advantage.
AX (Agent Experience): the new emerging layer, where products and platforms must be ready for AI agents to interact autonomously. Today we are entering the AX era. If UX was about thinking of users and DX about developers, now the challenge is to design products that can be consumed by AI agents. We design not only for people but also so that AI agents can read instructions, build, and execute. Today AX may be the equivalent of SEO in the 2000s: if you don't design to be readable by agents, you fade away.
Why does it matter to corporate innovation?
Vibe coding has strategic implications for corporations:
Democratization of development: non-technical profiles can create functional prototypes in a matter of hours.
Speed of validation: the time needed to go from an idea to a prototype tested with real customers is drastically reduced.
Reduction of error costs: it allows launching hypotheses to the market and quickly discarding those that do not work.
Change in talent roles: developers become curators and auditors of AI, ensuring quality and safety.
At Byld, for instance, we have used vibe coding to materialize and validate with real users initiatives such as:
A collaborative platform for natural disasters, which allowed us to test with affected communities in weeks which functionalities were the most valuable and what their willingness to pay was.
A femtech app for personalized wellness, developed in just a few days, which helped us validate which features were truly valued by users and which business model was the most attractive.
In both cases, we went from hypotheses to functional prototypes in record time, obtaining real feedback before investing large resources.
For innovation teams, the question is no longer whether to use vibe coding, but how to integrate it into their processes before the competition does.
Key tools of vibe coding.
The ecosystem is expanding rapidly. Some notable tools are:
Replit: generates complete applications, maintains context across multiple files, and deploys in seconds.
Bolt.new: creates web or mobile apps from the browser using prompts, with real execution in containers.
Lovable: designed for non-programmers, makes changes in interfaces easy with simple instructions.
v0 (by Vercel): specialized in frontends, offers real-time previews while describing what is being sought.
Current limitations.
Quality and maintenance: the code can be opaque and hard to scale in complex projects.
Security and compliance: AI can introduce inadvertent vulnerabilities.
Technological dependence: relying too much on an AI provider can create lock-in.
Talent gap: democratizing does not imply replacing technical understanding; there is a risk of training professionals who are dependent on AI.
Where is vibe coding heading?
The future points to vibe coding becoming a standard for rapid prototyping in corporations. In the winter 2025 batch of Y Combinator, 25% of the startups reported that 95% of their code was generated by AI. And major tech companies estimate that today between 30-40% of production code already comes from AI.
Does this mean programmers will disappear?
No. AI lacks judgment and deep understanding of business context; human ingenuity will still be necessary. The value will lie in human-machine collaboration, where the most innovative organizations will be those that learn to “vibe” their ideas into code... before the competition.
Conclusion.
In 2005, the advantage was knowing Java; in 2025, it will be knowing how to vibe. Those who learn to translate ideas into conversational code first will define the next cycle of innovation. At Byld, we help corporates move from idea to prototype in days, not months. If you want to learn how to vibe your ideas with us, let's talk.
