On occasion, I look back and remember the year when I came to the conclusion that my future working as a writer was bleak, and I used my savings to buy a MacBook Pro. I had a fleet of options I had given myself: learn design and become the go-to guy for graphics and illustration; learn video editing and make wicked videos — after all, I work in media where we make a lot of videos — or learn UI/UX and join the growing community of app builders. That could be fun.
I bought the laptop, a 2017 MacBook Pro, even though I already had a 2018 Air. I saved a ton of videos on YouTube. I was going to learn at least one of the skills by year’s end. I couldn’t even get through the very first video on the basics of design.
It is one of the reasons why I have particularly found vibe coding a most exciting new frontier in app development. If AI was as popular as it is now and as readily available, I might have become a vibe coder. Vibe coding is when the code for an app is generated by AI. Already, a ton of apps have been built this way. Other times, software engineers rely on them for assistance.
Eventually, the MacBook Pro battery got swollen from lack of use and I later traded it out. But you don’t have to be like me. If you are in the market for tips and tricks to start out as a vibe coder, then you’re in luck. This week we spoke to one who declared in the interview that there was no need to learn any rudimentary computer language before vibe coding. Shocker!
As vibe coding has become popular, it has not come without some risk. Last year, the women-focused app, Tea Dating Advice, was hacked, leaving data of many users compromised and plastered across the internet. Many have claimed that the app was vibe coded. In an interview with cybersecurity experts this week, they told us that vibe coding poses a great security risk to apps for many reasons.
There is more on ethical vibe coding this week. What is the best AI coding tool to use? We brought together a chief technology officer and an AI architect to hash it out in a heated debate. Their conclusion is very revealing.
