Vibe-coding, an AI-supported form of software development, is having a moment. There are many companies selling vibe coding services, Google recently launched a vibe-coding agent, and it’s even a Collins Dictionary Word of the Year. However, at the same time that this new growth model has risen to prominence, many critics have noted that it creates all kinds of problems for the industry. Mainly, it can make mistakes that will eventually have to be fixed by a human developer who must sort out why the code is the way it is in the first place.
One person who seems surprisingly good with it is Linux progenitor Linus Torvalds. During a recent open source software conference in South Korea, Torvalds expressed some cautious support for Vibe Coding, although he said he sees it as a way for young coders to experiment with computing rather than a sensible way to develop corporate software products.
“If you’ve really tried to build a product, vibe coding can be a terrible, terrible idea from a maintainability standpoint,” Torvalds said. “But I think it’s a great way… for new people to get involved and get excited about computers and to get computers to do something that maybe they couldn’t do otherwise. So I’m actually quite positive about all of this.” He, he said, mocked people who “hope to build billion-dollar companies just using vibe coding.”
In general, Torvalds seemed both hopeful and somewhat weary of the current wave of automation sweeping the software industry. “I think of it as something exciting and something new and something good,” he said, adding that people’s expectations may not be in line with reality. “We have people doing a lot of work in using AI to help deal with the flow of patches and backboarding patches to stable versions and things like that, but a lot of it is experimental,” he said.
The Linux creator added, “AI is just another tool.” He said, “In the same way compilers free people from writing assembly code by hand, and vastly increase productivity, do not drive away programmers.” Torvalds said, “I look forward to the day when AI becomes less hype and more an everyday reality that no one constantly talks about.” “Obviously there are still a few years to go,” he said.
Vibe coding has been generating a lot of buzz lately. Some see it as the gateway to a new evolution in software development, which could foster a new generation of startups. However, even the creator of vibe-coding has let it be known that automated code may not cut the mustard in many settings. In general, it may be like many other emerging AI services – a tool that is only helpful to some extent, and only part of the time.