I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what 「code」 actually means when we’re doing Vibe Coding. It’s one of those fundamental shifts that sneaks up on you – like when we stopped thinking about physical buttons on phones and started thinking about touch interfaces. The change is so profound that we need to completely rewire our understanding of what programming actually is.
In traditional programming, code was everything. It was the precious artifact we spent hours crafting, debugging, and maintaining. We treated it like fine china – delicate, valuable, and something you handled with extreme care. But in Vibe Coding, code becomes something entirely different. As the principles suggest, code is capability, while intentions and interfaces are the long-term assets (Ten Principles of Vibe Coding).
Let me give you a concrete example. Last week, I was building a data visualization tool. In the old world, I’d spend days writing React components, D3.js configurations, and API integration code. In Vibe Coding, I simply described what I wanted: 「Create a dashboard that shows real-time sales data with interactive charts that update every 30 seconds, plus anomaly detection alerts.」 The AI generated the actual code – hundreds of lines of it – in about 15 seconds.
Here’s the mind-bending part: that generated code is essentially disposable. It’s a one-time product created for that specific moment. If I need to change something tomorrow, I don’t edit the code manually (that would violate principle #4 about not manually editing code). Instead, I modify my intention prompt and let the AI regenerate everything. The code becomes transient while my intention – that clear description of what I want – becomes the lasting asset.
This aligns perfectly with how GitHub Copilot and similar tools are being used by 90% of Fortune 100 companies (Microsoft Q2 ’25 earnings). They’re not just using AI to write code faster; they’re fundamentally changing their relationship with code itself.
Think about it this way: when you use a search engine, you don’t care about the algorithms that power it – you care about getting relevant results. Similarly, in Vibe Coding, you stop caring about the implementation details and start focusing entirely on the outcome you want to achieve.
But here’s where it gets really interesting. If code is disposable and intentions are permanent, then our entire approach to software development flips upside down. Instead of spending 80% of our time maintaining existing code, we spend 80% of our time refining and clarifying our intentions. The quality of our prompts becomes more important than the quality of our coding skills.
This doesn’t mean code becomes unimportant – far from it. Code still needs to work correctly, be secure, and perform well. But our relationship with it changes. We become architects of intention rather than craftsmen of implementation.
So the next time you’re tempted to dive into that generated code and start tweaking it manually, ask yourself: am I thinking like a traditional programmer or a Vibe Coder? Because in this new paradigm, knowing code means knowing when to let it go and focus on what really matters – the clear expression of intent.