WSJ: ‘Vibe Coding’ Has Arrived for Businesses (July 8, 2025)
Vibe coding (using AI tools to create code) has exploded in popularity this year, speeding prototyping and development considerably. But experienced engineers are still required to confirm the AI-assisted development work fulfills the requirements and follows security best practices.
Creating your own app is now possible with any number of artificial intelligence-based tools, leading to the “vibe coding” revolution for code-writing amateurs.
But professional developers are picking it up now, too, bringing the practice—generally understood as the ability to create functioning apps and websites without strictly editing code—into businesses.
Using AI tools like OpenAI’s GPT models and Anthropic’s Claude, Wilkinson’s (Vanguard’s divisional chief information officer for financial adviser services) team is vibe coding new webpages with the help of product and design staff. The process has eliminated the need for traditional handoffs of work between teams, speeding up the design for a new Vanguard webpage by 40%. Prototyping went from taking two weeks to 20 minutes, she said.
“The role of the engineer is still very, very critical to make sure that the boundaries and conditions are set up front for what the vibe coding is going to produce,” she said. “It doesn’t excuse the engineer from needing to understand what’s going on behind the scenes.”
I built my first vibe-coded app this week, and I was astonished by Claude Code and what it wrote. But I also have enough dormant development skills to understand how to create a new webserver instance, install tools using the terminal, and write MySQL queries.
Jude Schramm, CIO of Fifth Third Bank, said the regional bank’s 700 full-time engineers may be entirely vibe coding in a few years’ time. Schramm said he’s already thinking more about the value of his developers as business problem-solvers rather than as code authors.
This suggests that expertise remains a necessary component of the vibes-assisted world.