97% of Developers Use AI: "Vibe Coding" Shifts Power

The term "vibe coding," introduced by Andrej Karpathy, has been named Word of the Year by the Collins Dictionary. At the same time, a GitHub study indicates that over 97% of enterprise developers are already using AI to code. This evolution challenges the feasibility monopoly of engineering teams, relying on information asymmetry and precedents like desktop publishing.

A Named and Measured Practice, From Words to Uses

Nine months after its emergence, "vibe coding" has been designated Word of the Year by the Collins Dictionary. The expression was popularized in February 2025 by Andrej Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI, to describe a working mode where one formulates an intention to an AI, accepts its proposal, and a functional result emerges without reading the code in detail. Karpathy presented this term lightly, in the context of a weekend project. At the same time, its use is becoming entrenched in companies: in 2024, Kyle Daigle and the GitHub research team surveyed two thousand enterprise developers in the United States, Brazil, India, and Germany, and over 97% reported using AI coding tools at work. Adoption is no longer described as an emerging trend but as a widespread reality.

When Feasibility Stops Being a Reserved Veto

Non-technical profiles can now quickly produce operational prototypes. A founder can, on a Friday, mobilize Claude, Cursor, or Figma Make and, by Monday, obtain a rough version of a feature initially estimated to take three weeks, sufficient to support a demonstration. A designer who was told about technical difficulties can build a version, sometimes with mediocre code, and deliver it. According to the author, artificial intelligence dismantles the engineering monopoly, whose authority was real but is no longer the only barrier between an idea and a functional version. Being the sole entity to make a product real allowed for the imposition of deadlines and impossibilities: this blocking capacity is relativized when others achieve usable results.

The Power of Experts Relied on Code's Inaccessibility

Software production has long been difficult to contest from the outside: the complexity of code rendered the work unreadable for non-engineers, while mockups and user journeys could be debated by all. Technical objections such as a race condition, a broken schema, or coupling to the authentication layer could end a discussion without possible verification. John French and Bertram Raven described in 1959 the power of experts as an informal basis of power, independent of titles. A CTO might not decide on strategy, clients, or budget, while holding technical answers that others could not easily verify.

An Asymmetry Described by Akerlof and Illustrated by Poe

George Akerlof demonstrated in 1970, regarding the used car market, that information asymmetry gives a strong leverage to those who can distinguish "lemons." Software teams have operated on a comparable asymmetry, where coders qualified what was acceptable. The author also relates this dynamic to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter," where an object hidden in plain sight remains unfound because access is presumed to be difficult. Jacques Lacan argued that it is not so much the content that matters but the hold of the object on those who pursue it, a hold that the author compares to the dynamics surrounding a Jira ticket. According to him, for about thirty years, the unverifiable in code remained unchecked, allowing untested claims to thrive.

Precedents: Desktop Publishing and Design Literacy

In the late 1980s, desktop publishing gave individuals equipped with a Macintosh and a laser printer capabilities once reserved for printing houses and specialists, triggering panic in publishing. In the Internet age, some clients argued that a close user of Photoshop could design a logo. However, the widespread use of tools did not eliminate the profession: Rebecca Kelly emphasizes that design literacy did not spread with software. Few people could open the tool and produce a good result. Value shifted towards judgment, and those who stopped protecting access to the tool to sell their expertise thrived. The author anticipates a similar trajectory for engineering.

Feedback and the Initial Position of Power

The author recounts having worked as an information architect on a corporate project where specifications and features were set in advance. After three weeks of iterations, the presentation was interrupted at the third mockup out of about one hundred twenty, with engineering objections declaring elements out of scope, unfeasible within the timeline, or unsuitable. Neither the client nor hierarchy truly decided what would be delivered: engineering held this power, and a refusal prevented construction. This position was explained by the mastery of feasibility—"can we build it and in how much time"—as named by Marty Cagan, rooted in a logic of constraint in the sense of Eliyahu Goldratt. Historically, this feasibility belonged to engineering, a near-veto on the actual product. Power did not stem from strategy or presence at initial meetings, but from the execution monopoly, backed by the intrinsic difficulty of software, acquired at the cost of years of learning and late-night incidents.

A Popular Imaginary Called Upon to Translate the Gap

The contrast between stated impossibility and actual achievement is illustrated by a scene from Iron Man where Obadiah Stane reminds that Tony Stark built a device "in a cave, with a box of scraps." The author parallels the lexical acceleration of "vibe coding" towards lexicographical recognition in less time than many companies deliver a feature, to highlight the gap between the discourse of impossibility and rapid proof through prototyping.