The number of new apps coming to the App Store has skyrocketed. We have a culprit: “vibe coding”

The arrival of tools based on generative artificial intelligence has caused a real explosion in mobile application stores, especially since we have development environments with AI that allow us to create and deploy applications without needing to know programming. According to data from venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), new apps launched in the iOS App Store in the United States increased 60% year-on-year in December, after remaining practically stagnant for the previous three years. The accumulated year-on-year growth in the last twelve months reaches 24%. The person responsible has a name: the “vibe coding“, that way of programming in which AI does much of the work. What is happening. 2025 has been the year in which “sensation programming” has exploded. And it is that in environments of ‘agentic programming‘ or vibe coding, just explain to an AI tool what application you need and the machine takes care of writing the code. Platforms like CursorBolt, Google AI StudioClaude Code or V0 have democratized app creation to the point that anyone with an idea can turn it into a working prototype without writing a single line of code. This opens many doors, as thousands of new developers without technical training are publishing applications in stores. That’s also a problem. Going back to 2008. As points out a16z, the situation evokes the early days of the iPhonewhen Apple launched its SDK and in a matter of months went from 500 applications to downloads that exceeded 1,000 million. That ecosystem ended up generating hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. Here the phenomenon is even more overwhelming, since the creation of applications is no longer ‘limited’ to experienced developers, which means that in an afternoon we can create any simple app, as long as we know what to ask of the AI. Image: a16z The problem. Things are clear: you will not be able to create a complex application in one sentence. And now he told us Miguel Ángel Durán, a software engineer known as midudev, in March of last year: “don’t think that just saying something without knowing anything about programming is going to give you the next Airbnb.” As my colleague Javier Pastor mentioned some time ago, the case of Leoa user who created an entire SaaS platform with vibe coding and even got paying customers, perfectly illustrates the risks, since two days after bragging about his achievement, he had to ask for help because his app displayed public API keys, had an easy-to-jump paywall, and crashed his database due to basic programming errors. Quality matters. “You can do very basic things. We have tried Cursor, Bolt, etc., and you reach a level that one may think is advanced, but in reality what usually happens is that they are cloning a Github repository and changing its colors,” we say. counted Some time ago Daniel Ávila, co-founder of CodeGPT. There is a flood of low-quality apps, much more than before, since now many more inexperienced people can easily publish them in any app store. And the problem is that many of these applications do not even reach the prototype level, being unfinished products that work superficially and then end up accumulating all kinds of technical errors. Even worse if the app has a paywall. Between optimism and caution. “Vibe coding is super interesting to extend the prototyping of ideas and empower people,” we say. explained last year Nerea Luis, doctor in computer science. But he also recognizes that “it has risks” because completing these projects requires knowledge that neither the user nor the AI ​​possess. On the other hand, Omar Pera, Chief Product Officer of Freepik, was more optimistic: “vibe coding turns top engineers into 2x or 3x engineers.” Does it democratize access to application development? Yes, of course. The problem comes when the AI-generated application of someone without experience goes from a project to learn, as a hobby, or as an app development for one’s own use, to a project that encompasses more ambition and seeks to attract many clients. Cover image | James Yarema In Xataka | We believed that the AI ​​talent war is about engineers and developers. Actually, it’s about plumbers and electricians.

Vibe coding wants to help Open Source. But developers don’t want AI botches

If you like Open Source software, vibe coding now gives you a fantastic opportunity: to take that code and modify it to your liking with the help of vibe coding and the AI ​​agents that program. Let them tell it to me. You may have good ideas and the AI ​​will solve them with new code generated with these tools, but there is a problem: the quality of that code may not be adequate. what has happened. Steve Ruiz (@steveruizok) is the creator and responsible for TLDrawa nice Open Source application that allows you to turn your browser into a canvas so you can easily draw whatever you want on it. On January 15, Steve posted a message on X in which he announced something very striking: he would stop accepting code contributions (pull requests, PRs) in the TLDraw GitHub repository. We don’t need low quality code. “Due to the influx of pull requests of low quality, we will soon close those requests to external contributors,” said the person responsible for a project in an additional post on the official blog of the project. The message was clear: although people’s intentions are surely good when trying to contribute their ideas to an existing project, this developer soon realized that the code contributed by new programmers, fans of vibe coding, was of low quality. Solution? Ban those contributions made with AI. AI-generated code can serve. In that article I indicated that this was not a measure against vibe coding, but against code (any code, human or AI) of poor quality. Ruiz explained how: “We already accept code written with AI. I write code with AI tools. I hope my team uses those AI tools too. If you know the project’s code base and know what you’re doing, writing great code has never been easier thanks to these tools.” AI Slop, but from code. Although we often talk about “slop created by AI“(AI Slop) in reference to low-quality text, images, music and videos, the term can also be applied to code. Ruiz explained how in September he began to detect many requests for code contributions that seemed correct but that after a deeper analysis, although they worked, could potentially introduce future problems and complexity to the project. I correct here, I correct there. In addition, many of the contributors had profiles in which they could be seen jumping from Open Source project to Open Source project and then disappearing. They simply contributed without following the policies or requirements of the project and moved on to another. This is a plague. In the debates that this decision generated in Hacker News and x Ruiz found himself with a surprise: people not only did not protest, but they valued the measure positively. He commented how “this seems to be the standard experience for all public repository maintainers right now.” He cited the example of Excalidrawanother similar project that “received more than twice as many PRs in the fourth quarter of 2025 than in the third” in your repository. More and more vetoes of low-quality AI code. Other projects are going through that same phase. ghosttya terminal emulator for macOS and Linux, recently published their “AI policy” in the site’s public GitHub repository with important notices. For example, that “PRs created by AI must have been fully verified with human use”, and further that “all use of AI in any way, shape or form must be disclosed.” That’s cheating. Curl, a very popular utility for command line users, had announced the opening of a bounty program to detect bugs and vulnerabilities in its code. What have many people done? Use AI to find them and take the money. Those responsible for the program have announced that They will close it this month in the face of the avalanche of low-quality vulnerability reports clearly generated by AI. Linus already said it. Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, admitted to using vibe coding tools for some small personal project. While recognizing that these tools can be great, he warned of the danger of all that AI-generated code: “AI will be a tool, and it will make people more productive. I think vibe coding is great for getting people to start programming. I think (the code it generates) is going to be horrible to maintain… so I don’t think programmers will go away. You’ll still want to have people who know how to maintain the output.” AI code works, but it is not usually “quality”. The developer community has been warning and experiencing this for some time. Although AI tools can help program and solve many routine tasks, the generated code must be reviewed by a human programmer to avoid future problems. It is reasonable to think that this code will be increasingly better and of higher quality, but today in many cases the situation is clear: it may work, yes, but that is not enough for many projects in production, especially when they are used by thousands (let alone millions) of people. In Xataka | Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds had been rivals for 30 years. The funny thing is that they just met and took a selfie

“you should spend all your time practicing vibe coding”

Alexandr Wang is only in his twenties, but under his responsibility he has the greatest minds in AI in his position as head of the Meta AI Lab. In one of his last interventions during the coverage of the Meta Connect event in the TBPN podcastissued a very direct recommendation to adolescents and young people concerned about their future work: “you should spend all your time practicing vibe coding“. The idea behind his statements is that the sooner you begin to familiarize yourself with the new ways of programmingthe more options you will have when AI is involved in almost everything we use. ​Everything will be “vibe coding”. Wang assured in his speech that the work of software engineers had changed a lot in recent years and that, even for someone who had been in the job market for as few years as he had, it’s going to change a lot more in the next five years. The Goal Manager and founder of Scale AI assures that it is no longer so much about being good at programming in Python, C++ or JavaScript, but about learn to converse with the AI ​​models that are already programming in those languages ​​and explain to them precisely and with natural language what you want to achieve, and monitor its results until the result works. According to Wang, the future of programming inevitably involves he Vibe Coding. The best thing is to start now. Wang’s strongest message is aimed directly at teenagers. “If you’re 13, you should spend all your time coding with Vibe Coding. That’s what you should do,” said the young Meta manager. Wang compared the current technological moment with the computer technology boom of the late 70s and early 80s with the flourishing of the computer industry. “When personal computers emerged, those who spent more time with them and grew up with them had a huge advantage in the economy of the future, like the Bill Gates and even the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. I think that moment is happening right now,” stressed the founder of Scale AI. Practice new skills. Wang takes that idea even further when he talks about the dedication necessary for today’s young people to acquire those programming skills for their future work. “If you spend 10,000 hours playing with those tools and discovering how to use them better than others, that will be a big advantage,” encouraged the Meta executive. His criteria are based on his own experience, since at just 19 years old, Wang fundó Scale AI, a company dedicated to labeling content for training AI models and only 25 years old, entered the list of millionaires of Forbes with a fortune valued at more than $1.1 billion. The future of programming. According to Wang in his speech, it is clear to him that AI will not only help with programming, but will also write by itself practically all the code that a person like him has produced in his entire career. However, Wang does not believe that the role of the human engineer will disappear, but rather that it will shift to another point in the process. Your job will be to know what to ask for, how to combine different tools, how to review what the AI ​​produces and how to turn it into real products. That is why he insists so much that children and adolescents get used to this as soon as possible. new way of workingso that the youngest learn to use the Vibe Coding and integrate it naturally into their way of working as we already do today with computers and programming languages. In Xataka | “In a year or two, code editors will not exist”: four programmers explain the vibe coding revolution to us Image | Scale AI

The last one signs Google “raising” his commitment to Vibe Coding

Openai is at a key moment. On the one hand it has the entire technological industry pending its next great revolution with GPT-5its next language model that will boost Chatgpt and the rest of its AI tools. However, it is also in the midst of a bloody battle to stay for the best talent in ia. Goal has already been shown taking several of his top minds. Now Google has also moved card taking the founders of Windsurfthe company in which Openai had put an eye To buy for about 3,000 million dollars. Google’s master play. This Friday, Windsurf confirmed The play with the departure of the CEO, Varun Mohan, and the co -founder Douglas Chen, along with several key researchers of the startup that has promoted, together with cursor, the ‘Vibe Coding‘. The operation, valued at 2.4 billion dollars, includes a non -exclusive license of Windsurf technology, but leaves out any participation in the company. It is the classic “Reverse-Acquihire” that allows technological giants to take talent without awakening regulatory alarms. The context of the debacle. Openai had been negotiating the purchase of Windsurf for months, a startup that had fired its annual revenues up to 100 million dollars in April, multiplying its turnover in a few months. However, the operation had generated internal tensions between Openai and Microsoftits largest investor, since OpenAi wanted to prevent its partner from having access to Windsurf programming technology. This blockade in the agreement with Microsoft caused the purchase not to continue. In this way, when the period of exclusivity expired Openai had agreed with Windsurf to negotiate his purchase this Friday, Google did not hesitate to enter with an offer that Openai could not match. Talent bleeding. Meanwhile, goal continues to execute its burned land strategy in the AI labor market. The Zuckerberg company is offering salary packages ranging from 10 to 100 million dollars to star researchers, an unprecedented escalation that has triggered the salaries of the sector 50% since 2022. The goal is to sign 50 experts to lead their new Superintelligence Laboratoryafter the stumbling blocks of his calls and the exit of key figures such as research director Joelle Pineau. The company has already taken to several topnai top minds to his superintelligence laboratory, and has done the same with many other companies, as is the case of AI star engineer in Apple, Zhifeng Chen. Between the lines. Windsurf loss is especially painful for OpenAI because it represented its direct entry into the developer tool market, where Github co -ilot Microsoft dominates with authority. It was a way of diversifying its business beyond Chatgpt and competing in a niche that is experiencing explosive growth thanks to the tendency to program with the help of AI. Google moves file on an increasingly competitive terrain, making Openai’s strategy difficult in this segment. The pressure intensifies. The situation becomes more complex when the competitive context is analyzed. Anthropic has managed to significantly boost his income thanks to Claude Codeits programming tool, while startups as cursor (valued at 10,000 million) and Replit continue to gain ground. Google has now also entered full of offering programming tools promoted by AI, and many as many as XAI with Grok also They have announced Wanting to participate in this wave with a code specialized model that is expected to launch in August. Cover image: Wallpapercave and Village Global In Xataka | We knew that AI would generate new jobs that did not exist before. What we did not expect is that he was fixing his pifias

What is Vibe Coding, and what advantages and disadvantages offers this concept of programming using artificial intelligence

Let’s explain in a simple way What is Vibe Codinga new way of programming using artificial intelligence tools. Or at least it is a term that has been coined to refer to the people who use AI to create code and program. We are going to start the article explaining what Vibe Coding is in a simple way so you can understand it. Then, we will tell you the main advantages and disadvantages that this methodology has. What is Vibe Coding The easiest way to summarize the concept of Vibe Coding that is It has nothing to do with knowing how to program, but to know what to program. Come on, it is something like programming without knowing how to program, using an idea in your mind and resorting to artificial intelligence. Therefore, it is a term coined by artificial intelligence expert Andrej Karpathy for refer to using AI tools to create code instead of writing a person. It’s like saying in an elegant way that you use artificial intelligence to create the code, just like there was an elegant word to say that your drawings have made them with chatgpt, or that you are a “composer” of music that uses Suno. Basically, in this concept or work method it is that you have an idea, and you are asking with natural language to an artificial intelligence chat that Code believes you to do this and the other. Thus, the AI ​​is responsible for generating the code while you supervise the process by making the creative mind through Prompts. It is a concept that is creating a lot of controversy, because some people see it as the future of a more accessible schedule and where it is not so necessary to spend hours picing code. However, others also warn of the dangers of depending too much on artificial intelligence. In the end, as with many other artificial intelligence tools The important thing will be to find a balance. Perhaps to use AI for simple code fragments or sketches on which to work. Advantages of Vibe Coding The main advantage of this method is Make the most accessible programming For anyone. You would no longer need to have programming experience to create applications or software, not even study one or more languages, of all this will take care of artificial intelligence. In addition to this, the Vibe Coding It should also be able to reduce times in projects improving productivity. As the code brute is written by an AI, even if you have to review this, this should reduce development times at a certain level. And finally, even if you want to do a project programming it, you will always have the option of Create prototypes and sketches quickly with the code generated by the AI. Then, from that code you can start working, or directly start from scratch after seeing how it works. Vibe Coding Disadvantages As is evident, the first disadvantage is that You will create a code that can have all kinds of errors. The AI ​​has not yet reached maximum reliability when creating code, so it will be very necessary to invest a lot of time to review everything you think to make sure there are no failures. It is also The loss of technical knowledgesince if a company hires many people who do not know how to program and use only AI to do so, in the end it will not be able to undertake complex tasks. In addition to this, there is also the problem that If a technical or code failure arises But you don’t know how to program, so you will not have the knowledge to solve the problem. This, in the long run can make productivity less. In Xataka Basics | How to improve chatgpt responses: 9 steps to guarantee higher quality and better sources

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