Vibe coding won’t be a death sentence for productivity software.
At least that’s what LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman said during an episode of his “Possible” podcast released on Wednesday. Vibe coding, a term coined by OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy this year, involves developers prompting AI to generate code.
The trend has gained traction in Silicon Valley in recent months, and some companies have begun listing vibe coding as a necessary skill on job listings.
While responding to a question about whether the longevity of technology, Hoffman said people “overpredict, in the new things, the death of the old.”
“Like, a classic one is when mobile started growing, people said PCs are over. And what happens is PCs grow—like mobile grows a lot more — but like PCs have continued,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman said new technology can coexist with older systems, and they can, in some ways, enhance each other.
“For example, one of the memes right now is vibe coding is going to wipe out productivity software,” Hoffman said. “What I think you’ll see is productivity software will continue, and then vibe coding is going to add on to it.”
He added, “But it’s not going to be like suddenly productivity software is going to go away. That’s the pattern that people need to understand.”
Hoffman, a partner at venture capital firm Greylock Partners, also spoke about it from an investor’s perspective.
“‘I want to bet on mobile, or I want to bet on, maybe, vibe coding,” Hoffman said. “But it’s a very standard pattern that what happens is, it persists for a while. And then, by the way, when it dies, it dies very quickly, in a smaller number of years.”
Representatives for Greylock Partners did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.