40 Years Apart
A few days ago, I experienced something that felt like science fiction becoming reality. Using Firebase Studio, I created fully functional web applications—Hangman, Wordle, and Mastermind—with nothing more than a few conversational prompts. Each took mere minutes. No syntax to remember, no debugging sessions stretching into the night, no Stack Overflow searches for obscure error messages. Just me, describing what I wanted, and watching as complete, workable web apps materialised before my eyes.
Later that day, emboldened by this newfound power, I created a Blackjack trainer that taught probability strategies for different gaming scenarios. The surreal nature of the experience wasn’t lost on me—I haven’t written a line of traditional code in more than 25 years, yet here I was, creating sophisticated software through nothing more than conversation with an AI.
This moment transported me back four decades to where my coding journey began. I remember when I first started coding as a 16-year-old on a computer in my father’s office. As I wrote, “I remember using my first PC in 1983-4. I remember getting a ZX Sinclair home but didn’t use it much. At the same time, my father had also got a computer at work. It was very expensive (Rs 200,000 or so, when the dollar was Rs 8 per dollar). Since we couldn’t find a software programmer who would stay long enough (!), I decided to learn BASIC programming, and would go after college and write programs on it. Wrote many interactive games then: one that simulated a one-day cricket international (remember that was the time India had won the Cricket World Cup), Monopoly, and a game I called MinderMast (guessing a 4-digit number in upto 10 tries).”
I added in another post: “Those after-college hours spent in that room with a computer that seemed impossibly large sparked a passion that would lead me away from my planned career in civil engineering.” My next significant coding chapter came years later. “I learnt some theory about the digital world during my IIT years, and did some low-level assembly language programming for a communications project. Computers came back into my life at Columbia University during my Masters education. That is when I started writing software seriously, something I continued at NYNEX, and then the early days of my entrepreneurial career. I wrote (along with my co-founder Sanjay) a multimedia database in 1992-3, and then an image processing software (Image WorkBench) in 1993-94.”
The contrast is striking. In 1983, creating a simple game required weeks of painstaking effort, wrestling with BASIC syntax, managing memory constraints, and debugging line by line. In 2025, I built more sophisticated versions of similar games in minutes through natural conversation. The same creative impulse that drove me to simulate cricket matches and build number-guessing games forty years ago now finds expression through an entirely different medium—not code, but conversation.
This transformation represents more than just technological progress; it’s a fundamental reimagining of the relationship between human creativity and machine capability. What once required deep technical expertise now requires clear communication and creative vision. The barrier between idea and implementation has virtually disappeared.
The journey from prompting ChatGPT for writing assistance in early 2023 to vibe coding complete applications in 2025 illustrates the breathtaking pace of change. We’re not just witnessing incremental improvements in development tools—we’re experiencing a paradigm shift in how software comes into existence.
This phenomenon, dubbed “vibe coding” by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, isn’t just changing how we build software; it’s redefining who can build it. And for someone who has witnessed the evolution from room-sized computers to conversational AI, from BASIC to natural language programming, the implications are both thrilling and profound.
In this essay, I will explore vibe coding through multiple lenses—drawing on AI insights, industry analysis, and perspectives from thought leaders—to understand its transformative implications for software development, SaaS business models, and the Martech ecosystem. We’ll examine how this technology democratises creation, disrupts traditional vendors, and promises to unlock innovation at a scale we’ve never seen before.
But perhaps more importantly, we’ll explore what it means when the ability to create software—once the exclusive domain of those who could master arcane syntax and complex abstractions—becomes as natural as having a conversation. When the 16-year-old version of me spent those after-college hours learning BASIC, I was joining an elite guild of programmers. Today, vibe coding promises to dissolve that entirely, making software creation a universal human capability.
Welcome to the age where coding is conversation, where imagination is the only prerequisite, and where the next great software innovation might come from someone who has never written a line of traditional code. The implications for business, creativity, and human potential are just beginning to unfold.
