Vibe coding isn't punk like Rick Rubin says at all

“If you had something to say, you could say it; you didn’t need the expertise or skillset other than your idea and your ability to convey it. And vibe coding is the same thing. It’s the punk rock of coding.”

(Rick Rubin, 2025)

Vibe coding isn’t punk rock like our dear friend Rick Rubin says at all. There is no politics beyond whichever cruel, grey melange the Large Language Model puts together based on whatever it pulls out of the Internet. There is no anger, much less dissatisfaction, with the system whatsoever. It didn’t come from a place of societal frustration, it came from a place of relentless optimisation. There is no sound, there is no fury, there sure as hell aren’t any life-changing seven inches coming out of it either for that matter.

I’ll admit to the surface level comparison in terms of “democratisation,” for lack of a better word, but that’s about it. The crux of this hyper-optimisation and some late stage capitalism end-game couldn’t be farther away from punk. I use AI to code for me and help with writing and have no problem admitting it. I just think this notion is off. There are songs that have made me throw things, songs that have made me hug friends and songs that have changed the way I see the world and the people who run it, and many of these fit snuggly into the punk genre. Whilst revolutionary in many ways, vibe coding is more like a washing machine than a Stiff Little Fingers record.