Thoughtworks Technology Podcast27 Nov 2025

We still need to talk about vibe coding: Reflections on 2025's word of the year

Vibe coding was, remarkably, named word of the year by the Collins English Dictionary at the start of November 2025 — pretty good going for a term that was only coined in February. We first discussed it on the Technology Podcast back in April, and, given its prominence in the collective lexicon this year, thought we should revisit and reflect on the topic as 2025 draws to a close.

Lots has happened in the intervening months: MCP adoption, the evolution of agentic coding tools and practices like context engineering have had a significant impact on the way the world is thinking about and using AI.

To talk about it all and reflect on the implications, Thoughtworkers and regular podcast hosts Prem Chandrasekaran, Lilly Ryan and Neal Ford reconvened for a follow up to our April conversation. Taking in everything from the term's semantic slipperiness, its security risks and the challenges of maintaining AI-generated code, this is a discussion that, despite going deep into vibe coding, also touches on a huge range of issues in the technology industry today.

Before we enter 2026, looking back on the good, the bad and the ugly of the last 12 months of experimentation is essential if we're to build better software for the world in the future. This episode aims to be a guide through that process.

Listen to our April episode on vibe coding: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/podcasts/technology-podcasts/vibe-coding

Read Ken Mugrage's blog post exploring the shift from vibe coding to context engineering in 2025: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/machine-learning-and-ai/vibe-coding-context-engineering-2025-software-development

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(100)

Scaling the enterprise harness: How to achieve AI agent controllability across an organization

Harness engineering is still a new concept, but already we've noticed a challenge being consistently faced by technology leaders: how can a harness be used at scale across an organization to ensure co...

6 Aug 45min

Embracing hybrid AI: How Lenovo is leveraging local, on-device AI

Cloud was one of the main drivers of the early waves of AI adoption. However, as AI has become more and more embedded in systems and devices — in both consumer and enterprise contexts — it's becoming ...

23 Jul 30min

What does the future of software engineering look like?

At the end of June, Thoughtworks and Martin Fowler convened an unconference-style event in Switzerland with a range of industry leaders. The aim was to reflect on the current challenges and learning a...

9 Jul 46min

What is code?

What is code? It might sound obvious, but if you scratch the surface it becomes more difficult to articulate precisely what we mean. AI is complicating the picture further and changing the relationshi...

25 Jun 40min

Database branching: Overcoming the bottlenecks of shared database environments

Database branching has, for a long time, been a troublesome piece in the modern developer workflow puzzle: a good idea in principle but in practice a slow and often expensive challenge. Get it right a...

11 Jun 39min

What is spec-driven development?

Semantic diffusion, combined with the pace of technology change, makes talking about AI-adjacent practices and techniques incredibly diffficult. There are few better examples of this issue than the te...

28 Mai 45min

What is harness engineering?

'Harness engineering' is one of the most significant terms to emerge in software engineering in 2026. Broadly referring to the work done to control unpredictable AI agents and coding assistants, its u...

14 Mai 40min

Anthropic Mythos: Hype, reality and the actual security implications

Anthropic Mythos garnered significant attention when it was launched in mid-April 2026. Yet despite it apparently presenting an unprecedented threat to global software, you don't have to look to close...

30 Apr 48min