"Vibe coding" beats "clanker" to be Collins dictionary's word of the year (www.theguardian.com)

Collins dictionary has named “vibe coding” its 2025 word of the year — a term coined by Andrej Karpathy to describe AI systems that turn natural language into working code, letting people “forget that the code even exists.” Collins’ lexicographers flagged a big jump in usage across their 24-billion-word corpus since the phrase first appeared in February, seeing it as a linguistic marker of how generative AI is reshaping software development from a specialist craft into a more conversational, design-driven activity. For the AI/ML community, the choice signals both cultural acceptance and technical responsibility: widespread uptake of conversational code generation promises to lower barriers to entry, accelerate prototyping and shift developer skillsets toward prompt design, specification, and verification. It also highlights tensions: related entries such as “clanker” reflect public distrust and frustration with AI systems, underscoring the need for robust correctness, transparency, and tooling for testing and interpretability. As “vibe coding” enters mainstream vocabulary, model-makers, platform builders and educators will need to address accuracy, safety and maintainability if conversational programming is to move from catchy phrase to reliable practice.