VibeCoding vs. WishCoding: Revolutionizing Programming for Everyone

When Andrej Karpathy, former AI director at Tesla, casually introduced the term “VibeCoding” in 2024, he likely aimed to find a more efficient coding method for programmers. Little did he know, this concept would quickly sweep through the tech community, even being named Collins Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2025, symbolizing the AI era’s slogan of “anyone can code.” However, as the excitement faded, it became clear that while VibeCoding lowered the barrier to writing code, it still left 99% of ordinary people outside the door of digital creation. It wasn’t until the emergence of Ant Group’s “WishCoding” that a real breakthrough occurred, transforming programming from an engineer-exclusive skill into a superpower accessible to everyone.

The Halo and Limitations of VibeCoding

VibeCoding, translated as “vibe programming,” centers on describing requirements in natural language for AI to automatically generate code. This innovation allows programmers to abandon tedious syntax memorization and repetitive coding, enabling them to quickly obtain runnable programs by simply expressing their ideas. For the approximately 30 million programmers worldwide, this represents a liberation of productivity, allowing them to realize their ideas faster and at lower costs. Consequently, VibeCoding rapidly became mainstream in the industry, viewed as the future direction of software development in the AI era.

However, behind the celebration lies a harsh reality. VibeCoding starts at the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) window and ends with a piece of code. It assumes users understand coding, dependency management, and deployment—basic skills for professional developers but towering obstacles for the remaining 99% of the global population. An ordinary person may be able to use natural language to have AI generate code, but they often lack the knowledge to turn that code into a mobile application, let alone share it with others. VibeCoding only accelerates the “writing code” phase, while every step in the chain from idea to usable application remains an insurmountable hurdle for the average person.

It’s akin to VibeCoding providing ordinary people with a magical knife to quickly prepare ingredients without teaching them how to cook, season, or plate, leaving them without a kitchen to bring their ideas to the table. Most people’s creativity remains trapped in their minds and conversations, unable to transform into usable, shareable digital products.

The Arrival of WishCoding

While the industry was still caught up in the VibeCoding race, Ant Group took a different path by proposing the new “WishCoding” concept. If VibeCoding is about “enabling those who can code to code faster,” then WishCoding is about “empowering those who cannot code to create applications.” It completely bypasses the coding step, reducing the software generation starting point from “writing logic” to “describing intent.” Users need no programming knowledge or technical concepts; they simply need to clearly express what they want in natural language, and AI can directly generate a fully functional, interactive, and shareable application.

Launched in November 2025, Ant Group’s Lingguang (WishCoding) quickly gained attention for its ability to generate applications in 30 seconds and deploy them instantly. On April 20, 2026, Lingguang underwent a critical upgrade, deeply integrating native mobile capabilities (camera, gyroscope, LBS, microphone, etc.) and introducing the “Lingguang Circle” community, allowing users to complete the entire application generation, iteration, usage, and distribution process on mobile.

Creating applications in the Lingguang app is as simple as posting on social media. For instance, if you want to create a fragmented focus timer, just tell it, “support custom focus duration, rest countdown, total focus time leaderboard, minimalist interface, match different white noise based on weather,” and in just a few seconds, a complete usable application will appear on your phone. If the first version isn’t good enough, you don’t need to modify the code; simply tell the AI, “add a focus achievement badge,” and instantly, a new version can be iterated. Throughout the process, there’s not a single line of code or technical jargon—only pure expression of ideas and presentation of results.

This experience completely breaks down the barriers between “those with ideas” and “those who can realize ideas.” Designers, students, office workers, stay-at-home parents—anyone who can express needs in natural language can become a creator in the digital world. Lingguang compresses what traditionally required months and a professional team into 30 seconds, allowing one person to complete the task, truly realizing the era of “one-person applications”—one person, one sentence, one smartphone can bring ideas to life. As of now, Lingguang users have created over 30 million flash applications covering various aspects of life, learning, work, and entertainment.

Lingguang Circle: Nurturing Creativity and Opening a Co-Creation Era

If flash applications have achieved the leap from “personal ideas to applications,” then the “Lingguang Circle” gives every individual’s creativity a broader life. As the industry’s first zero-code application sharing community, Lingguang Circle not only allows users to share their flash applications with one click for others to browse, use, like, and comment, but more importantly, it supports “secondary creation.”

In Lingguang Circle, when you see applications created by others, you don’t need to understand the underlying code or master any technology; you just need to express modification ideas in natural language—“change the color to blue,” “add a check-in feature,” “modify the menu to a low-fat version,” and AI can generate a new version based on the original. This transforms the open-source community’s “Fork code” into “Fork intent,” making collaboration, once limited to professional developers, easily accessible to everyone.

In the past, the growth of software applications was closed and linear, planned, developed, and iterated by professional teams, while ordinary users could only passively use them. However, in Lingguang Circle, application growth becomes open, diverse, and limitless. A basic application can be modified into dozens of versions by different users, some focusing on simplicity and practicality, others adding fun features, and some adapting to specific scenarios. The boundaries between users and creators are completely blurred, allowing everyone to contribute to others’ ideas, continuously evolving and spreading good concepts.

For example, someone created a “relative relationship calculator” to solve the awkwardness of family gatherings; another added dialect terms and automatic reminder features; yet another transformed it into a “workplace address guide” for different workplace scenarios. A small idea, through countless people’s “wishes,” continuously generates new value, forming an unprecedented application ecosystem.

The Essence of the Programming Revolution: From Technical Empowerment to Universal Creation

From VibeCoding to WishCoding, what seems like an iteration of AI programming tools is, in fact, a complete transfer of digital creation power.

VibeCoding represents “technical empowerment for professionals,” optimizing existing software development processes and serving a minority of technical individuals, with a ceiling audience of only 30 million programmers. In contrast, WishCoding represents “technology benefiting everyone,” reconstructing the production relationship of software and liberating the power of digital creation from engineers to 8 billion ordinary people worldwide.

Behind this is a qualitative change in AI technology from “auxiliary tool” to “core productivity.” As early as the 1990s, former Microsoft chief architect Charles Simonyi proposed “Intentional Programming,” hoping software development could focus on user intent rather than code details. However, limited by the technology of the time, it remained a conceptual idea. Now, with the maturity of large models’ understanding, generation, and multimodal interaction capabilities, WishCoding has finally transitioned from concept to reality.

What Ant Group has done is act as the “automation layer from intent to realization” envisioned by Simonyi, hiding the complexities of code, development environments, and deployment processes behind the scenes, leaving users with only the simple path of “inputting ideas → obtaining applications → sharing and iterating.” It is no longer about optimizing a specific technical point; it has opened up a complete chain, allowing every fleeting thought the opportunity to become an application that can be used, shared, and continuously rewritten.

The Future is Here: Everyone is a Creator in the Digital World

As AI evolves from merely an auxiliary programming tool to a Coding Agent accessible to everyone, the landscape of the digital world is being fundamentally rewritten.

In the past, we were accustomed to passively using applications developed by others, satisfied with “as long as it works”; in the future, we can actively create our own tools, meeting every personalized need. Previously, the value of creativity relied on technical teams to realize; in the future, a single sentence can turn an idea into reality, with some individuals earning nearly ten thousand dollars in just two months from their self-made flash applications. Previously, the software ecosystem was dominated by a few tech companies; in the future, countless ordinary people’s small ideas will converge into a vast ocean of the digital world.

The product manager of Lingguang stated: “The development of AI will accelerate the release of software productivity to ordinary people. Lingguang aims to be the accelerator of this productivity revolution, enabling every ordinary person to have their own Coding Agent to create their own applications.”

From the “celebration of programmers” in VibeCoding to the “creation by everyone” in WishCoding, the AI programming revolution has finally moved in the right direction. This is no longer a technical game for a select few, but a digital age dividend belonging to everyone. When “anyone can code” is no longer just a slogan, and every spark of inspiration can take root and grow, we will ultimately usher in a truly open, diverse, and infinitely possible new digital world. And it all begins with you expressing your first wish in the Lingguang app.