Andrej Karpathy: From Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering w/ Stephanie Zhan

We're so excited for our very first special guest. He has helped build modern AI, then explain modern AI, and then occasionally rename modern AI. He actually helped co-found OpenAI right inside of this office, was the one who actually got autopilot working at Tesla back in the day. And he has a rare gift of making the

most complex technical shifts feel both accessible and inevitable. You all know him for having coined the term vibe coding last year, but just in the last few months he said something even more startling, that he's never felt more behind as a programmer. That's where we're starting today. Thank you, Andre, for joining us. Yeah, hello.

I'm excited to be here and to kick us off. Okay, so just a couple months ago you said that you've never felt more behind as a programmer. That's startling to hear from you of all people. Um can you help us unpack that? Was that feeling exhilarating or unsettling? Uh yeah, mixture of both for sure.

Uh well, first of all, um I guess like as many of you I've been using agentic tools like Alpha code adjacent things uh for a while, maybe over the last year as it came out. And it was very good at, you know, chunks of code. And sometimes it would mess up and you have to edit them, and it was kind

of helpful. And then I would say December was this uh clear point where for me uh I was on a break, so I had a bit more time. I think many other people were similar. And uh I just start to notice that with the latest models uh the chunks just came out fine. And then

I kept asking for more, and just came out fine. And then I can't remember the last time I corrected it. And then I was I just uh you know, trusted the system more and more. And then I was vibe coding. >> [laughter] >> And uh so it was kind of a I do think that it was a very stark