Vibe Coding, Two Awards, and No PowerPoint

At the invitation of Sophie Hundertmark, I had the chance to speak to students in the SAS course “AI in Banking” at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Institute of Financial Services Zug, IFZ) about what more than a year of AI coding and two Best of Swiss Apps awards mean in practice. Not a theory lecture, but lived experience — exactly the way we work at HMZ.swiss.

What is “Vibe Coding”?

“Vibe coding is a programming approach where you fully give in to your intuition, ride the wave of AI-generated suggestions, and forget that the code even exists.” — Andrej Karpathy

The new approach can be summed up in three points:

• Natural language instead of syntax — you describe what should be created
• Describe intention, not implementation — the how is increasingly handled by AI
• AI as a co-pilot, not a tool — a counterpart, not a button

The result: faster prototypes, lower barriers to entry, and more focus on creativity instead of boilerplate.

From Prototype to Award-Winning Product

Vibe coding isn’t a hype term — it delivers: bionic (Apple Vision Pro) and DinBrudi were both honored with Bronze at the Best of Swiss Apps 2025 — built in exactly this mode. Proof that fast building can turn into real, award-winning products.

No More PowerPoint

The medium was part of the message too: instead of 30-year-old presentation software, the entire talk ran as a modern web presentation — faster to create, nicer to look at, and live in the browser. So the approach wasn’t just the topic, but also the method.

What’s Still Missing

As impressive as the pace is — speed alone isn’t the goal. And this is exactly where the honest gap lies, which I also emphasized in the course:

• Without structure, speed turns into chaos. Vibe coding gets you to a prototype in minutes — but the path from “it runs on my machine” to a robust, maintainable product remains craft.
• Control has to stay with the human. The AI suggests, the human decides. With you in the driver’s seat — otherwise you generate code uncontrollably that no one understands anymore.
• Quality, security, and architecture don’t happen on their own. They are the difference between a nice demo and a product you can entrust to customers.

Vibe coding lowers the barrier to starting something. Finishing it still takes imagination, will, and craft — and that’s exactly what we work on.

Many thanks to Sophie Hundertmark for the invitation.