Here are the 3 keys you need to code - TAB, ACCEPT (and RUN)

I did have to smile when I saw this photo on the Vibe Coding subreddit on Reddit earlier today. Although I would modify it to add a third key for RUN (or refresh, or reload).

ChatGPT defines vibe coding as:

... an informal term that refers to programming in a relaxed, intuitive, or improvisational manner, rather than following strict methodologies or best practices.

I think more recently the term has come to be associated very much with the IDEs and development services that offer some degree of code completion or total code development options. Services such as Windsurf, Cursor, Replit and Loveable come to mind.

I've been making use of a variety of these tools myself to get actual practical experience to be able to talk about it to the executives and teams that I'm working with and advising.

I've been a full-stack 'engineer' using the LAMP stack ("Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP") since 1999. This was way before we had terms like Agile, DevOps or Continuous Integration. I was busy bringing systems and infrastructure to life, powered by a heck of a lot of pizza and caffeine - and by continuous googling to try and find examples of how to get stuff done. I don't remember when Stack Overflow arrived, but it was a godsend when it did.

I've kept my hand in when it comes to programming because I think it's always helpful to have a bit of an idea of how things work. When I've been supervising large transformation programs especially in financial services, I've often found it to be really helpful to be able to get into the detail at various points and to rapidly assess technical issues and find fixes quickly.

Mostly my programming activities have been related to personal projects. The last big thing I created of any scale was Eventscope, an online networking web app for conferences and event organisers. And I think that was back in 2003 or 2004 when we started that company.

When it comes to these new coding tools I have to say that they are a revelation. An absolute revelation.

I was astonished by how the code completion was working in Visual Studio. I absolutely appreciate the likes of Lovable, where a lot of the work is intentionally done by the 'agent', however, I'm really impressed by the likes of Claude Code.

This is a command line interface that directly connects to the Anthropic Cloud 3.7 APIs and can do almost everything you need on your computer or remote server. I say almost everything because they have limited a few things purposefully in the research preview of the system. For example, it can't easily make external requests. But, it can do all sorts of manipulation on the server via the command line and this makes it incredibly capable.

I have been sitting, talking to the system, throwing instructions and requests at it and watching it chomp through every single ask, quickly and steadily. It is nothing short of astonishing.

Here's a video from the Anthropic team discussing and showing what it can do:

I think it's actually better than what they showed in the video.

But, dear reader, to the headline of this article: The three keys you need to code nowadays?

• TAB: To accept the suggested code from the AI
• ACCEPT: To confirm the important actions that your coding agent wants to take on your behalf.
• RUN: To put the app into production or refresh the page to view the latest updates.

Or in my case, I'm wearing out the CTRL and SHIFT buttons because that's the key combination I use when I'm having the machine record my speech, convert it to text and have Claude make things!