Russian 'Vibe Coders' Emerge: 52% Write Code Without Programming Skills

According to a study by Bitrix24, a new category of developers called 'vibe coders' has emerged in Russia, who create applications using AI without professional programming skills. 81% of practitioners do not consider coding their main profession, and 52% started with no programming experience or only basic HTML editing. 72% of projects coded by AI already work almost autonomously and are used internally or by clients. The study shows that 44% of vibe coders are entrepreneurs, 12% are managers, and only 6% are professional developers. The most popular AI tools are Claude Code (55%) and OpenAI Codex (54%), followed by VS Code with AI extensions (26%) and Cursor (24%). Among language models, OpenAI leads with 71%, followed by Claude (58%), DeepSeek (34%), Qwen (24%), BitrixGPT (23%), and Gemini or Gemma (21%). The main problems cited are AI misunderstanding tasks (37%), difficulty maintaining projects (32%), and security concerns (27%). Only 11% manually review generated code, while 54% use the same AI for verification. 73% of respondents said they were able to abandon hiring developers thanks to vibe coding. 39% believe the era of employees creating apps with AI has already arrived, and 30% expect it to become mainstream within one to two years. Alexander Vartanyan, marketing director of Bitrix24, noted that development is no longer solely an IT department task and has become a tool for business process owners.