Recent advances in AI-assisted programming have sparked new forms of creative practice that blur the boundaries between development, authorship, and emotion. Among these, ‘vibe coding’, a term introduced in February, 2025 and later popularized by developers to describe an intuitive, conversational mode of coding with large language models, has become both a technical workflow and a cultural discourse. This paper presents a longitudinal analysis of 896 Hacker News conversations (155 valid threads and 7,223 comments) to examine how discussions around vibe coding evolved between February and September 2025. Through thematic and sentiment analysis, we trace a clear progression with early months of optimism and play, mid-year skepticism and fatigue, and late-year consolidation around responsibility and augmentation. Community sentiment mirrored this trajectory, with positive affect rising from 50% to 64% while negative tone declined from 33% to 20%. Together, these findings reveal that developers’ perception for vibe coding follows an emotional arc of adaptation, from excitement to reflection to mature integration. We argue that studying such affective trajectories offers a window into how software practitioners collectively negotiate creativity, identity, and well-being in the age of vibe coding.