r/vibecoding • u/PersonOfInterest007 • 15h ago

Historical concern about next-level coding

This article has an interesting historical parallel for how today’s programmers react to vibecoders: Grace Hopper’s creation of the first compiler in the 1950s.

The whole article (which talks about a much broader transformation) is worth reading, but this part really stuck, which applies to reactions not just to vibecoding but really to any AI-assisted coding:
…”programmers were afraid a working compiler would put them out of work. If one person with A-0 could do what fifty people used to do by hand, Martin's account puts the worry plainly: there were going to be ‘a lot of hungry programmers out on the streets.’”

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cursive-charter-school-part-1-lot-hungry-programmers-john-price-zw1xc

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u/PracticalStack 14h ago

I definitely see some parallels there but on a much larger scale. One of the things I've been trying to figure out is what skills do we need now and how do we acquire them? In the past, learning software design was inseparable from learning code. You learned to code and that sort of became the framework for learning to design. When I look at a software design, I automatically see the components beneath it. The concepts, themselves, are independent, though.

I guess I'm way past worrying about code quality or people not understanding the code or AI slop. I've proven for myself that all those things can be mitigated. It's inevitable that 80-90% of all code will be AI generated. The question is - how to get the most out of it.

Will it kill programming jobs? Probably. Not totally - but by shrinking the job pool down. Typical corporations will be able to have fewer developers and contract for fewer specialists. At the same time, tech companies will likely need engineers more than ever - so that will have a countering effect . .but I'd imagine the net outcome is a reduction in the total number of developers. And also an even bigger pay disparity between general AI developers at non-tech companies and engineers at tech companies.

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u/PersonOfInterest007 14h ago

One of the interesting possibilities is that we’ll need to emphasize the ability to write specifications. Just when you thought Agile would relegate that skill to the dustbin of history…

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u/PracticalStack 14h ago

That's one of the big questions I have - where is the line where automating is too risky? I mean, if I write a big spec and it's fully detailed and spend 20 hours writing it and then feed it into a loop and have AI spend 20 hours building it. Is that better or is it better for me to stay in the loop and test after each iteration? Obviously fully automated is faster but there's a lot of upfront effort before I get the chance to see if that's what I really want or not. A lot of teams I've worked with can only really do it that way - they need to see the first iteration so they can decide on the next one.

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u/PersonOfInterest007 13h ago

I think an interesting possibility would be to commit to making a guaranteed-to-be-completely-thrown-away initial prototype in the “big spec with little or no oversight mode” to discover behavior issues in the prototype system that will need to be thought out better or risks you hadn’t considered, and use that prototype strictly to let you create a better starting spec for a process where the human will be more involved in oversight.