More and more software engineers switch from actually writing code to vibe coding. Actual coding is a relatively slow process, in which you are responsible for writing every line of code of a computer program.
Vibe coding is a much faster technique. You tell an AI what you want via prompts, and it writes the code for you. If you don’t like the result, you modify the prompt. Rinse and repeat.
Vibe coding can be much faster than old fashioned programming. What might have taken days might be done in only an hour or two.
But there is a flaw in the paradigm. Vibe coding only works because the AI has scraped the code from millions of programs that were created by actual humans. In a sense, the AI is acting as a collage machine, piecing together patterns found in many snippets of human code to create its new results.
Once everybody switches to vibe coding, there will be no more human code. It will all just be combinations gleaned from the legacy of the old days, when human beings with actual brains put actual thought into coming up with new patterns, and writing those patterns in the language of programming.
Will that signal the end of a key part of programming — of the underlying ideas that make it powerful? Without new infusions of human-generated code, will humanity find itself facing a conceptual wall?
And if so, will future generations look back with regret? Are these the last days of a golden age of computational innovation?