I feel we have all seen the joke like the hiring process doesn’t want you to use AI but then once you get the job its forced heavily - this isn’t about that.
I want to start at a basic level of stigma. “vibe coder”
What this means is: ‘You don’t know how to do what I do and I’m essentially better for really knowing and or doing it without AI’ There’s normally two layers to this but I’ll break down the obvious part first.
Take two people:
- A non-technical person that saw some post on X about how to make some thing with AI, they are now a “vibe coder”.
- An engineer with 10 years experience that has seen it all and wants to make something with AI, they are now a “vibe coder”.
See the issue? If you don’t have words to communicate what’s actually going on there’s no useful conversation and vibe coder doesn’t mean anything. I guess it does mean something in both situations a purity test for - I either put in the struggle or just have so much rote memorization that I just know how to do it (but if it’s so easy and mechanical with the knowledge why not have AI do it in 3 seconds).
There’s normally a few easy to see outcomes. Person #1 probably makes something that looks good but falls apart when used in real life. Person #2 makes something more aligned to pre-AI world, there’s an MVP, there’s probably bugs, but there’s knowledge and a path to a solution instead of a brick wall.
I’ve seen another aspect as well on LinkedIn for instance, people saying how fast they can tell an application or resume is AI. Well.. as long as the content is real.. who cares. What are you seeking? You just want people to invest struggle for the sake of struggle?
Anyway something I’ve noticed, things are shifting and I feel people are trying to make sense of this but all have various degrees of exposure and audiences they interact with creating a confusing landscape.