The article isn't saying "vibe coding goes nowhere" -- that's just the headline.
The point being made is that vibe coding is changing so fast that any investments you make today into learning is quickly obsolete tomorrow as someone puts out a new tool/framework/VSCode-fork that automates/incorporates your home-brewed prompt workflow.
It's like a deflationary spiral in economics -- if you know that prices will drop tomorrow, only the sucker buys something today (but because no one is buying today, that demand destruction causes prices to drop, creating a self-fulfilling doom loop).
Similarly: with LLM coding, any investment you spend in figuring out how to prompt-engineer your planning phase will be made obsolete by tomorrow's tools. Really your blog post about "how I made Claude agents develop 5 feature branches in parallel" is free R&D for the next AI tool developer who will just incorporate your tips&tricks (and theoretically even monetize it for themselves)
The argument here (get your pitchforks ready, all ye early adopters) is "we all just need to sit back for 6 months and see how these tools shake out, early adoption is just wasted effort."
But during those six months, we all got bills to pay and mouths to feed. Some of us might be lucky enough that we can take six months off and bury our heads in the sand, but for those who can't, what do you suggest? The writing on the wall is that the AI revolution is coming for jobs. An estimated 800 million jobs are going to be disrupted in the next few years. I'd rather waste the effort and have a job after the dust settles, rather than sit back and get to say "see! I knew this was going to put us out of a job!" and then be smug about it while standing next to each other at the soup kitchen.
I don't disagree with you, and as with all things in life, answer is to find balance.
On the one hand, hype cycles and bubbles are almost always driven by FOMO (and sometimes the best strategy is to not play). On the other hand, LLMs are legitimately changing how we do coding.
There's always going to be people who need to have the latest iphone or be trying the latest framework. And they're needed -- that's how natural adoption should happen. If these tools tickle your fancy, go forth and scratch that itch. At the very least, everyone should be at least trying these things out -- history of technology is these things keep getting better over time, and eventually they'll become the norm. I think the main perspective to hold, though, is they're not quite the norm yet, and so don't feel like a schlub if you're not always all-in on the trending flavor of the week.
We still don't know the final form these will take. Learn what's out there, but be okay that any path you take might be a dead end or obsolete in a month. Use a critical eye, and place your effort chips appropriately for your needs.
We're not taking 6 months off. We take a conservative approach. We keep doing our job and get better at it (with the help of AI too). The vibe coders aren't leaving us in the dust. They're just getting a short-term loan.
If it does happen and AI becomes good enough to replace a competent developer, vibe coders might still have a job after the dust settles. But it will be minimum wage work and the profession of software engineering as we know it is dead.
I guess this argument falls apart if you are already on (or close to) minimum wage.
Minimum wage jobs pay low wages because a large number of people can do them. This means that if you work a minimum wage job, you're not just competing with others in your field. You're competing with anyone willing to work for minimum wage.
It also works the other way around. If your job used to pay well but now only offers minimum wage, you could just as easily switch to any other minimum wage job.
> if you know that prices will drop tomorrow, only the sucker buys something today
That argument never held any water, and it's not what makes deflation problematic. You just have to look at the first 5 decades of electronics and computers, and how people kept buying those, again and again, despite the prices always going down and quality persistently going up.
The same applies to that argument applied to those tools. If you can use them to create something today (big if here), it doesn't matter that tomorrow tools will be different.
The point being made is that vibe coding is changing so fast that any investments you make today into learning is quickly obsolete tomorrow as someone puts out a new tool/framework/VSCode-fork that automates/incorporates your home-brewed prompt workflow.
It's like a deflationary spiral in economics -- if you know that prices will drop tomorrow, only the sucker buys something today (but because no one is buying today, that demand destruction causes prices to drop, creating a self-fulfilling doom loop).
Similarly: with LLM coding, any investment you spend in figuring out how to prompt-engineer your planning phase will be made obsolete by tomorrow's tools. Really your blog post about "how I made Claude agents develop 5 feature branches in parallel" is free R&D for the next AI tool developer who will just incorporate your tips&tricks (and theoretically even monetize it for themselves)
The argument here (get your pitchforks ready, all ye early adopters) is "we all just need to sit back for 6 months and see how these tools shake out, early adoption is just wasted effort."