This is a phrase I hear more and more. It’s the new skill making its way to job postings and development envirments. No need to code, just tell the LLM what you want it to write and like a magic lamp the code will appear. Is it really that simple? Is there really no need to know code anymore? Perhaps the better question is, how much code does a vibe coder need to know. If I am choosing between a vibe coder who knows code and one who doesn’t, well, I know who I’m going to hire.

I’ve been writing bash scripts for probably 2+ decades at this point, so when I pop in my request to the LLM it spits back a script and I look at it and decide if that’s what I want, and if and how I want to tweak it. Does the script actually do what I want and does it account for the caveats in the outcome that my prompt did not fully qualify? Most of the time, no. I want it to work a little different or tweak something. Now, this method of writing a bash script is lightning fast compared to the time I would have spent sourcing old scripts, writing flow statements and consulting google. Often, an LLM will give me more error-proof code than I would have written or use some built in variables I wasn’t aware of that make the code simpler and more effective. I can then have it teach me a couple new things and I can reuse that knowledge in future requests. The reality, however, is that I get better results because I know the code

Here is another example. I wanted all in one file, a web server that would display markdown files in the directory it was run from and interpret the markdown code on an html page. I said write this for me. The script was written in python, html, and css. I know the basics of python but I am not familiar with all the modules that would be required to achieve this or the syntax for configuring those modules. I ran the script, it worked, I wanted to tweak some things so I asked it to modify the script. At some point, the server script stopped working. I stared at the code trying to reason out which module had the issue and how to troubleshoot the problem. It was then that the light bulb went on.

Yes vibe coding is fast and you don’t really need to know the code, but there a lot more challenges and pitfalls. The importance of human in the loop was staring me in the face and this experience served to firmly solidify what I had already been thinking. Sure, you can vibe code with little to no code experience, but the value of knowing and understanding the code is still a valuable skill. Where and how that skill sits in an organization is what’s changing. That’s the challenge. Re-defining business needs, position requirements, and CI/CD workflows. Not a small task to say the least and there is definitely a lot of uncertainty on both sides of the employment paperwork. This is why I think it’s important to take a step a back, look at the bigger picture, and admit that everyone is still learning this new landscape. Therefore, we must learn from each other and work towards a symbiotic partnership between the business, employee, and AI.

Wishing everyone good vibes ☮