{"id":17861,"date":"2025-11-12T15:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T23:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=17861"},"modified":"2025-11-13T06:13:36","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T14:13:36","slug":"vibe-coding-future-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/12\/vibe-coding-future-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Vibe Coding the Future of Skilled Work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week<\/a>, I shared some tentative thoughts on how AI changes the nature of learning useful skills and developing human capital.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. Thus, many of my early conclusions try to answer the question of what we should learn given the large amount of uncertainty, rather than adapting narrowly for a specific vision of the future.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming in terms of AI capabilities. And even if I somehow knew, the second- and third-order effects of technological change would still be hard to predict. When the Internet was nascent, experts easily predicted the rise of global communication. But nobody, as far as I can tell, predicted social media and its effects on politics and discourse.<\/p>\n

Similarly, noting that AI might automate or speed up some tasks is much easier than trying to determine what society will look like once that automation has been taken into account.<\/p>\n

As a trivial example, I remember when early AI image and video generators were demoed. I thought they were a near-magical technology, but I hadn\u2019t anticipated slop, where the telltale signs of AI generation become synonymous with low-quality.<\/p>\n

Of course, art is a somewhat unusual case. The meaning behind art has always gone beyond its superficial characteristics. A Leonardo da Vinci painting can sell for hundreds of millions<\/a>, while a nearly-identical copy is worthless. So it wouldn\u2019t be unprecedented if AI art was devalued, even if it is technically competent.<\/p>\n

But what about something that has more utilitarian, not merely aesthetic, properties, such as programming? Is \u201cvibe coding\u201d\u2014where you instruct a coding agent to write code on your behalf\u2014a democratization of programming ability? Or is it just more AI slop, flooding the software market with junk?<\/p>\n

Vibe Coding: Magic or Slop?<\/h2>\n

Talking to a lot of professional programmers, there seems to be some skepticism about the quality of vibe coding. And, since professional programmers have a better ability to discern quality code than non-coders, this judgement carries some weight.<\/p>\n

However, we also can\u2019t rule out self-interest here. Just as many artists and illustrators deplore image generation, in part because of its aesthetic inferiority and also out of concerns it might lower the value of their hard-won skills, I suspect a lot of programmer protests against vibe coding are recognition that it may be an existential threat to their livelihood.<\/p>\n

As for me, I\u2019m a somewhat unusual case. I\u2019m a programmer, but I\u2019m an amateur. I learned some coding in high school and university, and I learned a lot more theory and did more hands-on work during my MIT Challenge<\/a>. Since then, however, I\u2019ve mostly dabbled.<\/p>\n

As a result, I\u2019m a lousy judge of code quality. I don\u2019t have decades of experience managing large code bases to have a taste for good code. I defer to more experienced practitioners.<\/p>\n

But, I also don\u2019t have skin in the game. If the entire industry happily agreed to let coding agents write all code, it wouldn\u2019t make much difference to my career. Thus, I\u2019m more dispassionate about vibe coding than people whose livelihoods depend on having mastered this particular rare and valuable skillset.<\/p>\n

My Experiences Vibe Coding<\/h2>\n

When coding agents first arrived several months ago, I was happy to use them to create a few simple programs that I wanted to make but lacked the time and motivation to pursue on my own:<\/p>\n