It seems to me that the article is creating a false dichotomy where either you don't use AI at all, or you delegate every aspect of the work to AI. This simply isn't how it works in practice. You get to choose how much of the work you delegate to AI. There's still an enormous amount of space for human expertise, community, and enthusiasm for technology.
The public debate around AI makes me think of the cognitive distortions discussed in cognitive behavioral therapy. In particular, all-or-nothing thinking and catastrophizing. These are often symptoms of anxiety or psychosis. I sometimes wonder whether entire societies can experience these symptoms.
> This simply isn't how it works in practice. You get to choose how much of the work you delegate to AI. There's still an enormous amount of space for human expertise, community, and enthusiasm for technology.
I agree, especially with my own projects. Except you don't always get to choose in the workplace. Now that teams are being measured by PR throughput and token usage, you will look "worse" next to the person who is totally vibecoding. My fear is that if I don't vibecode, I'll be passed up for promotion.
The indicators that vibecoding may be bad, are lagging. What I mean is that issues that come up from vibecoding whether its performance, service degradation, massive data migrations etc. will always show up later.
I agree that it's out of the developer's control in some organizations. I'm also skeptical the degree to which this is happening across the industry. If I were running a software team, I would give team members autonomy over how much they use AI. Some people will be more productive with it, and some will be more productive without it. What matters is delivering quality software.
Long before vibe coding, it was well understood that output in terms of lines of code wasn't a good metric for quality or productivity. I'm predicting that the industry will come to the same understanding in terms of PRs and token usage. Eventually, those lagging indicators will catch up and teams will have to relearn the "No Silver Bullet" lesson.
The public debate around AI makes me think of the cognitive distortions discussed in cognitive behavioral therapy. In particular, all-or-nothing thinking and catastrophizing. These are often symptoms of anxiety or psychosis. I sometimes wonder whether entire societies can experience these symptoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion#Decatastr...