True of corpo software as well, FWIW.

Corporate ghouls will buy a successful company and stuff the “leadership” with an even mix of hapless morons and toxic careerists, then wonder why the successful products aren’t selling anymore.

Or so I heard, dear $currentEmployer whose corporate values I definitely share.

I agree with all you said but it’s still a (bad) abstraction.

By and large, the original market for VBScript or Cobol were people who did not have the means to understand - nevermind debug - their own output. Then actual professionals were hired to fix their broken pile of shit.

Vibe coding is arguably worse in many areas (such as determinism), but I’d argue it’s a difference of degree not nature. The idea and target audience are largely the same, and the results will be as well, which is why I am not worried for my job security, quite the contrary.

you’re at risk of becoming dependent, and not building the understanding you’ll need to make something that matters

Could be – and has been – said about literally any abstraction. Some people still haven’t gotten over the fact that assembly is not the default system programming language anymore.

For me vibe coding is more akin to vbscript or MS Access. It’s for people who neither know nor care about the “how” and don’t give a shit about quality, performance, security, or maintainability (i.e. people who have no interest in software development). It’s a market that’s looked down upon for many good reasons, but it does exist and it does serve a purpose for small-scale and low-stakes DIY automation. Unfortunately that purpose is a lot narrower than the marketing pitch, nevermind all the other deleterious problems with the AI industry as it exists today.