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That is a totally real point about confidence! I recently added a feature to an application that I know I won't be able to fix myself. If it breaks, I'll need to 100% rely on AI. On the other hand, I've inherited human written code in the past that I wished that I could just rewrite myself (so that I would confidently understood all of it) rather than try to understand how someone else's code was designed to work and then run into potential surprises. I never liked that part of the job, but maybe that will be the role of professional software developers of the future - less engineering from scratch (my favorite part) and more the dirty work of finding a specific point of failure in a mess of code that you didn't write.
My strategy, so far, has been to vibe small enough chunks that I feel like I at least own and understand the overall design/architecture and can pinpoint the general area that is failing/needs work. I am starting to feel like what I enjoy about software is the "owning" and controlling the direction of development part, not so much typing out lines of code and looking up syntax. But maybe I'm just getting old and lazy :)
But maybe I'm just getting old and lazy :)
😅
You're making a good point. Competition is hard. It always has been. If vibe coding or vibe engineering wins, we'll all adopt it anyway.
I'm only asking this. If it seems you no longer need to write the code, and for some you don't even need to read it, what control do you really have over the software you're building? Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it never did. Still, I'm wondering.
And if you lose control over how the software is made, where do you get the confidence you'll be able to fix it later when it breaks?
I think this is the real inner strength of devs. You know you can fix it anyway. You sleep well. You work in peace.
So with vibe coding, how do you build that confidence? I'm asking for real. It's not rhetorical.