We’re into a long run of promiscuous computing era where things have become insanely easy – but not simple to do. Developing software programs (and even applications) have become easier now than ever. A simple stroke over the internet will return tons of results of ‘vibe coded’ software – the new term for unreliable software.
I believe the core objective of computer science is to develop systems that would make easy to accomplish the things which humans have long ever been practicing, and not replace them. This has seen tremendous success in several fields such as medicine, healthcare, aviation etc. This proven track record of success has made these professionals trust the solutions which they have long been convinced to adapt, powered by technology.
As there is more demand for improvement of human lifestyle, we have seen several ‘actors’ get into the field of computing. Today you don’t need to study or have a computer science degree to become a software developer. As this trend continues, we have experienced tremendous decline in the art of making software. It is no surprise that young software engineers have no idea about systems development or how the underlying infrastructure they build on works. It’s a back box we’ve fallen into.
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As there is a common saying, ‘computers are becoming powerful and so the need to write concise and memory centric software may no longer be a thing of concern’.
While this statement seems to be a two-faced coin, most newbies tend to see only the ‘head, leaving out the tail’ of the coin. Just as learning mathematics in nursery school, you are first taught the basics of calculations, how to perform basic arithmetic without a calculator; in fact, you are not allowed to use calculators in exams until you get into secondary school when you must have mastered or understood the how to and why of basic arithmetic.
This is same for software engineering. We have begun to experience a decline in proficient and memory efficient software because most developers no longer understand the basics. They just ‘vibe code’ the future of their companies into technical debts. There’s no longer appreciation for safe and reliable software anymore because everyone feels with the advent of AI assisted coding, they can bootstrap any idea in their mind without the need to learn coding or consult a software engineer, unfortunately this is not true.
It would surprise you to know that the people leading this campaign are proficient software developers who have developed software applications and understands where to look when things go wrong, unfortunately those following the trend do not see the other face of the coin. I guess they are creating a future market for themselves. We have new terms for roles such as ‘vibe coder’, how about make new openings for roles such as ‘vibe debugger’?
Lots of efforts have been put into advancing computer science to the point we are today. I believe if not for these efforts, confidence and reliability which was put at the forefront of technological advancement, other fields of life would not have adapted their solutions. Now all that is being shredded on the AI thread mill operated by vibe coders.
Coding is the least primitives of software engineering; software engineering is more about bringing ideas to life which can be reliable over time. Reliability in terms of scale, security, objective and resources. What reliability or confidence does a vibe coder give an airline company that an aircraft running their software will land?
Where does this lead us to? Should we waste resources because we can afford to provision more computing power? Does that leave us into more technical debt? Does that save the resources of the stakeholders involved in powering these solutions?
According to this article by msn a C++ professional who dug into the archives of the code for strobelight – Meta’s profiling application which collects observability data from several of its services, discovered a performance debt. How did he solve this? Just by introducing the ampersand(&) which is an address operator which allowed the program to make reference to the actual data instead of making a copy of it each time it needs it. This single character commit constituted a 20% reduction in computing power required to perform the same operation which equated to an estimated 15,000 servers in capacity savings per year. This is the beauty of software engineering.
What then happens when these seasoned engineers all retire or are all gone?