Yeah - there's definitely a GIGO factor. Throwing it at a undocumented codebase with poor and inconsistent function & variable names isn't likely to yield great revelations. But it can probably still tell you why changing input X didn't result in a change to output Y (with 50k lines of code in-between), saving you a bunch of debugging time.

Most code on the planet is boring legacy code, though. Novel and interesting is typically a small fraction of a codebase, and it will often be more in the design than the code itself. Anything that can help us make boring code more digestible is welcome. Plenty of other pitfalls along the way though.

Eh, I've enjoyed writing a SQL query and having AI translate it to Linq. I've had at least one work directly, very clear on what it's doing, just with Linq's odd syntax. The other query was more complicated and wasn't something that translated well to Linq. I may have had to split that into two Linq queries.

Then again, I wouldn't count translating psuedocode (or SQL) as really vibe coding. To me "vibe coding" means you're not really looking at the code it produces.

It's a changing world, and there is going to be an ever increasing amount of AI slop out there, and even more potential programmers who won't make the leap due to the crutch.

At the same time, there are always people who want to and will learn in spite of the available crutches the latest tech revolution brings.

There will also be many good engineers who will exploit the tech for all its worth while applying appropriate rigour, increasing their real productivity and value manyfold.

And there will be many non-programmers who can achieve much more in their respective fields, because AI tools can bridge gaps for them.

Hopefully we won't irreversibly destroy ourselves and our planet while we're at it. 🙈