What stands out for me, is that it was all possible thanks to the fact that the AI operator/conversationalist had enough knowledge to, more or less write, it all by hand, if he chose to.

Probably it was said many times already, but it will rather be the competition between programmers with AI and programmers without one, rather than no programmers with AI.

In particular, I love this part:

"I had serious doubts about the feasibility and efficiency of using inherently ambiguous natural languages as (indirect) programming tools, with a machine in between doing all the interpretation and translation toward artificial languages endowed with strict formal semantics. No more doubts: LLM-based AI coding assistants are extremely useful, incredibly powerful, and genuinely energising.

But they are fully useful and safe only if you know what you are doing and are able to check and (re)direct what they might be doing — or have been doing unbeknownst to you. You can trust them if you can trust yourself."

Exactly this.

Which isn’t really “vibe coding” as it’s been promoted, i.e. a way for non-programmers to just copy and paste their way to fully working software systems.

It’s a very powerful tool but needs to be used by someone with the expertise to find the flaws.