I saw someone use the term "orchestration", which seems to be the word for building the software using LLM tools.

It made me think of the conductor, seemingly the most skillless job in the orchestra. All you do is wave the batton, no need to ever play a instrument. If LLMs are doing the hard part (writing code) then we can be the conductor waving the batton.

But of course the visuals are misleading. Being conductor doesn't take the least skill, it takes the most. He hears every instrument individually, he knows the piece intimately, and through his conducting brings a unique expression to a familiar work.

LLMs have made the musician part automated. They'll play whatever you want. No doubt a powerful tool in the hands of a skilled conductor. And a incredible tool for someone who can't play to generate music for themselves.

There's no shortage of "I built it and they won't come" posts here on HN, predating LLMs by decades. Because code has never been the hard part of "software as a business ". LLMs have driven this point home. Code has never been cheaper. Business has never been harder.

Vibecoding is the feeling of coding. It's the same feeling people have when they say they can see the picture in their head, but can't quite draw it.

I agree, and the corollary of this would be that the most senior engineers (who might be at a staff/principal level at a given company) who have the most amount of domain knowledge, deep understanding of various software architectures, and a product/customer oriented mindset may stand to benefit the most from AI-assisted coding, despite some narratives being peddled around by executives that they could do without senior engineers.

Unfortunately, for junior engineers the CS path has likely become more arduous, and we'd probably see something more of a doctor-like career path for CS students, where they specialize to obtain deeper architectural knowledge, before receiving employment.

But also the market for conductors is very small. There are 100 musicians but only one conductor in an orchestra.

So what you wrote does not bode well for the profession.

This "orchestration" software is about people trying to increase productivity by running many instances of a coding agent on the same project, without stepping on each other too much. It doesn't seem to be fully baked yet. A "shared nothing" architecture where you work have each instance work on a distinct project seems simpler if you want to spin more plates.

> LLMs have made the musician part automated. They'll play whatever you want

I like your metaphor even as someone who can be a bit skeptical of the overly broad promises of LLM’s/AI. But I do think this statement is too generous. It implies way too much actual musical ability. It also means that everything I can imagine musically is possible which it just isn’t, as there are limitations just like with real musicians.

If we want to really make the metaphor work, it’s an orchestra full of very informed people who have read a lot about music and have an idea of what their instrument should sound like and can even make whatever they’re holding sound like the appropriate instrument most of the time sort of. With our direction, our “conducting,” their success goes up.

But ultimately: they aren’t real musicians, they aren’t holding the right instruments, and they haven’t actually been taught how to read music. They are just often good at sort of making it work in a way that approximates what we want.

So then why did MIDI not replace musicians and conductors many decades ago? Why do we even bother thinking in terms of sheet music, or programs in terms of code?