> Vibe Coding has its uses and I'm sure that'll expand, but the idea of it replacing domain experts is outright laughable.

I don't think that's the argument. The argument I'm seeing most is that most of us SWEs will become obsolete once the agentic tools become good enough to allow domain experts to fully iterate on solutions on their own.

▲ shalmanese 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The argument I'm seeing most is that most of us SWEs will become obsolete once the agentic tools become good enough to allow domain experts to fully iterate on solutions on their own.

That’s been the argument since the 5PL movement in the 80s. What we discover is that domain expertise an articulation of domain expertise into systems are two orthogonal skills that occasionally develop in the same person but, in general, requires distinct specialization.

	▲	rsrsrs86 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, 4GL and 5GL failed, but authoring Access applications should be a breeze now.

▲ godelski a day ago | parent | prev [-]

  > The argument I'm seeing most is that most of us SWEs will become obsolete

That is equivalent to "replacing domain experts", or at least was my intent. But language is ambiguous lol. I do think programmers are domain experts. There are also different kinds of domain experts but I very much doubt we'll get rid of SWEs.

Though my big concern right now is that we'll get rid of juniors and maybe even mid levels. There's definitely a push for that and incentives from an economic point of view. But it will be disastrous for the tech industry if this happens. It kills the pipeline. There can be no wizards without noobs. So we have a real life tragedy of the commons situation staring us in the face. I'm pretty sure we know what choices will be made, but I hope we can recognize that there's going to need to be cooperation to solve this least we all suffer.