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slopinthebag 2 hours ago

People actually value the effort and dedication required to master a craft. Imagine we invent a drug that allows everyone to achieve olympic level athletic performance, would you say that it "democratises" sports? No, that would be ridiculous.

lovelearning 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It does technically democratize the exhilarating experiences of that level of performance. Likely also democratizes negative aspects like injuries, extreme dieting, jealousy, neglecting relationships.

That said, if we zoom out and review such paradigm shifts over history, we find that they usually result in some new social contracts and value systems.

Both good expert writers and poor novice writers have been able to publish non-fiction books from a few centuries now. But society still doesn't perceive them as the same at all. A value system is still prevalent and estimated primarily from the writing itself. This is regardless of any other qualifications/disqualifications of authors based on education / experience / nationality / profession etc.

At the individual level too, just because book publishing is easy doesn't mean most people want to spend their time doing that. After some initial excitement, people will go do whatever are their main interests. Some may integrate these democratized skills into their main interests.

In my opinion, this historical pattern will turn out to be true with the superdrug as well as vibe coding.

Some new value will be seen in the swimming or running itself - maybe technique or additional training over and above the drug's benefits.

Some new value will be discovered in the code itself - maybe conceptual clarity, algorithmic novelty, structural cleanliness, readability, succinctness, etc. Those values will become the new foundations for future gatekeeping.

slopinthebag an hour ago | parent [-]

The exhilarating experience is a byproduct of the effort it took to obtain. Replace drug with exoskeleton or machine, my point is the same. The way you democratise stuff like this is removing barriers to skill development so that everyone can learn a craft, skill, train their bodies etc.

But I do agree, if everyone can build software then the allure of it along with the value will be lost. Vibe coding is only a superpower as long as you're one of the select few doing it. Although I imagine it will continue to become a niche thing, anyone who thinks everyone and their grandma will be vibing bespoke software is out to lunch.

Personally I think there is a certain je ne sais quoi about creating software that cannot be distilled to some mechanical construct, in the same way it exists for art, music, etc. So beyond assembly line programming, there will always be a human involved in the loop and that will be a differentiating factor.

rdiddly an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It would democratize sports, while making sports worthless and unremarkable. It would collapse the market for sports.