His quote was deliberately (and hilariously, I might add) taken out of context by one of his friends repeatedly as personal computers became pervasive. On the surface, his statement that “there was no future in computers” seemed preposterous. Computers were everywhere.

But what my Dad was really talking about the career path for computer programmers. Sure, programming required training and the pay was good, but that doesn’t really define a career path. The career path for programmers was and still is to find their way into management.

Now enter Vibe Coding. Vibe Coding promises to democratize computer programming and make it more accessible to regular people. This feels very empowering. Now, anyone can code. Does this in some small way liberate us from the clutches of Big Tech or does it leave us ever more beholden to it?

I admit that I was terrible at coding. I really couldn’t get past the syntax issues and on a deeper level I am not so great with computer logic. I pretty much maxed out at creating WordPerfect macros, but even this limited experience makes me leery of Vibe Coding. Simplifying the process of coding, doesn’t simplify the creation of good applications. If Vibe Coding encourages people who think differently to get into coding that wouldn’t have otherwise, perhaps this diversity will unleash a whole new category of tools that truly are innovative. At the same time, every organization lives with some degree of technical debt from quick and messy code, and I can’t help but think that Vibe Coding will pile on to this debt.

The beautiful thing about software is that it is infinite, but that is also the challenge of it. One on hand, software allows you to create many programs that are the same, but different. That is what most software is. A few of these programs become huge, but most either catering to very specific niches or just fading away. Ironically, the basic categories of software hasn’t changed much from the 1990s. We get lots of variations on email, word processing, spreadsheets and databases, but we haven’t made the effort to rethink how software should really work in the age of rapidly proliferating data. Sure there are the apps around the emerging AI infrastructure, but for most the part AI features are just being bolted on to existing application categories.

Vibe Coding will likely add more “me too” applications. Vibe Coders will tinker with interfaces and personal preferences, but will they create something fundamentally new that will introduce new innovative categories of applications?

Given the market dynamics of the software industry, I am thinking that we will continue to get more of the same, faster. More than 50 years later, I think that my Dad was right. There’s no future in computers, just more people with no future in computers.