Danning-Kruger as a service

“Linus Torvalds embraces vibe coding!” “Even Linus Torvalds is trying his hand at vibe coding.” “Linus Torvalds Says AI Codes Better Than Him.” Does that mean that we, as software engineers, are really outdated?

A couple of weeks ago, Linus Torvalds posted that he used Google Antigravity to fix up his visualization tool. I have no idea what this tool is, to be honest, but that post literally made some people lose their shit.

I saw it and kinda shrugged, because yeah — why wouldn’t he? But then LinkedIn currents blew up some post (I can’t find it anymore) in which some “AI evangelist,” “part-time CEO,” “B2B EBITDA wizard,” etc., rushed to announce that SWE days are numbered and that whoever still tries to think to solve problems is a dinosaur, because even Linus Torvalds vibe codes. He decided that if Linus did it on some project of his, then all mere mortals must follow — otherwise they should crawl back under their rocks.

Now, I am living in a perpetual state of annoyance with AI evangelists. I can’t even fully explain why. I use AI all the time, but when other people start telling me how I should use it, I see red.

And this LinkedIn post finally clicked for me; I suddenly realized why it triggers me so much. People who push “AI is the solution to all problems” and “you must use AI to write code” often have no idea how to solve software problems without AI. They maybe tried to vibe code a simple JS app and were impressed that they were able to create something they were never able to do before. They become believers — and not just believers, they become zealots.

Using vibe coding to quickly create a UI for something that is already there and working is, indeed, a great way to get it done. I’ve vibe coded a UI frontend for exiftool for my specific needs using Rust and iced in a couple of days. The thing is, it is super easy to see if it worked or not. You run the program and you look at the results with your own eyes. If AI made a mistake, you prompt it to fix the specific issue and run the program again. Rinse and repeat. It’s like seeing a child with a toy scoop at the beach digging a hole in the sand and deciding that you’ve unlocked the secret key to mining.

The problem with people who never tried to solve a typical software problem is that they have no idea what they’re missing. Coding is one of the most straightforward parts of software development — and not the most difficult.

This is the Dunning–Kruger effect in action. AI chatbots and agents that make simple tasks even simpler are its perfect providers. Someone called AI chat bots and coding agents Dunning–Kruger-as-a-Service, and I can’t think of a better name for it.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against AI. I use it all the time to write code. I just don’t feel like it significantly improves my productivity. I do find it hard to understand what it is doing, and code reviews take a lot of time. If it doesn’t do what you want, I often find that just writing the code by hand is much faster than trying different prompts to get it to work.

Do I think that will change in the future? Yes. Most likely. It will get better. But it’s not there yet.