One of the oldest axioms of software engineering is that code is written primarily for humans to read, and only secondarily for machines to execute. Clean code, expressive variable names, and architectural elegance all serve a single purpose: to ensure that the next developer - or our six-months-older self - can understand what on earth happened. Code has always been a cultural artifact, a shared language, a bridge between human intent and silicon.
But what happens to this bridge in the era of vibe coding?
We are rapidly moving toward a reality where code is generated by LLMs and pull requests are reviewed by LLMs. When the resulting string of characters is spawned by a machine and audited by a machine, human readability immediately ceases to be a primary metric of quality. This forces a radical question upon us: If code no longer needs to be human, does the code itself need to change?
Why do we still cling to Python, to micro-frontends, or to neatly structured repositories? We invented these structures to accommodate the cognitive limitations of the human brain - to keep ourselves from drowning in complexity. An AI doesn’t need these training wheels. To an LLM, a 50,000-line monolithic spaghetti-code mess, completely impenetrable to a human eye, is just as easy to parse as the most pristine clean architecture.
So, what is the point of the code itself? Is it possible that code is merely a transitional, obsolete interface—a form of "digital carbon monoxide" that we will soon phase out entirely, replacing it with pure intent and mathematical weights?
I ran this exact thought experiment in practice recently when I built a tiny, native macOS utility called Portia over a single weekend (you can check it out here: getportia.app). The app's function is dead simple: when a port gets stuck (EADDRINUSE), it frees it up with a single click. Throughout development, I was almost exclusively in vibe coding mode. I wasn’t thinking about syntax; I was thinking about the problem and the user experience.
Portia was born in 48 hours, it works, and it does its job. But if I opened its source code today, I would see a hybrid structure that I, as a human architect, would never have designed that way. And the strangest part is: it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because the app is self-contained, it functions perfectly, and the code inside is no longer a piece of literature meant to be read. It is purely a functional byproduct. An expendable scaffold that helped erect the building.
This new software development paradigm isn't fascinating or terrifying because it’s "faster." It’s because it blurs the line between design and execution.
If code loses its human context, the role of the developer shifts fundamentally. The question is no longer whether vibe coding degrades our engineering skills. The question is: if writing and reading code becomes the exclusive privilege of machines, what is the unique value that only we, as humans, can inject into software?
Perhaps in the future, we will no longer be software engineers, but curators of context, intent, and boundaries. And the code itself will quietly recede into the background—like the clatter of a typewriter in an age of digital screens.
