The Great Comeback: How AI is Bringing Everyone Back to Coding

A generation of builders thought they’d lost their edge. They were wrong.

The Moment Everything Changed

Picture this: Your VP of Finance just topped the engineering leaderboard for most code written in a week. Your formerly “non-technical” product manager shipped a feature that engineering said would take months. A senior architect who hadn’t touched code in five years just prototyped a solution during the meeting where the problem was discussed.

This isn’t science fiction. It’s Tuesday at companies embracing AI-assisted development.

We’re witnessing the most significant shift in software development since the advent of high-level programming languages—a transformation that’s not just changing how we code, but who gets to participate in creation itself.

In their upcoming book, Vibe Coding: Building Production-Grade Software With GenAI, Chat, Agents, and Beyond, Gene Kima nd Steve Yegge show that AI-assisted coding (or vibe coding) isn’t only for software developers. It might be for everyone:

Who is Vibe Coding For?

Software Engineers, ML Engineers, AI Engineers: Stop wasting precious hours wrestling with framework updates and dependency hell when you could be tackling meaningful challenges. Vibe coding eliminates the tedious setup work, letting you dive straight into building exceptional software across domains. Those ambitious side projects gathering dust in your “someday” folder? Time to bring them to life.

Senior and Principal Engineers: Your career advancement came from spotting risks others missed and guiding projects to victory. Vibe coding amplifies these instincts into genuine superpowers. Break free from mundane implementation tasks to orchestrate both human teams and AI tools while tackling complex architectural challenges. Whether you’re a lone wolf developer or leading enterprise initiatives, mastering vibe coding will exponentially expand your strategic influence, enabling you to drive multiple projects forward instead of constantly putting out fires.

Technology Leaders: Miss the days when you actually built things instead of attending endless meetings about building things? Those were the glory days. Vibe coding resurrects that hands-on experience. You can rapidly prototype concepts and begin refining them personally, immediately. You can literally code during strategy discussions. Sure, it’s a bit indulgent, but why not enjoy yourself? This practice will sharpen your strategic judgment too, since you’ll gain firsthand insight into how this technology revolutionizes development workflows and unlocks unprecedented opportunities.

Returning to Coding: Your career trajectory may have labeled you “non-technical,” but that’s not really accurate, is it? The real culprit is the increasingly Byzantine setup requirements that eventually drove you away from programming. Modern development overwhelms everyone—you’re not alone. Fortunately, vibe coding bypasses the grueling tutorial marathons and infrastructure configuration nightmares. AI manages the technical minutiae that would otherwise create maddening bottlenecks, including environment preparation. Plus, it writes the actual code. You can ship meaningful projects again without drowning in implementation headaches.

Product Owners and UX: Your programming foundation gives you solid intuition about software mechanics at the conceptual level. You’ve been sitting on this brilliant feature idea for months—seemingly simple frontend work—but engineering keeps deferring it due to “resource constraints.” What if you could execute it independently? Vibe coding empowers you to build genuine features or functional prototypes of major concepts within hours or days. Imagine the dynamic shift when you demonstrate something engineers claimed would be “prohibitively complex to implement.”

Infrastructure Engineers (DBAs, SREs, Cloud, Build): The industry has perpetuated a false dichotomy between “real developers” and “infrastructure specialists” for far too long. Vibe coding demolishes this barrier entirely. You can craft sophisticated applications like any traditional developer, without mastering numerous new languages or frameworks. Build premium-grade solutions for your specific challenges: performance monitoring tools, data migration utilities, auto-scaling systems, whatever you need.

“Level 99 Heroes Logging Back In”: You once ranked among the planet’s most formidable programmers. Then came that final straw with npm (seriously, what even is npm?) and you called it quits. The hassle wasn’t worth the payoff anymore. Let the newcomers deal with this chaos. But heads up, world—an entire generation of programming veterans is mounting a comeback, ready to demonstrate what true expertise looks like.

Students: You’re launching your career during a pivotal moment that’s both daunting and incredibly opportune. While the job market remains volatile, one truth is undeniable: every development role now integrates AI capabilities. Your learning focus shifts from memorizing syntax, APIs, and framework details to mastering AI collaboration for software creation. Embrace vibe coding early, and you’ll leap ahead of seasoned developers still catching up. You’ll deliver assignments that catch senior engineers’ attention and assemble a project portfolio that captivates any interviewer. Most importantly, you’ll develop essential expertise in recognizing AI’s capabilities and constraints, positioning you at the front of the pack.

Tech Adjacent Roles (Program Managers, Analysts, QA, Customer Success, Sales, Finance, HR, Marketing): You likely have multiple workflows that automation could transform—if only you had developer support available. Vibe coding puts that power directly in your hands. No more languishing in the backlog behind “revenue-generating customer features.” Taking initiative on these improvements lets you finally optimize those neglected organizational processes that never receive attention. Your organization will ultimately appreciate the effort. (Plus, the engineering team will be both impressed and grateful they didn’t have to handle it.)

Whatever your background, Kim and Yegge share techniques that will transform how you work with code, making programming more accessible, more productive, and—most importantly—more fun. You bring the problems, and AI can help you with the rest.

This post is inspired by insights from Gene Kim and Steve Yegge’s upcoming book Vibe Coding: Building Production-Grade Software With GenAI, Chat, Agents, and Beyond. Stay tuned to this blog for more exclusive content and excerpts from the book. Or sign up for our newsletter.

- About The Authors

Leah Brown

Managing Editor at IT Revolution working on publishing books and guidance papers for the modern business leader. I also oversee the production of the IT Revolution blog, combining the best of responsible, human-centered content with the assistance of AI tools.

Follow Leah on Social Media

•