Software Development with AI – Perspective from an experienced software engineer

I feel a lot of the issues I have with "vibe coding" come with what feels like an aversion to creativity. We acknowledge that using LLMs to create video and images is affecting creativity but don't acknowledge that we are subverting the act of being creative to "labor". I would argue that in the act of solving problems as developers we are tasked with exhibiting creativity and this creativity creates the patterns that LLMs harvest to produce their responses. As we move away from engaging in low-level creativity, quality and variety in markets will dwindle or shift to more high-level products based on a stagnant foundation that like hardware drivers and legacy healthcare data will become the domain of specialized developers. It's true that non-linear video editing revolutionized video editing, but it didn't replace editing as an Art by producing already edited footage. The taste of an editor comes from years of editing and seeing the difference between choices that would be masked to future editors using AI for the task. Reducing awareness of the options reduces the domain of the Art. Programming is no different.