'Grieving the loss of details': a coder's lament as vibecoding redefines what programmers are for
emax · x · 2026-10-11
Developer blog purplesyringa published a journal-style post, 'Grieving the loss of details', on how the industry's shift to vibecoding is sidelining programmers who love the machine itself.
- The author proudly called themselves a 'coder' rather than an 'engineer': detail work — performance optimization, language internals, counting cycles, hand-written machine code, toy OSes — over juggling Java-esque abstractions.
- As the industry revalues programmers primarily for architecture design, opportunities to use their strongest skills are disappearing, and the new model is one their mind 'is incapable of working with'.
- The piece traces eight years of falling in love with computing since watching Tron: Legacy at age 10.
- Reposter emax offers a counterpoint: maybe AI will let us not just obsess over details but actually address all of them.
A sincere reflection on programmer identity in the AI era.
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