The Gray Beards Were (Sort of) Right
I remember the first time I saw a Senior Dev almost flip a table because a Junior installed Eclipse.
This was back during the height of the "Editor Wars." On one side, you had the Gray Beards—the wizards of the shell—swearing allegiance to VIM and Emacs. To them, using a mouse was a sign of weakness. If you couldn't navigate a codebase with :100j or C-x C-f, you didn't deserve to touch the kernel.
On the other side, the "lazy" modernists (like me) were embracing IDEs. We wanted intellisense. We wanted automated refactoring. We wanted a debugger that didn't require a prayer circle to attach to the process.
The IDEs won. Almost everyone today uses VS Code, IntelliJ, or Visual Studio. Why? Because the complexity of modern software outpaced the speed of human typing. We needed tools to manage the sprawl.
Now, we are staring down the barrel of the next evolution: Vibe Coding.
The hype-merchants in Silicon Valley claim this is the end of writing code entirely. You just "vibe" with an LLM (like Cursor or Windsurf), tell it what you want in English, and it spits out a React component. The purists are screaming that this is the death of craftsmanship. The futurists say syntax is obsolete.
Here is the truth from the middle of Pennsylvania: The tool has changed, but the trap remains the same.
Intellisense for Your Brain
When we moved from VIM to IDEs, we didn't stop thinking; we offloaded the rote memorization of library signatures so we could focus on architecture. The IDE highlighted our syntax errors, but it didn't write our logic.
Vibe Coding is different. It does write the logic. And that is where the danger lies for industries like ours.
In Central PA—where we manage supply chains for Hershey or patient portals for UPMC—we cannot afford "magic." If you use VIM, you touch every character. You own the code. If you use an IDE, you tab-complete, but you still structure the class. If you "Vibe Code," you are essentially asking a very confident, very fast intern to write the function for you.
The Reality Check:
The VIM Lesson: The Gray Beards argued that IDEs made you lazy. They were half-right. IDEs made us faster, but they also allowed developers to use libraries they didn't understand because the IDE handled the imports.
The Vibe Lesson: AI coding tools are the ultimate IDE. They don't just complete the line; they complete the thought. But if you don't know how to write the code yourself, you cannot review what the AI produces. You aren't a pilot anymore; you're a passenger in a self-driving car that might decide to drive off a cliff because it hallucinated a bridge.
When to Use It (The New "IDE"): Treat AI like a Super-Linter. Use it to generate boilerplate, write unit tests, or explain a regex string that looks like a cat walked across the keyboard. When to Avoid It (The "VIM" Mode): When you are writing core business logic, security protocols, or anything that touches PII. Turn the "vibes" off. Go full "VIM mode"—even if you're in VS Code. Write it line by line. Verify the state. Be the Gray Beard.
The Local Context
We are going to see a lot of this "Vibing" very soon. As I mentioned, there is a Vibe Coding Hackathon of Central PA at Pursuit Coworking on January 31st, 2026, hosted by the New Tech Meetup of Central PA.
I want you to go. I want you to watch the new generation "vibe" an app into existence in 4 hours. It will be impressive. It will also be a mess of spaghetti code underneath. Your job, as the pragmatic architect, is to learn the tool well enough to know when to let it run and when to hit the kill switch.
The Artifact Bridge
I know your PM is going to argue with you about this. They see "Vibe Coding" as a way to fire half the dev team. You know it's just a way to generate technical debt at light speed.
So I created this Decision Matrix for you. Download it, print it out, and point to it. It’s the modern equivalent of a "VIM Cheat Sheet," but for decision making.
Note: This resource is locked for Subscribers Only. I share my best pragmatic tools with the people supporting the Dispatch. If you are already subscribed, the download link is waiting for you at the bottom of this email. If not, hit the button below so you don't have to face that PM meeting unarmed.
The Roll Call
Is anyone locally still using VIM or Emacs as their daily driver? And for the rest of you on VS Code—have you installed Copilot/Cursor yet, or are you holding the line? Hit reply. I want to know who is driving the tractor and who is letting the tractor drive itself.
The Sign-Off
Here's to challenging the hype, adapting the tool, and connecting with your craft.
— Don
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