Unless your gunning for a top position as a vibe coder, this whole concept of "falling behind" is just pure FOMO.
Earlier this year the ecosystem was still a mess I didn't have time to untangle. Now things are relatively streamlined and simple. Arguably stable, even.
I feel behind, sure, but I also don't think people on the bleeding edge are getting that much more utility that it's worth sinking dozens or hundreds of my very limited hours into understanding.
Besides, I'm a C programmer. I'll always be several decades behind the trend. I'm fine with that.
And rest of my field. Automated tools do part of work. AI probably some, but not enough of actually verifying findings and then properly explaining the context and implications.
It's high dose copium. Please keep the good times rolling! Buy my books! Sub to my stack!
Meanwhile, with local models, local RAG, and shell scripts, I am wandering 3D immersive worlds via a GPU accelerated presentation layer I vibe coded with a single 24GB GPU. Natural language driven Unreal engines are viable outputs today given local only code gen.
Karpathy and the SV VC world thought this would be the next big thing to pump for a decade plus; like web pages and SaaS. But the world is smarter, more adept at catching up that it is just state management in a typical machine. The semantics are well known and do not need re-invention.
The hilarity at an entire industry unintentionally training their replacements.
I've tried at every new model release (that can run on my 24GB card) and everything is still entirely useless.
I'm not writing web stuff though.
what drugs are you using?
Unless you're in web dev because it seems like that's one of the few domains where AI actually works pretty well today.
???
The classic line (which I've quoted a few times here) by Charles Mackay from 1841 comes to mind:
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
"[...] In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first."
— Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds