I became a software engineer before I understood computer science.
I learned to code on a Commodore 64 when I was young. Later I became a biology major, took a few computer science classes, and got my first software job writing context-sensitive help for a consulting firm.
I had no formal training. Barnes & Noble was my curriculum. I would try things, break them, and try again. That was my routine for a long time.
Early in my career, around people with computer science backgrounds, I felt the gap. They understood computers down to the bits and registers. I couldn't explain things like two's complement. I could build features, but I didn't always know why the computer acted a certain way.
After twenty-five years, I have what I need to deliver platforms that hold up in production. I picked up data structures, concurrency, and the fundamentals I once assumed separated engineers from people like me. Some helped. Some rarely came up. Respecting the craft mattered.
Today there is another version of me. Anyone can build an application without much background or experience. AI can write the code and speed up the output. It can also make it easier to skip the learning that used to happen along the way.
The same thing is true of production. Sample apps teach you how to make something work. Production teaches you how many ways working software can still fail.
Vibe coders may follow the same arc I did. Biology major to help files to engineer is a strange path, but it worked. Prompt to prototype to production team is strange too, and some of those people will become engineers.
Here is where I land after arguing against myself. Formal training is the wrong dividing line. I lacked it too. The question is whether AI becomes a shortcut around the respect for craft and production ownership that made the training matter less.
I see the parallel. I'm less sure the path matches. I put in the grind because I had no alternative. Every bug was mine, and every bad abstraction eventually came back to me.
Vibe coding can produce working software without forcing that ownership. Some people will cross the gap anyway. It will happen when the work stops being something the tool made and becomes something they have to stand behind.
That is when building becomes engineering.
