The Soft Skills Renaissance

As more and more of our knowledge work is outsourced to AI models, I believe we are entering a phase where all knowledge work, and eventually all software work, will occur on a spectrum similar to "Vibe Coding".

If you're unfamiliar to Vibe Coding, it's the practice of programming without focusing too much on code, syntax, or architecture.

You're "vibing". Continuously prompting and re-prompting an LLM to code for you.

The vast majority of work is done by AI, with humans providing the direction through strategic or creative prompting and additional context.

It makes me think that we're witnessing a gradual soft skills renaissance. When all of our hard skills are all outsourced to AI, soft skills become the new hard skills.

Builders can leverage their soft skills like taste, intuition and empathy into their product design.

At the same time, it's creating a divide. AI is acting as both the great equalizer, creating a 'builder middle class' for every domain, and at the same time a divider. The best get even better as it amplifies their capabilities.

So long as there is open access to top models, this should remain. But it does beg the question, what happens when models go private?

Want to get into "vibe coding"? Check out these posts:
- [Vibe Coding](/posts/vibe-coding)
- [Building Full Stack Apps with AI](/posts/one-shot-apps)
- [The Future of AI IDEs](/posts/ai-ides)