Andrew Connell - Good (AI Coding) Vibrations

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Chris McNulty and Microsoft MVP Andrew Connell explore the explosive rise of "vibe coding" — AI-assisted development from natural-language prompts — and debate the real-world risks, rewards, and strategic implications for today's business and technology leaders.

Takeaways

Vibe Coding Has Gone Mainstream. AI-assisted coding is no longer experimental. A GitHub survey found 92% of U.S. developers use AI coding tools at work, and Gartner projected that 60% of new code would be AI-generated by 2026. The global market for AI code-generation platforms has reached $4.7 billion, with projections of $12.3 billion by 2027. Collins English Dictionary cemented the trend by naming "vibe coding" its 2025 Word of the Year. [secondtalent.com] [strayspark.studio] [ndtv.com]

Speed Gains Come with a Comprehension Tax. A January 2026 Anthropic randomized controlled trial of 52 junior engineers found that developers using AI code assistants scored 17% lower on comprehension tests than those coding manually — averaging 50% versus 67% on quizzes — with the largest gap appearing in debugging questions. Productivity gains did not reach statistical significance. This confirms what Andrew warns: rapid output without understanding creates fragile systems. [infoq.com]

Microsoft's Copilot Strategy Is Fragmented. Andrew contends that Microsoft is "flailing" and "shipping the org chart," with multiple disconnected Copilot products that confuse customers. A Recon Analytics study of more than 150,000 respondents (July 2025–January 2026) found Microsoft Copilot's share as paid users' primary AI tool fell from 18.8% to 11.5% — a 39% contraction — while Google Gemini climbed from 12.8% to 15.7% and ChatGPT held roughly 55.2%. When all three platforms were available, only 8% of workers chose Copilot versus 70% for ChatGPT and 18% for Gemini.[reconanalytics.com]

"Agentic Engineering" Is the Mature Alternative to Naive Vibe Coding. Andrew initially "hated" the term vibe coding but came to distinguish between undisciplined prompt-and-ship and a professional practice he calls agentic engineering, a term he credits to technologist Simon Willison. In agentic engineering, the developer still reviews AI output, plans architectures, and catches errors — using AI as a force-multiplier for experienced judgment, not a replacement for it.

Developers Are Becoming AI Orchestrators. Chris and Andrew agree that the most effective AI-era developers act like development managers: delegating tasks to specialized AI agents (ideation, UX, debugging, documentation) and then integrating and verifying results. Andrew recommends organizations build an internal Center of Excellence — a handful of people who deeply understand AI tooling and can guide the broader team.

Entry-Level Talent Still Matters — IBM Proved It. Despite predictions that AI would replace junior roles, IBM announced in February 2026 that it is tripling its entry-level hiring, including for software developers. IBM CHRO Nickle LaMoreaux stated: "We are tripling our entry-level hiring, and yes, that is for software developers and all these jobs we're being told AI can do". IBM's rationale: cutting junior talent creates future shortages of mid-level managers and senior experts, and outside hires cost more and adapt more slowly. [finance.yahoo.com]

Quality and Security Demand "Vibe Checks." A December 2025 CodeRabbit analysis found AI co-authored code contained approximately 1.7× more bugs and issues and 1.4× more critical issues than human-written code. Meanwhile, a Fastly survey of 791 professional developers found that nearly 30% of senior developers report that editing and auditing AI output offsets most of their initial time savings. Code review must become a continuous, front-of-cycle discipline, not a final checkbox. [coderabbit.ai]

Quick Quotes

Andrew Connell — Founder, Voitanos

"I think Microsoft is flailing a good bit… They seem to be reacting to what other people are doing, and there's no real cohesive story across all of their M365 Copilot story."

"The one fear that I have with this is what is it going to do to the entry-level jobs? I have a very significant concern.