2026: The Year
The IDE Died
"If you're using an IDE starting on, I'll give you till January 1st. You're a bad engineer."
— Steve Yegge (00:06:46)
00:06:46Productivity Gap
May Be Fired
IDEs Die
Framework
The Productivity Crisis
OpenAI internal data reveals a 10x productivity gap between engineers using AI tools and those who don't
"They're having alarms going off at performance review time because how do you compare these two engineers who are the same level, same title, same everything and one of them is 10 times as productive as the other one by any measure."
— Steve Yegge (00:03:28)
00:03:28Who Is Refusing Adoption?
The 50% Problem
Andrew Glover from OpenAI reported they may have to fire 50% of their engineers who refuse to adopt AI tools. The productivity gap is so wide that retaining non-adopters creates performance review nightmares.
Context: At OpenAI, 60% of engineers weren't using AI tools (larger percentage), while the remaining engineers achieved 10x productivity gains, creating an impossible comparison for performance reviews.
What Is Vibe Coding?
The new paradigm that replaces traditional IDE development
Dario Amodei's Definition
Iterative conversation that results in AI writing your code.
— Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic
Simple definition: Anything where you don't type in code by hand. It's basically like going into a dark room to develop photographs — the old-fashioned way of software development.
"We are probably going to be the last generation of developers to write code by hand. So let's have fun doing it."
— Dr. Eric Meyer, Meta Hack language creator (00:12:37)
00:12:37The FAFO Framework
Gene Kim's breakdown of why people vibe coding
Faster
Superficial benefit — quick deployments (30 minutes for customer issues) and eliminates coordination overhead.
Example: Zapier support teams fix customer issues in 30 minutes instead of waiting for backlog prioritization.
Ambitious
Makes impossible possible — legacy replacement in 6 weeks vs 5 months, leaders building production apps.
Example: Fidelity Dr. Top Pal replaced Log4j-vulnerable app in 5 days after team said 5 months.
Autonomous
Work independently — no more waiting in line for quarters or years. High-bandwidth coordination via shared markdown.
Example: Designers and UX researchers shipping features without developer queues.
Fun
Addictive — people stay up until 2-3 AM coding. Rekindles joy for experienced developers.
Quote: "I've had so much fun and I'm having to force myself to go to sleep at night."
Optionality
Modularity creates option value — more swings at bat, parallel experiments, not painted into corners.
Benefit: Try multiple approaches in parallel instead of committing to one path. Lower cost of experimentation means more innovation.
Real-World Case Studies
Concrete data from companies implementing vibe coding
Booking.com
Bruno Passos • 3,000 developers
Scale
3,000 developers
Result
Double-digit productivity increase
Impact: Faster PR merges, smaller review times, and measurable productivity gains across the entire engineering organization.
Travelopia
Shri Balakrishnan • $1.5B revenue
The Project: Replace Legacy Application
Old Approach
8 people
6 developers + 1 UX + 1 PO
Timeline
6 weeks
was 5 months
New Approach
2 people
1 developer + 1 domain expert
Quote: "Maybe these days it might be two. A developer and a domain expert. In other words, as Kent Beck said, a person with a problem and a person who can solve it." — Shri Balakrishnan
Fidelity
Dr. Top Pal • 25,000 applications
The Challenge: Log4j Vulnerabilities
Team Estimate
5 months + hiring
frontend person required
Dr. Top Pal's Solution
5 days
vibe coding himself
Outcome: Application in production, usage increased 10x, team got more headcount
Irony: Junior engineer Swathy helped maintain it while senior engineers refused to adopt AI tools.
Cisco Security
John Rouseer • 100 top leaders
The Initiative
Required 100 top leaders to vibe code one feature into production within one quarter (3 months).
Goal: Get hands-on experience to understand potential and reshape technology organizations from within through direct leadership exposure.
The 2026 Prediction
Why IDEs will die and what comes next
All code within a year, year and a half will be written by giant grinding machines overseen by engineers who no longer actually look at the code directly anymore. Weird new world. That is where we are going.
— Steve Yegge (00:02:42)
Watch the predictionAgent Swarms: The Future Architecture
The problem: Everyone building single diver with 1M token context windows. The solution: Multiple specialized divers.
PM diver
Coding diver
Review diver
Test diver
Get-merge diver
Core principle: Task decomposition, successive refinement, components, black boxes. Context window = oxygen tank — even bigger tanks run out. Multiple specialized divers are the solution.
The CNC Machine Metaphor
Old Way
Saws and drills — manual control, hand-crafted precision
New Way
CNC machines — coordinate-based automation, engineers become operators
Implication: Engineers become operators overseeing the grinding machines, not craftspeople typing code by hand. The "NoDev" evolution parallels Adrian Cockcroft's 2011 "NoOps" prediction.
Actionable Takeaways
What you should do right now
For Engineers
- •Learn vibe coding now — give up your IDE by January 1st
- •Spend $500-$1,000/day on AI tokens — match your daily salary
- •Practice required — trust takes time (10,000 hour rule)
- •Focus on task decomposition — breaking down problems for AI agents
- •Become the operator, not the coder — oversee the CNC machine
For Leaders
- •Address the 50% problem — senior/staff engineers refusing AI adoption
- •Calculate ROI — 10x productivity gains documented
- •Enable experiments — Cisco required 100 leaders to vibe code one feature per quarter
- •Redefine coordination — LLMs as amazing intermediation vehicles
- •Budget for tokens — consider matching developer salary with token spend
Source Video
2026: The Year The IDE Died
Steve Yegge & Gene Kim • AI Engineer Summit 2024