I’ve always found the pioneer, settler, town planner model to be a great way of thinking about this. Successful, long-term projects or organizations eventually can use all 3 types.
Maybe vibe coding replaces some pioneering work, but that still leaves a lot for settlers to do.
There's still a market, but when I looked into COBOL work out of curiosity (I've never been anywhere near it in real life), the salaries I found were surprisingly low, compared with common modern languages.
Perhaps the old adage "it's getting hard to find X employees [at the price we are willing to pay]" applies.
That surprised me because I've seen articles and heard podcasts for years where they've said COBOL programmers are well paid due to scarcity, though never quoting amounts.
Maybe vibe coding replaces some pioneering work, but that still leaves a lot for settlers to do.
(I admit I’m generally in the settler category)
https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-to...