Obviously it was not the same s since models that could write programs were not available 10 years ago.
And if you just mean your friend taught himself programming on his own, well that is actually very cool, I did too back in the 90ies and so did many others here.
My point is that it is now possible to vibe code a full application from frontend to backend today and still not be able to understand a line of TypeScript or anything else.
20 years ago we had cpanel where people without programming knowledge can instantly deploy their own apps. Many people got millionaire doing that, I'd say proportionally probably way more than the people vibecoding solutions. This is not as revolutionary as we thought.
And if you just mean your friend taught himself programming on his own, well that is actually very cool, I did too back in the 90ies and so did many others here.
My point is that it is now possible to vibe code a full application from frontend to backend today and still not be able to understand a line of TypeScript or anything else.