My week starts with a request: "I need a server to deploy to production, but the devs have no idea how to do it. They don't know how to use the terminal, they don’t know how to handle certificates, nothing. They need to be able to click a few buttons and deploy directly to production. They're Vibe Coding experts."
Welcome to 2026.
My oh my 
I do have my fair share of those folks too in $DAYJOB. The last time they spend three weeks (!) on debugging an issue where a webhook would not return anything.
Took me five minutes to asses and fix it for them. They were missing the CA intermediary.
In your case - I hope that they aren't vibe coding something that handles sensitive data 
Oh - haven't heard of that one before. Cool,. thank you for linking it!
@h3artbl33d @stefano ok, let’s be fair here. PKI is really hard for someone who doesn’t do it regularly, and most devs don’t do it regularly. Especially with custom CAs.
I had almost the exact thing happen: a developer was struggling to re-integrate with a service endpoint after a version update. He had spent weeks, and they were at risk of missing the contracted delivery date. The dev found one of my tech talks on PKI and reached out for help.
The error: SEC_UNKNOWN_ISSUER. It took a few minutes for me to realize he was pointing at the wrong trust store, and I sorted him quickly.
This was in 2019, long before AI agents were writing code reliably.
I’m not saying skills atrophy isn’t happening, but this specific example is more about misaligned skills, which has been an unsolved problem forever.
@stefano isn't "Experts" quite misleading if connected to "Vibe Coding"? 😁
good luck!
@stefano I find a similar thing happening more often with my colleagues too.
I think the luck of knowing can be fine, after all I didn't know what I know now and I keep leaning new things. I find the real problem is the lack of willingness or incentives to learn new things.
And I really don't understand why people that call themselves developers would not want to learn or how to change that in them (I doubt anyone but them could really change that).
Ignoring the vibe coders aspect because well vibe coders.
@zeitverschreib That's the real problem. People are starting to accept the idea that a dev is actually a "vibe coder".
This is (extremely) dangerous.
@stefano oh wow. I don’t even know where to start on that one!
Vibe coding experts is such a stupid term. A kid who can type in ai can call themselves that. Geesh. Just think of how much knowledge can get lost in just one generation. Baffling.
And then to run a server later on without even being able to use the terminal!
Years ago that was the first I learned as a Linux server admin and it’s still my default 😀
@stefano here’s the thing: in today’s society, you DON’T actually need ability or competence to do things if you have enough competence to fake it and can generate sufficient hype.
Don’t hear what I’m not saying; society needs competent people and everything falls apart if we lose them. However, society doesn’t reward competence, especially compared to their incompetent but charismatic peers, and especially in today’s ideologically driven, post-facts world.
Musk knows jack about rockets. Altman knows jack about AI. They’re white men who know how to hype up investors, and that’s sufficient to be successful in today’s society.
Charlatans are nothing new, but we’ve somehow ended up in a society where the more smoke they blow, the more we reward them, with no checks on whether they’re actually generating any measurable net positive impact on society or humanity as a whole.
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@stefano maybe one of these will help https://www.adafruit.com/product/1191 ?
Seriously I have hooked up CI and production status to my 5 1-foot high bear lamps, *so* much fun. Brought to the internet with haproxy for extra nerdery.
@stefano For you, that’s terrible.
For me, a non-techie, it means that I’ve finally attained the skill level of a professional developer! 🤭
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