I suppose a more rigorous definition would be useful. We can probably make it more narrow as time goes on
To me, the essence of coding is about using formal languages and definable state machines (i.e, your toolchain) to manipulate the state of a machine in a predictable way.
C, C++, even with their litany of undefined behavior, are still formal languages, and their compilers can still be predicted and understood (no matter how difficult that is). If the compiler does something unexpected, its because you, the programmer, lacked the knowledge of either the language or the compiler's state.
Vibe coding uses natural languages, and interacts with programs whose state is not only unknown, but unknowable. The machine, for the same input, may produce wildly different output. If the machine produces unexpected code, its not because of a lack of knowledge on the part of it programmer - its because the machine is inherently unpredictable and requires more prodding in soft, fuzzy, natural language.
Telling something what outcomes you want, even if described in technical terms only a programmer would understand, is not coding. It's essentially just being a project manager.
Now you may ask - who cares about this no true Scotsman fallacy? If its coding or not coding, we are still producing a program which serves the product needs of the customer.
Personally, I did not learn to code because I give a shit about the product needs of the customer, or the financial wellbeing of the business. I enjoy coding for its own sake - because it is fun to use systems of well defined rules to solve problems. Learning and using C++ is fun, for me; it seems every day i learn something new about the language and how the compiler behaves and I've been using C++ for several years (and I started learning it when I was 12!)
Describing the outcome or goal of a project in natural human language sounds like a nightmare, to be honest. I became a software engineer so I could minimize the amount of natural language required to succeed in life. Natural language has gotten me (and, I suspect, people like me) in trouble over and over again throughout adolescence, but I've never written a piece of code that was misunderstood or ambiguous enough for people to become threatened by or outraged by it.
I think the disconnect is that some people care about products, and some people care about code.
It's qualitatively different to go through source code and specifications to understand how something works than to look at a database with all the weights of an LLM and pretend like you could predict the output.
