>And why wouldn’t writing software be a skill issue

You've missed the point. Nobody doubts writing code well or badly is indeed a skill issue.

The question is that "once you account for all of the things you need to do to make the code very high quality, did vibe coding actually provide any real value?"

I'm certain there are guardrails that help bolster vibe coding but I'm equally certain that when ive prompted something important I usually have to redo it enough times that just writing it manually myself usually would have been quicker.

Then I watch other people who code who dump on that opinion and I see total slop. They just can't tell the difference.