What skills do people need to successfully program with AI?

The new trend of "vibe coding" allows people to program software without writing a single line of code. Now, a new study by ETH Zurich published in the Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems has shown that users who want to develop apps and programs successfully with AI need not only a capacity for clear written expression, but also a basic knowledge of computer science.