May 23, 2026
GitHub Was Hacked
A lot of people currently react to the recent GitHub compromise like the solution is suddenly:
“Quick. Replace your IDE with something secure.”
And honestly, I think that reaction completely misses the actual lesson.
The problem was never really VS Code.
The problem was never really VSCodium either.
The problem is that many developers slowly stopped treating their development environments like the highly privileged systems they actually are.
And AI coding culture is accelerating that problem massively.
Treat Your Development Environment Like What It Actually Is
Your IDE is not a toy.
It is not a visual playground. It is not a browser game with productivity plugins. It is not a Tamagotchi container for animated typing cats.
It is one of the most privileged environments on your entire machine.
Your editor has access to:
- source code
- API tokens
- environment variables
- SSH keys
- deployment configurations
- infrastructure credentials
- databases
- terminals
- git repositories
- production systems
And people casually install extensions into that environment like they are downloading weather widgets for their desktop in 2007.
That has always been dangerous.
The recent GitHub situation did not invent that risk.
It simply reminded people that the risk never disappeared.
GitHub Was Hacked. VS Code Was Not The Devil
The internet immediately turned this into another culture war.
Now suddenly everybody wants the:
- “secure IDE”
- “minimalist editor”
- “AI-free workflow”
- “terminal-only setup”
as if installing Neovim suddenly makes somebody immune to bad operational behavior.
It does not.
If you blindly trust software from random strangers on the internet, the underlying editor is not really the main issue anymore.
The exact same thing existed long before VS Code.
Back then people downloaded random binaries from forums. Then they double-clicked them directly from the Downloads directory. Then they followed instructions like:
“Run as administrator or it won’t work properly”
or:
“You need to disable your antivirus first”
And somehow many people acted surprised when that eventually turned into a disaster.
The current extension ecosystem is often not fundamentally different.
Only prettier.
Vibe Coding Made This Worse
AI coding introduced another weird cultural shift.
A lot of people now treat software engineering environments like disposable playgrounds.
Extensions for everything. AI agents everywhere. Random integrations. Automatic installers. Autonomous shell execution. Remote scripts. Terminal access. Browser automation. Cloud integrations.
All stacked together inside the exact environment containing:
- deployment credentials
- infrastructure access
- production tokens
- private repositories
- business logic
- customer information
Then people wonder why security incidents become catastrophic.
The uncomfortable part is that many developers no longer even know what half of their tooling is actually doing.
And that is the real problem.
Not VS Code. Not VSCodium. Not AI.
Blind operational trust.
I’m Still Using VSCodium
I am not switching away from VSCodium.
Not because I think it is magically secure. But because I understand what role it plays inside my workflow.
I like:
- the project handling
- the profile system
- the workflow speed
- the extension isolation
- the UI structure
- the overall editing experience
And honestly, most of the danger disappears the moment you stop treating your IDE like a plugin zoo.
My setup is intentionally boring.
Very few extensions. Profiles separated by actual workflow requirements. Auto-updates disabled. Minimal unnecessary integrations. No random extension collecting.
The funny thing is that many developers treat minimal setups today like some kind of elitist security ritual.
It is not.
It is simply respecting the reality of the environment you are working inside.
Developers Forgot What Responsibility Feels Like
One thing I increasingly notice around AI coding culture is that many people want to feel like magicians instead of engineers.
Everybody wants the futuristic workflow. The autonomous coding agent. The fully automated pipeline. The magical self-building software machine.
But very few people seem interested in the responsibility that comes with operating those systems.
Software engineering was always dangerous.
Not because code is evil. But because software systems eventually become infrastructure.
Infrastructure controls:
- money
- communication
- customer data
- servers
- businesses
- access control
- production systems
- identity
And once your environment reaches that level, blindly trusting tooling stops being quirky.
It becomes negligence.
AI Is Not The Problem. Delegating Understanding Is
I actually think AI coding is incredible.
I use it heavily. Probably more heavily than many of the people currently panic-posting about the end of software engineering.
But AI becomes dangerous the moment people stop understanding the systems around it.
The model writes code. That is fine.
The dangerous part starts once people also delegate:
- architecture
- operational thinking
- security awareness
- infrastructure understanding
- workflow reasoning
- trust boundaries
- deployment responsibility
At that point people stop engineering.
They start operating magic boxes they no longer understand.
And history has never been particularly kind to humans doing that.
The Craft Was Always The Important Part
One of the strangest things about modern developer culture is how many people seem desperate to feel important because they can write code.
But code was never really the valuable part.
The valuable part was always:
- systems thinking
- architecture
- tradeoffs
- operational understanding
- long-term consistency
- problem solving
- workflow design
- responsibility
The implementation layer simply happened to require humans for a while.
Now that part is changing.
And instead of panicking about AI replacing everything, I honestly think many developers should simply reconnect with the engineering side of the craft again.
Because that part is becoming more important, not less.
Learn From This Properly
The recent GitHub compromise should not teach people to panic-switch editors.
It should teach people to:
- reduce unnecessary trust
- audit their tooling
- stop installing random extensions
- understand their environments
- separate workflows properly
- treat development systems seriously
- stop blindly delegating responsibility
Most importantly though, it should remind people that software engineering environments are privileged systems.
They always were.
Nothing about AI changed that.
If anything, AI simply increased the blast radius of careless operational behavior.
And honestly, that is probably the actual lesson hidden underneath all the panic.
It’s Not The Hammer Hitting Your Thumb
One thing I kept thinking about while watching the reactions to all this was how weirdly familiar the entire situation actually feels.
People often react to incidents like this as if the tool itself suddenly became cursed.
But most tools are not inherently dangerous because they exist.
They become dangerous once people stop understanding how and when to use them properly.
A hammer is not dangerous because it is capable of hitting your thumb.
The problem is usually that you either:
- did not understand what you were actually trying to hit
- used the wrong tool for the situation
- trusted the situation too casually
- ignored obvious warning signs
- stopped respecting the environment you were operating in
Software engineering is not really different.
Your IDE is a tool. Your AI coding assistant is a tool. Your deployment environment is a tool.
The danger starts once people stop understanding the systems surrounding those tools.
That is exactly why I think the answer to situations like this is not panic.
It is responsibility.
Learn from it. Reduce unnecessary trust. Understand your environment. Treat your systems with respect.
And maybe most importantly:
Do not confuse convenience with safety simply because the interface looks modern and friendly.
That mistake existed long before AI coding.
Now it just scales faster.
Not:
“VS Code is evil”
But:
“You were always supposed to understand the tools you trust.”