I kept hearing that with the Nov 2025 release of Opus 4.5 and GPT 5.2 Codex, ex-coders were sprinting back to coding.

On a sample of ~1,700 developers on GitHub, exactly ten fit the “dormant returner” profile.

Here are a couple of examples:

But they’re the exception. I could find only TEN out of 1,700 developers who returned. I also found a few who exited:

To be fair, the vibe coding revolution is real, but maybe we are (I am) mis-interpreting it.

  1. There are lots of new non-developers joining GitHub. Anecdotally, Naveen Gattu (finally!!) and Ankor Rai
  2. A few high-profile ex-developers are returning and are very active. Anecdotally, Sebastian Siemiatkowski
  3. But the majority of the developers who were less active last year remain less active.

Read the full analysis.