Manipulating Word Representations, and Preparing Students for Coding Jobs?

Recent research in natural language processing using the program word2vec gives manipulations of word representations that look a lot like semantics produced by vector math. For vector calculations to produce semantics would be remarkable, indeed. The word vectors are drawn from context, big, huge context. And, at least roughly, the meaning of a word is its use (in context). Is it possible some question is begged here?