If you had told me in 2022 that less than three years later, the founder of Replit would be tweeting "I no longer think you should learn to code," I would have been utterly confused.
If you'd gone on to say that by then, I'd be using AI to write the majority of my own code, I would’ve laughed out loud, wondering where this jokester came from.
And if you'd added, "Don't worry — you're going to love it," I probably would’ve said, "Alright buddy, lay off the edibles."
The reality is, LLMs are amazing at writing code. I now use them to write the vast majority of my code. Not only is it faster, but given enough context, LLMs often make better decisions than I do.
Are they perfect? No. Do they make mistakes? Plenty. Do they still require supervision? Absolutely. But we can all see the direction things are headed. If you're a software developer who still believes your career won't be impacted by this, you're in denial.
So why am I not anxious about this? After letting this thought percolate in my mind for the past couple of years, I've realized the answer is simple: I got into coding because I love building things.
I've always loved browsing the internet or playing around with my phone and thinking, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if there was an app that did this?" So I set out to learn how to turn these ideas into reality.
My first attempt at building an app with Ruby on Rails was a complete disaster. I took an online course covering UI and CRUD basics and confidently set out to build my first real app.
Things started off well, but as soon as the complexity increased slightly beyond the basics, I found myself totally lost. I read Stack Overflow threads and posted questions, but by the time I got answers, my momentum was usually gone, and I'd already moved on to the next idea.
Slowly but surely, I kept trying out new app ideas, and with each attempt, I learned a bit more. Eventually, I decided to focus more on the UI, as I found the visible and tangible parts of the app (frontend) a bit more exciting than the invisible data-handling parts (backend).
Eventually, I landed my first gig as a junior frontend developer, and the rest is history. Fast forward to today, and I can now iterate on an idea and spin up a full-stack MVP in just an hour or two. Only two years ago, that same MVP would’ve taken me weeks, maybe even months.
Think about that for a moment. It's incredible. And that’s exactly why I’m not worried about AI replacing me as a developer. I got into this profession because I wanted to build apps, and now I can build them ten times faster.
So, will I still have a job two years from now? I don’t know for sure, but I think so. Will it look different? Almost certainly. But will I still be building apps? Absolutely.
