I frequently see people freak out, fearing getting replaced by AI. Honestly, I get it. You are sitting at the office and doing your daily CRUD app with some business logic sprinkled on top of it. You see some CEO announce that they are writing 90% code with AI in their company and see that it will be 100% in the US in the next 6 months. Of course, you get frightened, it can do the same CRUD apps you can do, but a lot cheaper and faster. But, should you really?

Let’s start with software engineering in general. It is a field where you are pretty much required to learn things for your whole career. And in the process, you automate some tasks or use some automation made for developers. Nowadays, there are not many assembly or C developers compared to others. A couple of decades ago, software development mainly consisted of assembly, C and other low-level languages. Over time, developers built software on existing technology or improved it if necessary. Nowadays, it is substantially easier to make an application than before. Why? You write software using software that was already made for your convenience. Let’s think of git. Imagine how you would manage your project without any version control. Applying patches to the project, resolving conflicts and logging who did what would be chaos. Now, imagine building your own code editor, terminal emulator, web browser or even OS. Sounds ridiculous, right? Nobody would do that. It is essentially not doing a subtask you have and delegating it to a convenient tool. Which is completely okay, because that is how automation works. I believe that AI/LLM is another automation tool, but a much bigger one.

AI is a powerful tool for sure. It can do the routine task you do in several minutes. That is the point — it lets you not do the trivial, routine, boring stuff. You tell it to write an endpoint for the given database entities in your project, and it does it. That means, AI is another tool in your possession that helps you build stuff. You just have to do a single thing — think about what you are building. You could say that you are just becoming a product manager, and you are partially right. However, keep in mind that AI is not a thing that knows or does everything. Sometimes, your business logic is never seen before in the world, and AI fails. That is the limitation of the AI — it cannot know everything. You can somewhat solve this problem by carefully, explicitly describing your problem and feeding relevant data. Yep, that works for a bit, until you hit context limit and hallucinations. AI is a double-edged sword.

So, are we getting replaced?

• Yes, if you are going to ignore progress in the software engineering field.
• No, if you are willing to harvest the tool in the open field and use it to your advantage.

I believe in future, traditional programming will be done mainly for recreational purposes or for specific, non-trivial, hard tasks. You mainly write software in English and go for a programming language when you need something specific which exceeds the limitations of the tools you are using. I like to think about AI in coding using this analogy:

• You use an excavator/motorized digger to dig a lot of dirt. (industry standard software development)
• You can also use a shovel, but it is ineffective compared to an excavator. Maybe you like it for growing a muscle or just for physical work. (recreational programming)
• However, for archaeology, you need to be delicate and really know what you are doing (non-trivial, hard software)

Another one:

• You can just buy vegetables from a convenience store. (You do the most effective approach)
• You can also have your own garden. (recreation, financial difference is negligible)
• You may need something specific, like fresh, hard peaches (non-trivial, not best as an example)

Do not fear getting replaced. Be happy that your routine is trivial and can be automated. Makes use of the fruits of the software engineering tree. Value yourself and your time. Be on the bleeding edge of your industry. Be curious about the new toys you get. Always learn and prosper.