I’m a Luddite when it comes to this stuff as well. I use it, but mostly just in Ask mode. The agentic stuff I do not like at all. It’s not perfect, and that means I have to troubleshoot and fix it anyway, so I would just assume do it myself so I properly understand what’s going on and can speak to it and be accountable for it. Lucky for me, my management talks about AI a lot, but they’re not over my shoulder hitting my knuckles with a ruler if I write actual code.

I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet. I want to see what things look like on the other side of the crash, when people get more realistic about using the things as tools instead of replacements, and get more realistic about their limitations. I’ve seen articles where a reporter with no stated experience created a dashboard for a few different things. While she admitted she wanted to throw her laptop in the ocean, she seemed to gloss over much of the hardship and didn’t mention how long it took to get something working. She also didn’t post a link, so there was no way to gauge how functional it was, beyond a couple screenshots.

My suspicion is that once the hype wears off, maybe anyone can code, but most people won’t want to. Then we’ll have the question of how professional developers best work. WYSIWYG web page editors used to be all the rage… anyone can make a website… but look at what we have now, professional are back to code and people not looking to write code are using very structured web-based platforms.

I’m with you on saving up money to get out, even if it’s just as an insurance policy. That said, I don’t think the collapse of the profession is inevitable just yet.

Smart move to wait for the other side of the crash.