Like I mentioned here elsewhere: AI replaces the IDE/editor, not the thinking. We now just work one abstraction level higher, but your ability to architect solutions is as relevant, if not more so, than ever before. I design test cases, architectural plans, review the output, do verification. AI just writes the code and helps me with research. If your job can be entirely offloaded to AI then I’d question if your job was that needed to begin with, but writing code was never the job, engineering was. These are just tools to do the job with, they aren’t the job itself.

We solve business problems through technology and to me it’s quite concerning how many developers think their job was knowing syntax of a particular language. Nobody besides themselves care about the syntax of a particular language, certainly the business doesn’t care. I question if retaining your knowledge of programming languages is that important anymore, but your ability to read code if needed (after all, most programming languages are quite similar so it’s not that hard), do architectural and systems thinking, yes. More than ever before.

Honestly, the fear-mongering around AI replacing developers seems to really just expose the developers who never learned architectural and systems thinking, and were just translating Jira tickets to code. While I do not wish job loss upon anyone, I’m not very surprised if those types of jobs will disappear.