How AI will replace your developer job

AI coding tools and agents are not going to write good software on their own. Not without significant human help. Not now, not ever.

Yet, your job as a developer is still at risk.

But it won’t be an AI agent that replaces you; it will be a human. Because, if you don’t put in the effort to learn to create good software, then you will be replaced by someone who does.

From the No AI Webring manifesto:

Are you sick of seeing this nonsense pop up everywhere; of seeing the Web polluted by machine-generated drivel; of seeing idiots the world over go 'gosh' and 'wow' at meaningless pastiches because they've never appreciated a real work of art and don't understand why others do? Sick of no points of view, no skill, no originality, no creativity, no value?

So let's get that nonsense out of here and acknowledge that human creativity is fundamentally irreplaceable.

Good work requires good taste, a point of view, skill, and creativity. All of those attributes require experience, and experience takes time and effort. You have to actually build stuff, get users to use it, maintain it, fix it, refactor it, and live with it for long periods of time. There are no shortcuts.

Josh Comeau wrote a great post recently called The Post-Developer Era. In it he lays out some pretty good empirical and anecdotal evidence showing that AI is not taking our developer jobs. He also starts to hint at how the technology and economic cycles work, why we might be in a bit of a slump, and why we have reason for optimism.

The reality is that, for now, there are some businesses and managers who believe AI can do the work of developers, designers, and other creative humans. Those businesses and those managers will create shit products. Those products will ultimately lose in the market.

Having taste, experience, and the ability to do deep work will ultimately win. But it's going to take a while to play out, unfortunately.

As I wrote in The Vintage Software Engineer, we can be grumpy about this, but also optimistic and excited about what the future holds.

So, put in the effort, be patient, and be persistent. You need to live with your code for months or years to see how it bumps up against the real world, to see people using it in unexpected ways, and to find the sharp edges that don’t fit. You need to get to the point where you learn enough to know how you would do it better next time. Then you need to do it all over again, getting progressively better each time.

Good quality software takes good judgement; good judgement takes experience; experience takes time. But, lucky for you, your knowledge will start to compound exponentially once you get that flywheel going.

So get started. Let your curiosity guide you. The best work is not usually the work someone else is asking you to do. You need to chart your own path, have your own experiences, and just build stuff.

And that is the most wonderful thing about building on the web: You can just build stuff. You don't need to be told, and you don't need permission.

AI has nothing on that.

— Kris Walker

Today is International No Diet Day. So, there's that.

This is edition is focused on webrings, a wonderful artifact of 1997 Web which seems to be making a bit of a comeback. Check out the webring definition on Wikipedia for a refresher (well worth it). To follow the narrative, check out this Hacker News discussion "What ever happened to webrings?".

I was first exposed to the webring concept a couple of years ago, but the signifance was lost on me at the time. Recently I noticed a list of webrings on Ariel Salminen's site. Then I noticed Andy Bell had noticed the same thing.

Webrings are back! I feel like we really need this now, in this era of walled gardens; stuck in social media platforms, search engines, and mobile applications. It's been getting cramped in here, and I want to see what other people are doing on the web.

So, for today, here is an appetizer of freedom outside the walls.

— Kris Walker

Today is International Workers Day.

To celebrate, I'm honoring one particular worker at Google, who, in October 2011, posted a rant lampooning his company for failing to recognize the importance of building a platform. Ironically this was posted on the already doomed Google Plus "social media platform", further proving his point.

I love this essay! It makess me laugh out loud, it makes me think, and it makes me appreciate the industry I work in for all the frustration and fun of building software with other people.

The post no longer exists on Google Plus, of course, but it has been archived as a GitHub gist at the link below. Today I'm doing things a bit differently and including the full text here. Links to the original source and resulting Hacker News discussion are posted at the bottom.

— Kris Walker

Today is National Shrimp Scampi Day in the US, so we're keeping it light with three little essays with a different perspective on dependency management.

Since I began working with Deno I have been copying my project dependencies into a folder and checking them into source control instead of using npm (gasp!). This is an old technique called "vendoring", and today's essays lay out the case for why you should be thinking about it.

— Kris Walker

Today is Lover's Day and I don't really have any hot takes on that.

• Chris Coyier reminds us that running our own website is awesome? Unless it's not.
• How to host your site on that old Nintendo Wii you're using as a door stop.
• DHH encourages us to stand up to the cabal of giant tech companies.
• Getting off social media makes most people happier.

— Kris Walker

Today is Earth Day!

It's also National Jelly Bean Day in the US. So, take that for what it's worth.

We start today with a couple of essays to kindle your entrepreneurial spirit from a couple of icons in the startup world: Jason Cohen and Paul Graham.

Then we attempt to settle the debate between web components vs. JavaScript frameworks, before Jamie Zawinski reminds us that mobile software "upgrades" are usually anything but upgraded.

— Kris Walker

I have been thinking about how bloated most websites really are. What is the impact of that? Why is it happening? What can we do about it?

Today's edition starts with a fantastic (and funny) talk on The Website Obesity Crisis, compressing an HTML5 game into a QR code, and the Dao of Product Design.

— Kris Walker

Today is National High Five Day in the US.

• Matt Mullenweg has some comments about SEO, Perplexity, and giving depositions in court.
• Joel Spolsky's classic rant on Unicode.
• How type is rendered on screens. Explains anti-aliasing.
• Seth Godin reminds us that AI still takes effort.
• Do we really have to layout our websites for mobile first?
• AMP email was a thing?

— Kris Walker