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