After 15 years of building software, I’ve seen technologies come and go. But AI-assisted development feels different. It’s not just a new tool—it’s a fundamental shift in how we work.
What’s Actually Changing
Code Generation
Yes, AI can write code. But that’s not the revolutionary part. The revolution is in velocity.
I used to spend 30 minutes writing boilerplate. Now I describe what I want and iterate on the result. The time saved isn’t just efficiency—it’s mental energy preserved for the hard problems.
// Before AI: Write every line manually
// After AI: "Create a REST endpoint that validates user input,
// checks authorization, and returns paginated results"The output isn’t always perfect, but it’s a solid starting point 80% of the time.
Documentation
AI excels at generating documentation from code. This used to be the task everyone avoided. Now it’s nearly automatic. The barrier to good documentation dropped dramatically.
Code Review
AI catches patterns that humans miss. Not replacing human review, but augmenting it. Security vulnerabilities, performance issues, style inconsistencies—flagged before a human even looks.
Learning
New framework? Feed the documentation to an AI and have a conversation about it. This is genuinely faster than reading docs cold. The AI provides context, answers questions, and generates examples on demand.
What’s Not Changing
Understanding Requirements
AI can’t sit in a room with stakeholders and understand what they actually need (versus what they say they need). This remains deeply human work.
System Design
Architecture decisions require understanding business constraints, team capabilities, operational requirements, and future flexibility. AI can suggest patterns, but the judgment call is still ours.
Debugging Complex Issues
AI helps narrow down problems, but truly gnarly bugs—the ones that span multiple systems and involve timing issues—still require human intuition and experience.
Empathy
Understanding users, anticipating their needs, designing experiences that feel right—this is human territory. AI can analyze data about user behavior, but it can’t feel the frustration of a confusing interface.
The New Developer Skill Set
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Prompt engineering: Not just for AI products, but for AI-assisted development. Knowing how to ask gets better results.
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AI output evaluation: Quickly assessing generated code for correctness, security, and maintainability.
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System thinking: As AI handles more implementation, understanding how pieces fit together becomes more valuable.
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Domain expertise: The deeper you understand the business domain, the better you can direct AI and catch its mistakes.
My Workflow Today
- Spec with AI: Describe what I want to build, iterate on the approach
- Generate scaffolding: AI creates the basic structure
- Implement details: Mix of AI generation and manual coding
- Review and refine: Critical evaluation of all generated code
- Test: Still mostly manual test writing (AI tests often miss edge cases)
- Document: AI-generated docs, human-reviewed
This workflow is roughly 2x faster than my pre-AI approach for most tasks.
Concerns
Over-reliance
Junior developers learning with AI might miss foundational understanding. Like using a calculator before learning arithmetic—it works, but something is lost.
Code Quality
AI-generated code often looks right but has subtle issues. Without deep understanding, these propagate into production.
Security
AI trained on public code inherits public code’s security patterns—good and bad. Vigilance is essential.
The Honest Truth
AI won’t replace developers in the foreseeable future. But developers who use AI effectively will outcompete those who don’t.
The job is evolving from “write code” to “direct AI while maintaining quality, security, and architectural integrity.” That’s not easier—it’s different.
What I’m Excited About
The boring parts of development are getting automated. The interesting parts—understanding problems, designing solutions, building products people love—remain ours.
We’re not becoming obsolete. We’re being freed to focus on what matters.
That’s a future I can get behind.
Thoughts on AI and development? I’d love to hear your perspective. Get in touch.