‘I totally lost the art of writing code’: Developer reveals how AI changed his mindset towards upskilling forever

A backend developer recently asked a question that many other tech folks have to grapple with as well. As someone who has spent years learning programming languages, cloud platforms, frameworks and tools, he doesn't really feel the need to continue doing so anymore. And the reason? Artificial intelligence.


Taking to Reddit, the user described how learning Java, Spring Boot, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes and even front-end stuff used to be exciting for him. Every new thing that he learned made him feel like he's one step closer to becoming a better developer. But today, all that excitement seems to be fading away as he feels like he's being shadowed by one ominous thought - what if AI will learn all that faster than humans and automate all those tasks anyway?

And this question is not exclusive to software development. As AI becomes more and more competent in day-to-day affairs, many people are starting to wonder if all this learning will eventually become a waste of time anyway.

Many developers feel a sense of pride and joy when they manage to successfully solve a problem, build something interesting, fix some bugs or just see their software actually working.


Many developers have fond memories about those days spent pulling their hair out over a computer, staring at a blinking cursor trying to understand what the blinking issue is going on in their code. But eventually, it all comes together - the moment when you finally manage to get that stubborn piece of software to do what you want it to do. And the feeling is simply indescribable!

This, along with the promise of financial stability and an opportunity to work on interesting things are some of the reasons why people choose to become software developers in the first place.

Some developers feel conflicted about this particular prospect. While they do acknowledge the utility of such tools, many of them would miss the good old days of manually writing code.

The developer who posted on Reddit admitted that, nowadays, most of his code is actually written by an AI. He spends most of his time debugging or otherwise tweaking the suggestions made by an AI. Sometimes he has to do it really quickly as the deadlines are approaching. The ability to quickly churn out working code snippets certainly has its benefits.

AI-powered code generation tools allow teams to become more productive. Projects can be completed sooner and with less effort. Developers can focus their time and energy on bigger issues rather than mundane tasks.


But as your actual manual coding becomes less and less frequent, you might start feeling not like a developer in the first place. After all, if you're just copy-pasting code suggestions with little to no actual input from your end, you might be wondering if your actual skill as a developer is even useful anymore. It's the same exact analogy as with a calculator - if you're always relying on it to do your math homework for you, you will eventually forget how to do simple calculations.

The real root of the problem, however, lies elsewhere. While the initial reaction to the prospect of AI taking over routine tasks is understandable, the actual underlying cause for developers' anxiety lies in uncertainty.

Most often, the fear stems from the fact that people don't know what the future holds for them. Developers who spend months upon months learning a certain framework might be justifiably worried about their career prospects if the said framework becomes obsolete in a matter of a few years.

This fear isn't unwarranted either as history shows that multiple waves of layoffs occurred throughout the history of technological development. Industrialization replaced numerous manual jobs with machinery, thereby displacing many factory workers. ATMs replaced tellers in banks which in turn caused many bank employees to be laid off. The same thing happened to photographers with the advent of digital cameras.


The original post resonated with many developers as they shared some quite interesting thoughts on the matter.

One user wrote: "Try to give interviews, the same companies who force you to use AI for everything will ask you to write every obsolete library syntax by hand."

Another user explained: "Bro I spent years learning how to code just for AI to show up and say 'thanks for training me.'"

And finally, one user offered some practical advice: "Start upskilling in AI, that's the only option we have left now."

While the prospect of AI doing all the boring repetitive tasks for developers may seem like a bad thing, it's probably not. Throughout the history of technological development, entire categories of jobs get automated while entirely new industries are created at the same time.

While most developers' day-to-day tasks may be supplanted by AI, there will always be room for innovation. Software design, system architecture, product management, critical thinking and AI supervision will always be needed. And while writing code may become easier, knowing what to build and how to build it nonetheless will be crucial in the future.