Is coding dead because AI has taken over it? (opens in new tab)

I don’t think coding is dead, but I do find AI deeply demotivating. It feels like continuing to play a game after the cheat codes have been enabled.

You could be an amazing player, but everyone will point out the cheat codes are on. The last refuge will be deeply niche programming or areas not well represented in, or not generalizable from, the vast training corpus.

Not even close. Not yet at least. AI is definitely helping with menial coding tasks, but the more complex stuff is still best left to the human in the loop. And the HitL is still needed to make sure the basic stuff is done well.

Ask 10 people & you'll get 10 different answers :D. Here's mine: I don't think software development jobs are going to disappear, even though the amount of hand-written code will in all likelihood decline. Those employing s/w devs are just going to expect more output. Until recently most smaller teams wouldn't even attempt more ambitious projects due to worry they'd blow it (yes, the uncomfortable reality is that most s/w projects fail). Now, they're getting braver since LLMs are essentially a RAD tool, and I'd argue that's a good thing.

I've been a professional dev for 20 years, and done plenty of solo projects, but also worked on teams at small & large firms. Even when we were able to build good products, the amount of man-hours sunk into those products often meant they weren't profitable. One of my former bosses made the whole s/w dev dept. gather int the cafeteria one day & ranted at us that he's spent 6 million Euros paying software developers but our products aren't selling, and he doesn't understand why we take so long to build basic products. That boss left shortly thereafter & the company was restructured, but in a way, he wasn't wrong. I can imagine that had we had LLMs things might've turned out differently, but who knows.

No. I am having more fun coding than ever before. I am learning new things, building things I never had time to even consider exploring and building throw away prototypes just because. I still think learning to code is crucial and necessary to get production grade systems as of now.

It's fascinating to me how dramatically software engineering has changed over the last couple of years due to advanced LLMs and programming tools.

For whatever high percentage of engineers, having AI generate and edit code is now a large part of their day. That and reviewing code and testing take up more time.

Whether you want to call them engineers or not, producing custom software is much more accessible now.

There are a lot of consequences. For one thing, I think that this is going to reduce the market share of products like Salesforce and some other relatively high priced software that is often highly customized. There will be lots more open source competitors and many companies or departments generating custom software to replace it or parts of it.

Walking as a profession absolutely is dead. Unless you're a dog walker, you don't get paid just to walk something from A to B. Coding as a profession can similarly reach its end. Coding is not dead, but don't expect to get paid for it. Don't be the one in denial because your paycheck depends on preaching denial.

Yes coding is dead, and the whole windows 11 patch fiasco is a demonstration of it...

We all learn to walk, but most of us did stop learning to ride horses.

Short answer: no.

Long answer [^1]:

> Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states:

> "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

No

Claude Code does empower developers to do deep higher level work. It's easier to generate advanced changes now.

E.g. database optimisations a Senior Engineer might do, such as designing a database partition or creating a complex composite index. The problem? When Claude recommends more advanced solutions without a deep understanding it is easy to miss where the foot guns lie or if Claude got it outright wrong.

It's like being handed a chainsaw when you had an axe. Without good judgement, it's easy to cut down the wrong trees.

No. Maybe it is a problem for the author and many others who fit this profile:

> I love to solve problems using Web Technologies. JavaScript/TypeScript (along with the foundation, that is, HTML and CSS)

"coding" is "dead" for Web Technologies and frontend roles (for those looking for inflated starting salaries at $200K+) because AI can do at least 98% of the work and can at best one shot this sort of work.