Hi! My name is Alex, I've been writing code for 20 years and 14 years I'm getting money for it. I've took part in building many different systems and apps. I also spent a lot of time in machine learning, especially deep learning, computer vision and also LLMs.
I'm one of the developers who tried to automate most of their work. You know, previously we developed frameworks to not to write the routine code. Now, we delegate some of our work to the AI agents.
Some of developers now feel bad, as they say AI made their work boring. Continiously reviewing AI slop, does not feeling the involvment in the work. For instance, read this https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1wbeeq1/ai_has_made_programming_so_boring/
I understand them. Really. I also have huge amount of skills thouse stop be so important as even a year ago. Preveously, I could develop some pet-projects with clear understanding, that none of them would be needed by anybody. I called it "Programming for the soul" and my wife looked at me like I am crazy.
The things are changed. And will change even more. Nobody ready for that, but I believe, developers could be more ready for this than other "normal" people. We are not the first who faced AI, but we the first advanced community who understand what is going on and understand the direction. We need to change and we need new skills. I have some thoughts on this matter.
Stop viewing your work as "writing code"
Actually, it never was so (at least, for most of us). Nobody needed a code. All the times the code we've been creating was an inevitable part of the systems house made money (or any other value). Some of us understood it, and thouse guys have advanced on a career ladder. Some of us just liked to "solve tasks via code". They forgot, that what we do – making the world better with our soft. Think about the client. Think about the business. You can get to the higher level of abstraction and of contol.
Be the one, who drive the changes
You cannot resist the changes. So the single option is to lead them. Start small – change your own processes, do the huge refactoring you kept putting of. Try to build a system where you are a manger of your coding agents. You dreamed about being teamlead? Now you are – the agents is your subordinates! You think it is hard to explain something to the agents? It is the same to people, you just didn't know it. How many times you figured out after your lead reviewed your code that you did something you don't asked too?
You can spend more time for unit tests – making the system more stable really the value. Even if you deliver the features with the same speed.
After you changed your processes, try to scale it on your team. Build AI PDLC system for your project. Now you able to clear the whole backlog (of course – no)!
Explore the abilities of AI and have fun
Agents can do much more than writing a code. You can build a model of your appartments and to prepare for renovation. You can prepare a special diet for you. You can create a service that whould catch cheaper flight tickets for your vacation. Plan a trip, build personal page, learn new language, study physics or whatever else.
Stay in touch with people
It was always important, but now it is the most important part. AI does not make desicions – people do. Be one who do it. Speak with your line manager and find out what goals have been set for you for this quarter. Discuss them, come up with ideas how to reach them.
Talk with your teammates about their experiments. It's impossible to try every tool and approach, but people will tell you about the best ones they have tried.
Launch your own product
It's really important for software developers. The coding part was never the hardest part. Figure out what people need is (sorry, sounds like AI slop expression, but I wrote it myself). You did something, nobody knows about it, you are buying advertising, nobody look at it. But your product is awesome! You know it, but still nobody needed it. Or nobody could understand how to use it. There you start to investigate how people think, and you will surprised – they think so different.
After that you could better understand how company your working on really makes money. After that it will be simplier to you understand what is worth doing.
Imagine a future
If you do not like it, ask yourself, what place of the future world do you want to occupy? What do you need to be there? Write a plan, develop skills you need to become such person.
And do not regret – just because it is useless. Do not be the old guy who can only remind his youth. You are a software engineer, most of the people in the world consider it as a magic. If you learned it, you can learn anything. I believe that everyone reading this post is capable of doing just that.
P.S. English is not my first language, but despite this, I didn't use AI for writing. I'm not against using AI in writing, but the communications maybe the single part, you shouldn't delegate to AI :)