What happens to the Developer?

Recently, I've been struggling more and more with the way we're using AI to automate nearly every step of software development.

At first, I thought it was fun, interesting, and exciting. We were discovering new ways to make our lives easier and remove some of the tedious parts of development. I still believe there is tremendous value in that.

But lately, I've become increasingly uncomfortable with where this is heading.

In the past, I would read articles from developers discussing their favorite framework and why they preferred it, the latest technical challenge they encountered and how they overcame it, or even something they built purely for themselves to learn and improve.

Now, I primarily see some variation of:

"I vibe coded this app in an afternoon."

And I think that shift says something important about where our priorities have gone.

We seem increasingly focused on the end result rather than the development of the individual developer along the way.

That makes me wonder:

What about the developer as an individual?

What are we actually gaining in our careers when AI completes more and more of the work for us? If a tool can generate the application, write the code, debug the problem, and explain the solution, what am I personally developing through that process?

What differentiates me from another developer if our primary contribution becomes knowing what prompts to give a computer?

I'm not saying AI doesn't have value. It clearly does. I've used it myself, and I've experienced firsthand how much it can accelerate development.

But acceleration isn't the same thing as growth.

There is something valuable about struggling with a problem for several hours. There is value in reading documentation because you don't know the answer. There is value in writing something poorly, realizing why it is poor, and rewriting it. There is value in getting stuck, asking another developer for help, and eventually understanding the problem well enough that you don't need their help the next time.

Those experiences don't just produce software.

They produce developers.

And I'm afraid we're beginning to overlook that distinction.

If AI allows a junior developer to complete a task that previously would have required a senior developer, that may be great for the immediate project. But what happens to the junior developer who never gets the opportunity to develop the skills that would have made them a senior developer?

If the machine increasingly handles the struggle, when do we get the opportunity to become better at struggling?

This is also why the current conversation around the future of software development concerns me. The industry has already experienced significant layoffs, and AI is increasingly being presented as a way to accomplish more with fewer people.

Maybe that is simply where technology is taking us. Maybe software development really will require fewer developers in the future.

But if that happens, I don't want the only thing we measure to be how much software we can produce.

I want to know what happens to the people producing it.

What skills are they developing? What are they learning? What are they becoming capable of doing that they couldn't do before?

Because at the end of the day, I'm becoming less interested in what a computer can do.

I'm much more interested in what a human being can learn to do.

I want to see developers become stronger, more capable, more curious, and more creative. I want to see people build things because they want to understand how they work, not simply because they can generate the result in an afternoon.

Maybe that's the part of software development we need to protect.

Not the code.

The developer.