A few years ago if you said "just describe what you want and the computer will do it" — that was science fiction. Now it's Tuesday.
I spent last week building 40 browser-based developer tools. Half of them I described in plain English to Claude Code and it just... built them. Components, types, tests, the lot.
The weird part isn't that it works. It's how it feels.
There's this guilt developers know — the "am I even really coding?" feeling. Stack Overflow used to trigger it. AI just cranks it to 11.
But here's what I actually noticed: the thinking didn't go away. It moved. Less time on "how do I type this correctly". More time on "is this the right thing to build at all".
The English-as-code thing is real. But it's less like replacing programming and more like the abstractions keep going up. Assembly → C → Python → now this. Each step felt like cheating to someone.
Where do you draw the line between "using tools" and "not really coding"? Or is that even the right question?
Top comments (2)
My mixed feelings come down to this: asking AI for an app without knowing what you're doing is like asking a manufacturer for an engine without being an engineer — you might end up with a V12 when you needed a quiet hybrid, or something that looks right but fails under load. You won't know what to ask for, and you won't know if what you got is any good. English might be the new programming language, but you still need to be fluent in the problem domain.
Absolutely) I used to have a client that build awesome app on TS+React, Api integration, database. all awesome. But he got no clue why I can't open it by address localhost:3000 )))