DEV Community: Cesar Aguirre

If you think you can't keep up with every new AI buzzword...

Cesar Aguirre — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 15:52:16 +0000

Timeless fundamentals beat endless hype-chasing

Cesar Aguirre

Sep 28

Dear Coder: Open This If You're Feeling AI FOMO

#career #ai #programming #beginners

1 min read

Someone with good fundamentals is way more dangerous than someone else with just prompting skills...

Cesar Aguirre — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 16:03:28 +0000

Timeless fundamentals beat endless hype-chasing

Cesar Aguirre

Sep 28

Dear Coder: Open This If You're Feeling AI FOMO

#career #ai #programming #beginners

1 min read

Someone needs to check if AI-generated code is decent enough to stamp our names on it.

Cesar Aguirre — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 14:27:44 +0000

Timeless fundamentals beat endless hype-chasing

Cesar Aguirre

Sep 28

Dear Coder: Open This If You're Feeling AI FOMO

#career #ai #programming #beginners

1 min read

Pick your battles!

Cesar Aguirre — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 17:25:03 +0000

Timeless fundamentals beat endless hype-chasing

Cesar Aguirre

Sep 28

Dear Coder: Open This If You're Feeling AI FOMO

#career #ai #programming #beginners

1 min read

Dear Coder: Open This If You're Feeling AI FOMO

Cesar Aguirre — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 05:00:00 +0000

It's all over the headlines.

Every so often, someone reveals a model X% faster.
A tech CEO makes bold claims about the future of coding.
The stock market reacts with euphoria. Prices go up.

AI has also brought new buzzwords. Agents, prompts, workflows, integrations...

Pick your battles

FOMO is real.

Almost every week, I find tutorials about MCP, agents, loop engineering...or whatever it's the new trend. I skip most of them. I've chosen my battles to stay sane in the hype cycle.

I'm still figuring out how to adopt AI without losing my skills and identifying the problems it brings.

That's keeping me busy enough.

Some things haven't changed

If you're also experiencing FOMO:

Don't worry. Fundamentals matter more than ever.

Plenty of codebases still suffer from:

N+1 problems
Missing pagination
SQL injection

Most were written before the AI hype. Now imagine the chaos inside vibe-coded codebases.

There's still work ahead before (or if) AI really takes over.

Don't forget about AI. But build real skills first. Then leverage AI—In that order.

To help you build lasting skills beyond the hype, I wrote Street-Smart Coding. The roadmap I wish I had starting out.

From nah...to OMG!

Cesar Aguirre — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 14:06:48 +0000

Cesar Aguirre

Sep 21

From Skepticism to Overreliance, My Journey With AI (And How to Thrive as a Coder)

#coding #beginners #ai #programming

2 min read

From Skepticism to Overreliance, My Journey With AI (And How to Thrive as a Coder)

Cesar Aguirre — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 05:00:00 +0000

Nah... I don't care

In early 2023, a coworker tried that new thing called ChatGPT.
He shared his excitement.
I wasn't that impressed.

Months later, after all the buzz, I searched that Chat thing.
Every time I tried, I couldn't access it.
It was a public beta or something.
Too many people.

Then, I learned from Brent Ozar to keep a browser tab with ChatGPT open as a junior assistant.
Mmm, there's something there...

In early 2024, Devin was released.
"The sky is falling" all over the headlines.
I didn't buy it.

OMG! This is dangerous!

Early 2025, I decided to try AI with a fresh mind.

After using Copilot for weeks, "OMG! This thing is dangerous."
One day I realized I couldn't finish a simple task alone.
The tool worked, but I was becoming so dependent.

An AI detox season followed.
No more AI until you eat your vegetables and do your homework.

Then I made some rules to use AI without losing my skills.

Like any other tool, AI is a game changer with the right skills.
Otherwise, it's like a fancy calculator in a math exam you didn't study for.

To thrive in the AI era, build real skills, then leverage AI.
This is the way!

To help you build AI-proof skills, I wrote Street-Smart Coding. The guide I wish I had on my journey from junior to senior.

Probably you won't like it, but...

Cesar Aguirre — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 16:45:00 +0000

Cesar Aguirre

Nov 10 '25

If You're Learning Coding, Here's The Only Rule You Need to Adopt AI

#coding #beginners #softwareengineering #ai

2 min read

AI spits out code faster than any of us, with just a few magic words. Beep, beep, boop. But coding has never been the bottleneck.

Cesar Aguirre — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:57:54 +0000

Cesar Aguirre

Sep 14

The Unexpected Truth AI Reveals about Coding

#discuss #coding #ai #softwaredevelopment

1 min read

The Unexpected Truth AI Reveals about Coding

Cesar Aguirre — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 05:00:00 +0000

Most people glorify AI for its speed.

AI spits out code faster than any of us, with just a few magic words. Beep, beep, boop. But coding has never been the bottleneck.

In corporate settings, where is most of the time spent? 99.99% of the time, it isn’t coding.

It’s

Waiting for your product owner while they talk to a customer to find out what they need
Waiting for DevOps to create a pipeline for your new project
Waiting for Finance to approve a $5 or $10 USD/month purchase
Waiting for endless committees to decide what to build
Coordinating people to build the right thing under schedule
Waiting for code reviews, even when they're short and focused

AI speeds up only one step of the process: code generation. Everything else is as slow as it has always been. And more code means more reviews, builds, approvals, and bugs. More paperwork.

Has AI truly speed things up? What do you think?

I'm not against AI, but my mantra is build real skills, then leverage AI. That's why I wrote Street-Smart Coding, the roadmap I wish I had to build real, AI-proofed coding skills.

The edge isn't what symbols to type anymore

Cesar Aguirre — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:33:15 +0000

Cesar Aguirre

Sep 7

With AI, The Real Edge Is Knowing What to Build

#coding #beginners #ai #programming

2 min read

With AI, The Real Edge Is Knowing What to Build

Cesar Aguirre — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 05:00:00 +0000

"But... how did you know what to write?"

That's what Greg Baugues' daughter asked him after her first encounter with vibe-coding.
She was curious if there was a time when we had to type symbols, one by one.

It isn't about what symbols to type

Coding used to be about the craft:
Mastering symbols and perfecting the lines of code.
If you knew what to type and could make it work, you could find your way as a coder.

But AI has changed our job description by making code cheap.
Anyone is just a few sentences away from working code.

Knowing what symbols to type isn't the edge anymore.

It's about what to build

As I write this, I'm working on a legacy migration for a hardware shop.

Its main page is an entangled mess of over 40K lines of Visual Basic code.
Migrating it to anything newer is time-consuming.

To ease the pain of migrating it, management suggested starting some refactoring work.
The migration has dragged on for years, still far from completion.
The refactoring work won't show any visible progress on a late project.

Prompt an LLM to migrate it to Blazor isn't hard.
But its output will only create more problems.
The challenge is deciding the right approach: refactoring, migration, or rewrite.

The real edge is knowing coding is solving problems and choosing what problems to solve.

To help you grow beyond syntax, check Street-Smart Coding Manifesto. When coding is cheap, your edge comes from outside your IDE.