It’s a weird time to be a developer.
Not bad. Just weird. You open Twitter (sorry, X?), and suddenly everyone’s a “prompt engineer.” People are building Full Stack apps with three sentences and a screenshot. Job posts ask for experience with LangChain before they ask about JavaScript. And you're there like… wait, do I even need to code anymore?
Let’s talk about it.
Prompting Is the New Programming (Apparently)
Back in 2020, if someone said “prompting,” I’d assume they were talking about CLI flags or asking a user for input. Now? It means writing the perfect sentence to coax GPT into generating an entire microservice with error handling, tests, and documentation.
And let’s be real: it's kind of amazing. I’ve used prompts to scaffold codebases, generate test cases, refactor legacy nightmares, and even write bash scripts I didn’t feel like Googling. It works. And it saves time. And yeah it’s fun.
But it’s also a little... strange.
Because when you start writing prompts instead of functions, you stop flexing those problem solving muscles that got you into programming in the first place.
Are We Still Devs or Just API Wranglers?
Something changed over the last couple years and I’m not just talking about the layoffs (though we definitely felt those too). The vibe of being a dev shifted. Suddenly it’s less “crafting software” and more “assembling outputs from models and APIs.”
You write a bit of glue code. Prompt an LLM for a function. Copypaste some Stack Overflow answer into ChatGPT to "clean it up." Ship it. Move on.
Is this bad? Not necessarily. Tools evolve. Abstractions stack. No one codes in assembly anymore (unless you’re very, very cool or cursed).
But something feels different. I don’t get the same joy writing a bulletproof prompt that generates a Stripe webhook handler as I did just… writing it myself.
I miss zoning out with VS Code. I miss reading docs. I miss thinking through edge cases in my head. Now I just ask the AI to “handle edge cases” and hope it understood what I meant.
Why It’s Still Worth Learning to Code
Here’s the thing: prompting is powerful. But it’s not magic. And the moment something breaks or needs to scale or has a weird race condition, you’ll need to actually understand what’s going on under the hood.
Knowing how to code is still the superpower. The prompt is just a shortcut.
It’s like knowing how to drive vs. relying on autopilot. Sure, let the AI help you on the highway. But if you can’t parallel park manually when the system glitches, you’re toast.
I’ve seen this play out in real teams. New devs who only know how to prompt get stuck fast when debugging, testing, or building something non trivial. Senior devs are still the ones untangling those last 10% problems that the AI couldn’t predict.
So yeah. Learn to code. Learn to build. Learn why things work. Then prompt all you want.
But Also... Don't Be a Dinosaur
That said, refusing to adapt is a great way to become irrelevant.
I’ve seen devs mock prompt engineers like they’re not “real developers.” These same people once mocked front end devs too. And before that, mocked people who used Rails generators. And before that, mocked people who didn’t write in C.
See the pattern?
Prompting is programming now just a new flavor. It’s part of the toolkit. Ignoring it means ignoring a really powerful abstraction layer that can make you more efficient, creative, and productive.
The key isn’t to pick one side. The key is to know when to use the AI and when to be the AI.
So What’s Lost?
Creativity, maybe.
When we let the AI write our code, our job becomes editing instead of inventing. Curating instead of crafting. It’s like going from painting to photo editing. Still art, still skill, but… something's different.
We risk losing the joy of building from scratch. The tiny design decisions that add up to big differences. The unique fingerprints you leave in your code. When everything starts to look like GPT output, all apps start to feel the same.
And hey, maybe that’s fine for CRUD stuff. But the best software, the stuff that feels different, usually comes from human weirdness, not robotic predictability.
Closing Real Talk
Prompting is here and programming will never go back to what it was. That line between programmer and “AI wrangler” is officially blurred. If all you do is prompt, you’ll miss the soul of building.
So, keep learning to code don’t just learn to prompt. Use AI, but don’t let it erase your curiosity. Ask why, not just how. And remember, even as the world shifts, real creativity comes from the mind behind the prompt not just the box it’s typed into.
Feeling the same about the prompt shift? Is your code half AI generated these days? I’d love to hear how you’re keeping the spark alive in a world of endless autocomplete.
Top comments (51)
This is one thing that always has bugged me with AI and coding. The job isn't to write code, no one cares about the code except the developers writing it. The job is to build stuff that users use.
If the code meets all the requirements, then the user doesn't care if AI wrote it or if a human did.
The user doesn't care if AI wrote it but, 'code meets all the requirements' still leads to the intermediary concern that the code is particularly good.
This isn't work in a factory where everyone on the line is providing exactly the same contribution. Some think and experiment more, come up with new efficiencies and performance values, or even new paradigms.
I think it's a very good point of view, but I believe that at this moment we don't have an AI capable of fully programming an application on its own without losing context or generating errors in the process of adding new features. Although how the app was made is something invisible to the user, something that isn't is the presence of bugs that we need to prevent.
I never said fully programming the application, only writing the code.
There's a huge amount of stuff that needs to happen from writing code to shipping stuff to customers. AI can help with all those stages to a degree, but it still needs guidance for sure.
Love this take. I'd like to think of AI as calculators in math class. We could have one in our hands, but if we don't know what we want to compute it's useless...And teachers only allow us to use calculators after we learn the procedure by hand.
Prompting is great for scaffolding or quick prototypes. But I truly beelieve programming is still about understanding system design, testing, debugging, and edge cases. Without that, the app falls apart sooner than later.
Totally agree
AI is the new printing press. 🙃
I ship more as a SAHM with Claude in a (nap)time block than I could as a senior software dev hand-coding. And my 2yo builds games with Cline. He'll grow up with a fundamentally different (and more efficient) paradigm for turning ideas into products than we ever did.
I think you said it best yourself: "Use AI, but don’t let it erase your curiosity. Ask why, not just how.". No extremity is good, so we should not be some modern Luddites or vibe code 100% of our projects.
Every coder has to find the fragile balance him(/her)self. For every other project. That's life.
Thank you! Yes, you absolutely still need to actually learn to code, but those that aren't integrating A.I. pair programming into their workflow in some way are going to be left behind. I hear too many grizzled graybeards saying that they refuse to use A.I. to code no matter how many advancements are made. Those folks can't read the writing on the walls. Don't blindly accept revisions, don't assume you don't need to learn to program anymore, but don't just write it off either.
Honestly, those refusing AI’s help are… well, kind of dumb-dumbs(no offense 😅). Like, why choose the harder route when you could work smarter and still maintain quality? AI isn’t here to steal your job... it’s here to support you in doing it better. Nobody’s saying you shouldn’t know how to code. But rejecting AI entirely is like insisting on using a horse when you have a car in the garage. Let it assist you, just don’t hand it the keys.
Prompting is programming for monotonous work. I feel like I've said this a few hundred times by now, but AI does not help with creating something that no one has made before. If you're making something that adds value to something, you're almost certainly making something new, and AI isn't going to help you there.
I’m going to push back here, too (and then close this tab before I become an even bigger thread stalker)! Can you just open a blank repo and say, “hey AI, build me a brand-new event-driven microservice network on K8s that auto-scales like a dream”? No — not a chance! But that doesn’t mean AI is out of the picture entirely...
The same GPT models that get labeled as “bad at code” in Copilot? They’re phenomenal at surfacing ideas and blind spots even the most seasoned dev might miss after hours at the whiteboard. Give that power to someone who knows how to prompt, and suddenly you’ve got edge cases baked in, use cases you’d only catch post-release, and a whole buffet of solutions tailored to your actual scenario — all before the first line even ships!
I swear, I’m really not trying to hijack the convo 😇, but it’s wild how many folks fire up default AI and expect instant magic — then gripe when they’re left waving a plastic wand. You wouldn’t download a JDK and expect Java to spring to life on its own, right? So why treat AI any different? 🤷♀️✨
I don't think anything you said is wrong, but I'd rather spend an hour solving a problem than an hour figuring out the "optimal prompt" to get my glorified plagiarism machine to give me the result I want. Totally just my opinion though.
Again, it's my opinion, but if I have to figure out how to correctly prompt an LLM to give me my desired output, I would rather use my brain and do it myself.
Here’s the thing: you might be the top dog in your field, but eventually, the playing field flattens out — there are no more magic shortcuts to shave off time. Meanwhile, the folks actually learning AI right now? They’ll be dropping solutions into your stack twice as fast as you can even spot the opportunity. Blink and you’ll miss ‘em. 🏃♀️💨
Plus, it’s never really about chasing the elusive “perfect prompt.” It’s just input → output. That’s the whole game. Build simple systems, get simple (but powerful) results. And let’s be real — how many times have you shipped something that actually worked well in a tech stack you never bothered to learn, and didn’t care to understand? (I’ll wait.)
It’s a bit like a junior dev insisting, “Why bother with OOP? My functional code runs just fine!” Or someone swearing CI/CD is pointless because “I can just deploy from my laptop, NBD.” You can skate by, sure. But if you’re in this game for the long haul, at some point you’re gonna want to understand the basics behind modern dev — otherwise you’re just building sandcastles at high tide. 🏖️
Personally? I’d rather spend that hour figuring out why a prompt works so well in the first place. Once you get the hang of it, crafting solid prompts is basically second nature — just like picking up any new language. NLP is its own thing and, like it or not, AI is now the bedrock of modern development. 🦋
I joined the software industry at a time when AI tools like ChatGPT were becoming the new norm. In many ways, it felt like having a 24/7 mentor — helping me fix bugs, write components, and even explain concepts I never truly understood in college.
It made everything feel… easier.
Not because the work itself was easy, but because the AI made it feel that way.
Now, two years into my journey, I’ve started to ask myself some difficult questions:
🔹 Am I truly a developer?
🔹 Or just someone who’s good at asking GPT the right questions?
🔹 What would I do if AI tools suddenly disappeared tomorrow?
Some days, I catch myself pasting the same error into GPT again and again — over days, even weeks — still not fully understanding the logic behind the fix.
And ironically, even this post… was cleaned up with GPT's help.
Yes — I’m able to deliver tasks and complete projects on time.
But deep down I wonder: what about my skill development?
What am I truly learning beneath the surface?
Everyone says:
"AI is the future. Without it, there's no job in tech."
And maybe that’s true — but I also want more for myself.
I want to think independently, debug without assistance, understand the “why” behind every solution — not just the “what” that GPT gives me.
I want to be a developer with AI — not a developer because of AI.
Will I become a senior developer someday? A tech lead others look up to?
I don’t know yet. But I do know this: the growth I want won’t come from shortcuts. It will come from struggle, depth, and slowly rebuilding the habit of learning without leaning too hard on AI.
I really like the point, it might bit down grade our creativity but it's a tool for scaffold thing fast and when it broke it still your job to figure it out and tell the AI on the problem and not just dumping the code and call it the day.
I'm totally agree with the fact you must find the balance between the help of the AI with for example the boring stuff and your own mind. Personnaly I'm also using AI like a pair programmer, It help me to think and give me different pattern to solve my issue. At the end I will choose the better solution and not do just copy/paste the generated code !
In conclusion you will be always the maker but with better tools to achieve your own goals.
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.