Everyone is talking about AI replacing developers. Some say junior devs won’t even find jobs in 2026. As someone running a dev team at RobinReach, I think this is overblown and here’s why.
Writing Code Is Not the Same as Solving Problems
A lot of people think coding is just typing lines of code or building a simple website. Real software development is way more than that. You have to understand what a feature should actually do, how it should behave in tricky situations, track down bugs and find the root cause, design a system that is scalable and maintainable, and make decisions about trade-offs between speed, performance, security, and user experience.
And when it comes to full web apps, it gets even more complex. You are not just writing HTML or CSS. You have databases, backend logic, routing, state management, APIs, integrations, and frontend frameworks. AI cannot grasp the full system in context or reason about how all the pieces interact.
Static Websites Versus Full Web Apps
This is where people get confused. A static website is something simple, like a landing page or portfolio. You can set up a WordPress site or a Wix page in a couple of hours without any AI. It’s straightforward and there is nothing revolutionary about AI doing the same thing a little faster.
Full web apps are a different story. They have databases, backend logic, authentication, APIs, dynamic routing, state management, error handling, and scaling. Building and maintaining these apps requires problem-solving, debugging, and architectural thinking. AI is not ready to do that.
What Research Says
A recent MIT CSAIL study reported by IBM Think confirms this. It says that AI can churn out code but cannot think like a software engineer. AI struggles with planning long-term code, understanding an entire codebase, and handling legacy systems or specialized libraries.
Even the best AI does not remember previous prompts or understand how a project evolves over time. AI can write code but it cannot replace the reasoning, problem-solving, and judgment that real developers provide.
You can read the full article here: IBM Think – AI can write code, but can it beat software engineers?
My Experience at RobinReach
Even with AI tools, my junior developer drives the AI, not the other way around. They review suggestions, debug issues, validate fixes, and make architectural decisions. AI speeds up repetitive work but the thinking, problem-solving, and judgment are still fully human.
The Future of Development
The future is not AI replacing developers. It is humans working with AI. Developers who learn to use AI effectively will be faster and more productive. But understanding systems, reasoning through problems, and building robust software will always be human work.
Are we overestimating AI, or is the future really about developers guiding AI to solve real software problems?
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