There’s a fantasy floating around tech circles that AI is about to make software developers obsolete. The logic goes something like this: AI can write code now, therefore anyone can build software, therefore we don’t need programmers anymore. It’s a seductive idea if you’ve never actually shipped production software.
I’ve been using AI coding assistants daily for well over a year now. Claude, Copilot, Cursor, the works. And here’s what I’ve learned: AI is genuinely transformative for experienced developers. It’s also genuinely dangerous in the hands of people who don’t know what they’re looking at.
I am a front-end developer. That is my main thing. JavaScript, TypeScript, component frameworks, state management, the DOM and all its quirks. I have spent years in this world and it is where I am most comfortable. If you need someone to build a reactive UI or argue about whether signals are better than virtual DOM diffing, I am your guy.
I am also a PHP developer. Have been for a long time. Back-end work, WordPress, Laravel, the lot. That is another core part of my toolkit that has served me well for years.
We’re living through a fascinating time in software development. AI coding assistants like Claude Code, Codex CLI, and GitHub Copilot have become powerful tools that can generate code, explain complex algorithms, and even debug issues.
I’ve watched developers embrace these tools with varying degrees of success, and there’s a clear pattern emerging: the developers who truly benefit from AI are the ones who already know how to code well.
There’s a dangerous narrative floating around that we’re approaching the end of programming as we know it.
I write software for a living, often as a freelancer/consultant. My faith doesn’t make me louder; it makes me clearer. It’s the thing that nudges me toward honesty, courage, and high‑quality work when nobody is watching.