A Non-Conclusion

Honest Dev say: "Tool is tool."

This is a collection of thoughts on AI in software development. I have no strong opinions. I am simply observing.

The Great Replacement (of Sanity)

The year is 2026. Software developers are either convinced they will be unemployed by next Tuesday, or they are using AI to ship features while everyone else is busy being convinced they will be unemployed by next Tuesday.

• The Hysteria
  • "AI will take all the developer jobs!"
  • "Junior developers are finished!"
  • "Nobody will need to learn to code anymore!"
• The Reality
  • People said the same thing about Stack Overflow.
  • And Google.
  • And autocomplete.
  • Developers are still here. Still Googling. Still copy-pasting.

The Veteran Developer Syndrome

Some developers have been writing code since before JavaScript had classes. They have earned their battle scars. They have also earned the right to be skeptical of new things.

• The Sentiment
  • "AI-generated code is garbage."
  • "Real developers don't need AI."
  • "Back in my day, we wrote our own sorting algorithms."
• The Observation
  • These are the same developers who use IDEs with autocomplete, linters, formatters, and 47 VS Code extensions.
  • They import npm packages that import npm packages that import npm packages.
  • They do not write their own sorting algorithms.

Note: Being skeptical is healthy. Being selectively skeptical is just vibes.

The Recent Contract (A True Story)

I recently contracted at a company. The engineering managers had strong opinions about AI.

• The Policy
  • "No AI tools in the codebase."
  • "We cannot trust AI-generated code."
  • "There are security concerns."
  • "What about IP issues?"
• The Same Company
  • Uses an AI tool to transcribe and summarize all meetings.
  • Uses an AI tool for "productivity insights" (whatever that means).
  • Uses an AI tool for data analysis and reporting.
  • Uses an AI tool to generate marketing copy.
  • Uses an AI tool to draft emails.

Translation: AI is dangerous when developers use it. AI is innovation when managers use it.

The Actual Take

I do not have strong opinions on whether AI is good or bad. Here is what I do know:

• It is a tool. Like Git. Like Docker. Like that one Bash script nobody understands but everyone is afraid to delete.
• It can be used well. To learn faster. To prototype quicker. To automate the boring stuff.
• It can be used poorly. To ship code you do not understand. To replace thinking with prompting. To pretend you know things you do not know.
• But people wrote slop before AI existed. Copy-pasted Stack Overflow answers without understanding them. Shipped spaghetti code. Created security holes. Blamed the intern. The tool did not make them write bad code. They were going to write bad code anyway.
• This is true of literally everything. Remember when people thought the internet would make everyone smarter? Remember when people thought social media would bring the world together? The tool is neutral. The user is not.

Non-Conclusion

I am not here to tell you AI is good. I am not here to tell you AI is bad.

I am here to tell you it is here.

Whether you use it or not, whether you like it or not, whether you think it will take your job or not. It exists. Companies are building with it. People are shipping with it.

You can adapt. You can resist. You can write think pieces about it.

But you cannot make it not exist.