Will AI Replace Developers? (Spoiler: It’s Complicated)

Every few weeks, someone sends me another article about how AI is going to replace all programmers by next Tuesday. I get it — the headlines are scary, and some of these AI tools are genuinely impressive.

But after using GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, and various other AI coding assistants for the past year, I have some thoughts.

🤖 What AI Is Actually Good At

AI excels at the boring stuff. Need a basic function? Sure:

// AI nailed this in 2 seconds
function calculateTax(amount, rate) {
return amount * (rate / 100);
}

It’s also surprisingly good at explaining code, generating boilerplate, and even catching simple bugs. I won’t lie — it’s saved me hours of writing repetitive CRUD operations.

🧠 What AI Still Can’t Do

But here’s where it gets interesting. Last week, I was debugging a tricky issue with asynchronous calls in my web app. The AI suggested fixing it by just adding random timeouts. Random timeouts.

AI doesn’t understand:

Why the order of requests and responses matters

How it affects user experience on the frontend

The trade-offs we make to keep the app performant and maintainable

Our team’s approach to handling async logic cleanly

// AI might suggest this quick fix
setTimeout(() => {
  // retry or continue
}, 100);

// But you know the real fix involves properly handling promises or async/await
async function fetchData() {
  await someAsyncOperation();
  // safely update state or DOM here
}

👥 The Human Side of Programming

Programming isn’t just about typing code. It’s about:

• Understanding the problem — What are we actually trying to solve?
• Making decisions — Should we optimize for speed or readability here?
• Communicating with people — Explaining technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Maintaining systems — Dealing with legacy code that AI has never seen

AI can generate a React component, but it can’t sit in a meeting and figure out why the product manager’s requirements don’t make sense.

🔮 What I Think Will Actually Happen

I don’t think AI will replace developers. I think it will change what we spend our time on.

Less time on:

• Writing boilerplate code
• Looking up syntax
• Basic debugging

More time on:

• System design and architecture
• Understanding business requirements
• Code review and quality assurance
• Solving complex, domain-specific problems

Think of it like calculators and mathematicians. Calculators didn’t replace mathematicians — they freed them up to work on harder problems.

🛠️ How I’m Adapting

I’ve started treating AI as a very enthusiastic junior developer. It’s great at the tasks I’d normally delegate to someone just starting out, but I still need to review everything and make the important decisions.

# I let AI write the first draft

copilot generate component UserProfile

# But I'm the one who decides if it fits our architecture

# and meets our accessibility standards

💭 My Honest Take

Will some coding jobs disappear? Probably. The ones that were mostly copy-pasting from Stack Overflow anyway.

Will we need fewer developers overall? I doubt it. We’ve been predicting the end of programming jobs since the invention of high-level languages, and yet here we are — with more software being written than ever.

The bar might get higher, though. Understanding how to work with AI, how to architect systems, and how to solve genuinely complex problems will become more important.

🎯 The Bottom Line

AI is a tool, not a replacement. It’s a really good tool that will make parts of our job easier and more efficient. But software development is still fundamentally about solving human problems with human creativity.

And honestly? That’s the part I love most about programming anyway.

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