Code, Context, and AI: Why Human Developers Still Matter

This year has been somewhat of a wake up call to the developer community in terms of A.I. It seems like each and every month now a new tool comes out that can produce code faster and more accurately than the models before it.

Needless to say, this is going to keep happening for the foreseeable future. And many newer developers find themselves at a crossroads.

Do they continue to invest time and money into a field of study that’s going to evaporate in the next decade? Or do you pivot now and save yourself the headaches?

Let’s separate the hype from reality. Because after two decades of supposed “developer extinction events,” I’ve learned something important about our industry’s evolution and why human developers aren’t going anywhere (yet).

What’s really going on

Every few months, a headline declares that programmers are becoming obsolete. The latest AI model generates a todo app in seconds, and social media floods with predictions about the end of software development careers.

You’re also starting to see articles claiming that A.I. coding assistants are making junior developers worse, so they should stop using them. I would argue that the junior developer struggle is perfectly normal and that most companies…