It’s a weird time to be a developer.
Not bad. Just weird. You open Twitter (sorry, X?), and suddenly everyone’s a “prompt engineer.” People are building full-stack apps with three sentences and a screenshot. Job posts ask for experience with LangChain before they ask about JavaScript. And you're there like… wait, do I even need to code anymore?
Let’s talk about it.
Prompting Is the New Programming (Apparently)
Back in 2020, if someone said “prompting,” I’d assume they were talking about CLI flags or asking a user for input. Now? It means writing the perfect sentence to coax GPT into generating an entire microservice with error handling, tests, and documentation.
And let’s be real: it's kind of amazing. I’ve used prompts to scaffold codebases, generate test cases, refactor legacy nightmares, and even write bash scripts I didn’t feel like Googling. It works. And it saves time. And yeah—it’s fun.
But it’s also a little... strange.
Because when you start writing prompts instead of functions, you stop flexing those problem-solving muscles that got you into programming in the first place.
Are We Still Devs or Just API Wranglers?
Something changed over the last couple years—and I’m not just talking about the layoffs (though we definitely felt those too). The vibe of being a dev shifted. Suddenly it’s less “crafting software” and more “assembling outputs from models and APIs.”
You write a bit of glue code. Prompt an LLM for a function. Copy-paste some Stack Overflow answer into ChatGPT to "clean it up." Ship it. Move on.
Is this bad? Not necessarily. Tools evolve. Abstractions stack. No one codes in assembly anymore (unless you’re very, very cool or cursed).
But something feels different. I don’t get the same joy writing a bulletproof prompt that generates a Stripe webhook handler as I did just… writing it myself.
I miss zoning out with VSCode. I miss reading docs. I miss thinking through edge cases in my head. Now I just ask the AI to “handle edge cases” and hope it understood what I meant.
Why It’s Still Worth Learning to Code
Here’s the thing: prompting is powerful. But it’s not magic. And the moment something breaks—or needs to scale—or has a weird race condition—you’ll need to actually understand what’s going on under the hood.
Knowing how to code is still the superpower. The prompt is just a shortcut.
It’s like knowing how to drive vs. relying on autopilot. Sure, let the AI help you on the highway. But if you can’t parallel park manually when the system glitches, you’re toast.
I’ve seen this play out in real teams. New devs who only know how to prompt get stuck fast when debugging, testing, or building something non-trivial. Senior devs are still the ones untangling those last 10% problems that the AI couldn’t predict.
So yeah. Learn to code. Learn to build. Learn why things work. Then prompt all you want.
But Also... Don't Be a Dinosaur
That said, refusing to adapt is a great way to become irrelevant.
I’ve seen devs mock prompt engineers like they’re not “real developers.” These same people once mocked front-end devs too. And before that, mocked people who used Rails generators. And before that, mocked people who didn’t write in C.
See the pattern?
Prompting is programming now—just a new flavor. It’s part of the toolkit. Ignoring it means ignoring a really powerful abstraction layer that can make you more efficient, creative, and productive.
The key isn’t to pick one side. The key is to know when to use the AI and when to be the AI.
So What’s Lost?
Creativity, maybe.
When we let the AI write our code, our job becomes editing instead of inventing. Curating instead of crafting. It’s like going from painting to photo editing. Still art, still skill, but… something's different.
We risk losing the joy of building from scratch. The tiny design decisions that add up to big differences. The unique fingerprints you leave in your code. When everything starts to look like GPT output, all apps start to feel the same.
And hey, maybe that’s fine for CRUD stuff. But the best software—the stuff that feels different—usually comes from human weirdness, not robotic predictability.
Closing Real Talk
Prompting is here, and programming will never go back to what it was. That line between programmer and “AI wrangler” is officially blurred. If all you do is prompt, you’ll miss the soul of building.
So, keep learning to code—don’t just learn to prompt. Use AI, but don’t let it erase your curiosity. Ask why, not just how. And remember, even as the world shifts, real creativity comes from the mind behind the prompt—not just the box it’s typed into.
Feeling the same about the prompt shift? Is your code half AI-generated these days? I’d love to hear how you’re keeping the spark alive in a world of endless autocomplete.
Top comments (11)
Thank you! Yes, you absolutely still need to actually learn to code, but those that aren't integrating A.I. pair programming into their workflow in some way are going to be left behind. I hear too many grizzled graybeards saying that they refuse to use A.I. to code no matter how many advancements are made. Those folks can't read the writing on the walls. Don't blindly accept revisions, don't assume you don't need to learn to program anymore, but don't just write it off either.
Honestly, those refusing AI’s help are… well, kind of dumb-dumbs(no offense 😅). Like, why choose the harder route when you could work smarter and still maintain quality? AI isn’t here to steal your job... it’s here to support you in doing it better. Nobody’s saying you shouldn’t know how to code. But rejecting AI entirely is like insisting on using a horse when you have a car in the garage. Let it assist you, just don’t hand it the keys.
I think you said it best yourself: "Use AI, but don’t let it erase your curiosity. Ask why, not just how.". No extremity is good, so we should not be some modern Luddites or vibe code 100% of our projects.
Every coder has to find the fragile balance him(/her)self. For every other project. That's life.
Prompting is great for scaffolding or quick prototypes. But I truly beelieve programming is still about understanding system design, testing, debugging, and edge cases. Without that, the app falls apart sooner than later.
Keep reading the docs and thinking about edge cases. AI doesn't understand anything, and it makes things up.
Also AI doesn't write secure code.
Yes prompting is a means to an end. But I don't think it changes programming. We have to still come up with the specifications to let AI generate the code.
Maybe it changes for developers that hate to write documentation, because that is what specifications are. You can let AI create documentation for different target audiences.
I don't use an editor with a AI prompt module, because I tend to switch AI's constantly.
I use it when I'm unsure about things. And I use it to generate code I know I can't write that fast.
You said that you miss reading the docs and zoning out with your code editor. But you use artificial intelligence to solve your problems. Why don't you just stop prompting and go back to do what you miss? Nobody is forcing you to use artificial intelligence to write code.
Hey! I actually code cool stuff in assembly! And I'm definitely not cursed.
AI seems to be a great tool, and we got to embrace it - without making it our entire personality. One pattern I notice within devs that use AI (or in myself when using AI), is that you just care less about the code. It's not some sacred art anymore that you stare for hours. It just becomes yet another product. You tend to test less, or skip anything that might take some time... because now your brain is programmed to be lazy.
Agree on the creativity part. If you look at all AI generated stuff, they all look the same. There's literally no flavour that must come from within you.
I did a blog post recently addressing the same issue. If yall wish show me some love, I'm trying to grow my platforms.
Thank you! And love your take on this
I'm totally agree with the fact you must find the balance between the help of the AI with for example the boring stuff and your own mind. Personnaly I'm also using AI like a pair programmer, It help me to think and give me different pattern to solve my issue. At the end I will choose the better solution and not do just copy/paste the generated code !
In conclusion you will be always the maker but with better tools to achieve your own goals.
fun fact that this article was written with ai
"code—don’t"
such dashes are only installed by ai, not a human
good work, bro
that's the reason i didn't bother to read it.
This is well articulated, I told my collegues we need to understand the WHY behind each line of code.