I’ve been using AI to code a lot lately. Friends of mine too.

Others? Not so much.

We’re using the same tools, yet some people are energized and others are having an identity crisis.

I’ve come to realize the split comes down to what you enjoy about this job.

Two camps

If you love coding, the act of translating ideas into syntax, the craft of an elegant codebase, this moment sucks. I get it. The AI is better at that stuff than you’ll ever be. If that was your source of pride, then the ground is shifting.

If you love building, oh boy, this is an incredible time to be alive.

Understanding problems, making tradeoffs, figuring out what actually matters to users… all of this is cheaper than ever.

You can try twenty ideas in the time it used to take to try two. Explore approaches that wouldn’t have been worth the effort before. Focus on the interesting parts while the AI handles the rest.

I’ve seen this myself. You tell these tools what you want, like you would to a colleague, walk away, and come back to working code. A few months ago they required guidance, harnesses. Nowadays, not so much. No more back-and-forth if you use them right.

Just outcome. Working code, ready to test.

And yet.

The people who aren’t having fun keep saying things like “it feels like cheating” or “I’m losing my craft” or “what’s the point of learning anymore?”. I’ve seen those tweets. I’ve had those conversations, usually after a beer or two.

Identity crisis

When your self-image is “I’m a great coder” and the AI codes better than you, what’s left?

I’m not gonna lie: my manual coding skills are getting rusty. I reach for the AI before I reach for the code editor.

It is scary because I’ve been writing code for ¿20 years? and getting paid for it since I was 18.

But then I think about it differently. The job was never really “writing code”. It was figuring out what to build, spotting problems, making tradeoffs, aligning people. It was never so obvious: code is just the cost of getting to business impact. The AI just handles the translation now.

If your identity is “someone who writes code,” if the craft itself is what you love, I feel you. This has been me, too. It is genuinely scary, and I don’t have a clean answer for that.

The gap is getting wider

In my short experience, the gap between people who embrace AI and people who fight it is getting way wider.

The difference isn’t who can code faster. The AI can code faster than all of us. The important questions still stand:

Who knows what to build?

Who can talk to stakeholders and understand the real problem? Who can spot when the AI is solving the wrong thing elegantly? Who knows when to say “this is good enough” versus “this needs more work”?

Not AI (for now. I’ll revise this post in a few months).

The AI amplifies everything. If you’re building crap, well, you now build crap faster. That’s not an improvement. If you’re building the right thing, you move faster than ever. That’s transformative.

The easy part is solved. The hard part remains.

So what do you do?

Figure out which side of the split you’re on. Do you love coding or building?

If you’re on the building side: double down. You know the drill already. Talk to users. Prioritize. Plan. Architect. Ship.

If you’re on the coding side: that’s harder. Start thinking about what kind of coding you enjoy. Is it the craft, or is it the problem-solving?

There are still “coding things” that are extremely useful nowadays. AI tooling is WAY more useful with good Continuous Integration practices, a good safety net made of tests and types and checks. Feedback loops are more important than ever.

Either way: focus on fundamentals. Simplicity. Outcomes over outputs. The AI is terrible at these. You can be great at them.

Be the person who figures out what to build, not just the person who builds it. The former is extremely useful. The latter…

The split is here

If you’re on the building side, you’re about to become way more valuable. If you’re on the coding side, you still have time to figure out what’s next.

If you work on an adjacent field to software engineering, if you are a designer, a product manager, a marketer… be ready. Machines are coming after you.

Things are changing fast and they won’t slow down. We’re in the middle of something big.