Human Creativity Meets AI Muscle
Last week, I watched a "non-programmer" spend 7 minutes describing what he needed to a ChatGPT window, then spend the rest of the week fixing the mangled code it spat back. What he wound up with was an ugly website full of bugs he didn't know how to fix.
Welcome to programming's strange new reality.
The Death of Programming Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
The tech press loves a dramatic headline. "Software Developers Extinct by 2030!" makes for great clickbait but terrible prediction. Having spent 6 years in the development trenches, I've witnessed enough "revolutionary" tools to recognize the difference between evolution and extinction.
What's happening now isn't replacement—it's transformation. The developers thriving in 2025 aren't those who can regurgitate documentation but those who've mastered the art of breaking down problems and designing creative solutions.
"Vibe Coding" – Brilliant or Bull?
"Just vibing with the code, man," said no professional developer ever…until now.
The practice of describing your software requirements to AI tools, dubbed "vibe coding" by someone who clearly had a marketing degree, represents both remarkable progress and legitimate concern.
I recently saw a team burn three days debugging a critical payment system because nobody noticed their AI assistant had fundamentally misunderstood a currency conversion requirement. The code looked perfect. It read beautifully. It just happened to be calculating everything in Zimbabwean dollars instead of sterling.
The flip side? That same team automated an update and completed a code migration in a single evening, a task that typically takes several weeks.
The Human-AI Partnership
The most successful companies aren't choosing between human developers and AI tools, they're defining exactly how these two complement each other. It's not about replacement, it's about leverage.
The Reality Check
I've mentored developers for a long time and here's what I tell them now: Learn to write clear, concise code by hand. Then learn to write clear, concise prompts for AI tools. Master both and you'll run circles around developers who can only do one or the other.
For businesses diving into this new world: AI won't eliminate your development team but it might just transform what they can accomplish. The real question isn't whether AI is coming for programming jobs—it's whether your team is prepared to evolve alongside it.
How are you balancing human expertise with AI assistance in your development processes?