The future of developers, again

Yes, you.

The further along this AI road we go the more convinced I am that a person with the job of software developer won't write code in the future. I think for far too long the job of the developer has been to take specs and implement them. It never should have been that way. This is what Theresa Torres has been telling us for years with the product trio.

One of my favorite articles of late has been this one by Harper Reed titled "My LLM codegen workflow atm". It beautifully breaks down how to use LLMs as a planning partner, way before you ever put your hands to keyboard to write code (Brainstorming is one of the absolute best uses for LLMs right now). My goodness has this article been helpful.

As I've built projects with AI assistance over the past year an embarrassingly familiar pattern has emerged:

1. Get excited about an idea
2. Plug it into Claude
3. Have it start generating code
4. Iterate
5. Need to pivot or modify something I forgot to include in the original design.
6. Stuck in refactoring hell

Today I used the concepts from Harper's post to spend a few hours planning out a new project. It ended up uncovering a number of use cases I missed and edges that would have caused me significant refactoring pain in the future. I had to push myself and the LLM to wait to write code (although, shout out to Gemini Pro 2.5 for staying mostly on task!)

I no longer think you should learn to code... Learn how to break down problems, learn how to communicate clearly. https://t.co/UNkOEmotwQ

— Amjad Masad, CEO of Replit (@amasad) March 27, 2025

I'll be honest, it wasn't easy for me to have to write out all the edge cases and workflows in the app I was planning, but it's critically important if I want to avoid major refactoring pain in the future. I think this is the future of software development.

But honestly, that's the way it should have been all along, and now that we're required to act right, our productivity will skyrocket. Go slow now to go fast later. Sharpen your ax before chopping the tree. Whatever the metaphor, now is the time to work on our communication skills because now and in the future, they will continue to become increasingly important.

And if you're not a coder (yet) it has NEVER been a better time to catch up and be at the forefront of a major sweeping change in the software delivery space.

"Coding 1.0 is dead. Coding 2.0 is being born. They're related, but that's it."
- Matt Beane

It's such an exciting time to be creating digital products, everyone's got so many more capabilities than was previously possible, and coding is just one of those options. I'm personally excited to be able to create art, music, video, and more, and I'm excited for others who haven't been able to code to be able to take an idea and turn it into a real life website or app.

Go on, create the world you want to see.