I just finished writing a book about coding with the help of artificial intelligence tools. From September to January, I spent several hours each day experimenting with different tools and then writing about the experience.
Within the first few weeks of writing the book, I concluded that my coding skills had become obsolete. My feelings were hurt.
Traditionally, a computer programmer's primary job is to translate computer users' needs into steps for a computer to perform. AI tools will soon be able to do this job much faster and better than most people.
The title of my new book is Coding with AI For Dummies, but it really should be called Moving Beyond Coding For People. When AI can write code faster and better than people, it will give people the opportunity to focus on the jobs that AI can’t do well, including:
Knowing the difference between good and bad solutions
Strategic thinking
Improving processes
Understanding people’s needs
While some AI systems can often write acceptable code when given good instructions, they have exactly zero experience with being human. As a result, they fail at most tasks that require an understanding of people — such as teaching, collaborating, negotiating, balancing competing demands, creating user-friendly and intuitive user interfaces, and knowing when a solution to a problem is “elegant.” These essential parts of a computer programmer’s job often get overlooked in favor of typing code to “make it work.” As a result, programmers all too often become antisocial “robots,” and that’s often what’s expected of them.
I’m happy to give up the mechanical parts of what I do. Over the last 20 years, my primary jobs have been coding and teaching people how to code. Going forward, I see my job as teaching people how to not code so they can focus on the more important and human parts of writing good software.