Writing code is no longer the limit
With the advent of AI-powered code generators such as Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf, it’s now easier than ever to spit out seemingly working code—code that works most of the time, sometimes requiring only small tweaks. This is, in many ways, different from the StackOverflow era of copy-pasta, where heavy tweaking and integration into your own solution were required. However, today’s coding agents understand your project and can put the code you need in the right places. This has somewhat closed the gap between intermediate and senior programmers, but seniors still have an edge due to their breadth and depth of experience.
So is code really the limit anymore? What will developers’ jobs look like in the future? Developers today find themselves responding to “Y/N” questions about whether the code is fit for purpose from agentic coding tools such as Claude Code.
What does this improvement mean for developers?
Agentic coding tools have been increasing productivity for many developers by letting us focus on the hard parts of our applications and delegating the mundane parts to AI. However, the benefits are not felt equally across all levels of developers. Seniors benefit most from this simply because they have what is usually described as “taste” or sound judgment. Vibe coding really works best for those with good intuition and judgment. That ability usually comes with experience. The idea here is that your mileage will vary depending on your experience level as a dev. However, you’ll see some degree of productivity boost regardless of your experience level.
The question then is: can juniors level up through this process, or will they remain stagnant? How do we now appreciate memorizing patterns when agents can spit them out? How do we develop “taste” without prior experience? I think we can easily say that some vibe coders will basically begin to know what feels good and what doesn’t, and over time their vibing will improve. The fact that we can now iterate faster means we have faster feedback, and we can discard solutions that don’t work a lot quicker and rinse and repeat. In this way, we inevitably give in to the vibes, as Andrej Karpathy remarked.
The future of Software Development
In my opinion, software development consists of two main things: requirements and implementation. The part that will remain unchanged is gathering requirements and architecting solutions. The important thing for developers isn’t going to be how many JS frontend frameworks you know or a plethora of tools whose syntax and ceremonies you had to memorize. Today’s agent can write code for different frameworks and libraries that’s just as good as juniors and even some seniors. We often have the misconception that seniors know how to code super well, and I don’t think that’s true either. Agentic tools will in many ways level the playing field. So then what will actually be important post-AI code generators?
A solid mastery of the fundamentals of software engineering, architecture, and design principles will be ever more important. Spend time understanding the fundamentals, as they will help you become a better vibe coder. You understand your problem domain better than the AI. AI is only as good as the information you give it. So knowing what looks like a good solution to your problem is important. High-level problem-solving skills will be ever more important, like knowing how to decompose a big problem into smaller, more manageable chunks. Teamwork skills are still important, whether you work with agents or humans.
Summary
- Writing code is no longer the main bottleneck for developers
- Agentic coding tools are closing the gap between junior and senior developers in terms of code generation
- Seniors still have an edge due to experience, judgment, and understanding of fundamentals
- Mastery of software engineering fundamentals, architecture, and problem decomposition is increasingly important
- Teamwork and communication remain essential, whether collaborating with humans or AI agents
Happy coding!