Future of programming craft
I used to enjoy spending endless hours googling hard problems. It was more about a journey than a destination. Thinking about each step in the process, each line of code was a small win. Achieving state of flow, where hours felt like seconds, was a common theme in year 2020. Those were the times when programmers wrote code not for the machine, but for the fellow engineer who is going to maintain this codebase for years to come. That was the last era of real craftmanship for a single reason, people took pride of their work.
Don't get me wrong, some codebases were so bad that AI slop would be an improvement. Those were moslty made by junior developers, like me at the time, trying to figure out how to make code work, at any price. But there was something pure in this struggle, once the solution was found. Everyone was going through this ruthless process of trail and error, something that seems so strange today.
Prediction no.1: Brain degradation
This should not be a shocking discovery for everyone that has once been in shape and then stopped exercising. If muscle is not challenged from time to time, it shrinks. Honestly, this one scares me the most. Each time AI solves a hard problem for me in seconds, my mind becomes more dependant on this almost free dopamine hit. Learned helplessness is now attacking the mind, since it has already captured western bodies.
What would happen in Anthropic raised prices from $200.00 to $10,000.00? Everyone knows they will need to do that eventually, but we have convinced ourselves this is the problem for the future. I am sure this would still be a bargain price for some companies, but for small businesses I am not so sure. AI is powerful, you should use it, but try to complete a single task end to end, from time to time. You will struggle, maybe cry a little, but your mind needs this validation of self worth.
I love to think about functional programming. Everything comes down to function signature. This was such a cool revelation for me, since this part of programming is most feared. It keeps me staying longer in flow state, were challenge is not too easy or too hard. I call it brain rot antidot.
FP == Matching function signatures
Prediciton no.2: Era of emotionless Tab monkey
It's been a while since I felt pleasure when my fingers hit the keyboard. Usually it's like kicking already dead opponent, cold-pressing autocomplete. Not to mention, reading this AI slop every day for 8 hours is not a positive developer experience. The main question going forward should be, why does this feel like a factory work, hard, cold, robotic. I want a fireplace for my soul, were I can express myself through patiently crafted code and make other person feel appreciated. I want a reader to be touched, like in poetry. I want this sequence of 0s and 1s to be beautiful masterpiece.
Money is a big factor, what a surprise ha? Money comes with this simple dillema:
If I can finish 8 hours of work in 2, without caring about quality of that work, I can earn 4 times the money. On the other side, if I want to remain competent, AI should be my last resort, after all other options are exausted.
I would go for option 3, which is working on a project that pays the bills, and others which bring joy but are not paid well, or not paid at all. There I can take all the time in the world to play with software lego blocks and learn something new every day. AI can be a great teacher as well, no doubt about it, but from my experience, people learn best through struggle. You need obstacles to grow, not holding hands all day every day.
Prediction no.3: Going back to roots
Life is cyclic. What used to be popular now it's cosidered old-fashioned. On the other side, we are witnessing similar pattern in server-side rendering, were not everything related to UI should be solved with React. State will come back were it was supposed to be in the first place, on the server. AI wave is large and powerful, it will leave industry in different state and some old habits will die. Software development as a craft will always be precious since most of people's life is digital.
We would need experts that will fix AI slop tech debt. I know that first hand because people reach out to me for complete codebase refactor because project has become unmaintainable. We are still figuring things out, this wave is still going strong, with billions of dollars pouring into it. But at the end of the road, last people that are going to be replaced are senior software developers. On the contrary, we will need more of those sooner than later.
Summary
Does it really matter after all? Nobody knows for sure what tomorrow is going to look like, but I still want to enjoy my everyday work. Even if it makes me a nice, round 0, I would still get up every morning, read software books, and find some other way of supporting myself. That's how much I love this field.
Published on April 5, 2026