The era of ideas-developer

I’m going to wax a bit philosophical in this post, so fair warning if you are going to continue reading.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay. It works. It’s fast. It’s good (and getting better). I don’t believe we are ever going back. But it is also kind of sad.

Puzzles that once required hours of reading and experimentation to solve are just a matter of dumping your code into ChatGPT and asking a few questions. It feels like using a cheat code. Yes, it is faster and more efficient, but also less rewarding. The magic of finally fixing an irksome bug or getting an animation just right just doesn’t feel as magic.

But it isn’t all doom and gloom. The equation of what is valuable and what is possible is shifting under our very keystrokes.

We are entering an era of ideas-developers.

Maybe the industry term we are starting to see being adopted for this is something like a design engineer. Someone who blends knowledge about people, products, and code. Someone who looks for solutions that break the mold or offers new perspectives on old problems. Do they still write lots of code? Yes. But their value is as a context-rich problem solver. An ideas-developer not a web-developer.

Context aware creative thinking about what to do is not as easily replaced by AI.

So where does this leave us? For me there are a few key conclusions.

• AI is rapidly democratizing the ability to write code. Coding is gradually becoming a more common and widespread skill. AI will accelerate this process.
• Advanced technical blog posts are dead. Everyone just uses AI now, me included.
• Learn to code content will remain valuable. Unlocking the power of AI to assist with coding still requires fundamental understanding of the basics of computer programming and how the web works.
• Creative problem solving is more valuable than ever. Knowing what to do is more important than knowing how to do it. AI can easily solve the how do I do this questions.
• Making things is easier. AI is removing barriers for people to build like never before and we will see more and more products launch.
• Human interaction will remain critical. AI will only get ideas and products so far. Person-to-person meetings and conversations will still be incredibly important for businesses to thrive.

Now, proclaiming we are entering a new era is maybe a tad bit hyperbolic. But I do think we are rapidly going to go through a transition as AI makes the “how to code” questions more and more accessible.

Just look at what is possible with v0 and bolt.new.

As Morten Rand-Hendriksen talks about in his recent blog post on a similar topic:

Devs will still have work, plenty of it. It’ll be different work. More demanding, and interesting, and challenging, and human work.

For me personally this has meant a shift towards more creative coding. What can I do that is interesting and useful?

One project I have recently been hacking on is RainbowBlocks.art. A simplistic kids coloring website that I created for my own children, and thought others might enjoy too. I’m not ashamed to admit that there are bits and pieces of this code where I leaned on AI to quickly solve “how to” questions for me. Ultimately, the vision and ideas were mine. I acted as both an ideas-developer and a web-developer.

Happy prompting!