Everyone Says “Coding Is Dead” – Here’s Why They’re Wrong

code powers everything. So software engineering will never die. The manner in which we do it will change but it will never die. Maybe something else will come over the top of it. Maybe the abstraction will come higher and higher and higher because we're talking about um what is it? Is it assembly the the the raw foundational ones and zeros? You keep abstracting. You keep abstracting and um people made it easier and easier and easier. Maybe we'll get another abstraction on top of you know what cuz remember we we we we think strictly in web right but there's code in in [ __ ] probably this toothbrush. Do you know what I mean? There's code in this camera. There's code in pretty much everything. So code I did learn assembly by the way in university we did some like uh addition and subtraction and like going like jumping to a loop all in assembly like how you can do a loop. uh and something like this and it it's [snorts] kind of like horrible in a way if you look at it. Uh but we also did some C. We we learned C. Um so I yeah I did like some fun math stuff in C. Uh that that's gosh that's like 13 14 years ago. Oh man, I'm old. [laughter] Yeah. But there'll be there'll be things that you can literally create where you don't need to look at the line of code, right? And and and the maj and you know we go to the 8020 principle, right? There'll be 80% of software and 80% of things now where you can just write it because half the stuff you write anyway if we're going to abstract even further 80 8% of code that you write is stuff that you've copied elsewhere anyway. You've reproduced. 20% is completely new, completely novel. So we're just abstracting a layer on top of that. 8% of software now will be created by AI. The 20% will be assisted by AI but with an understanding of what's going on to really um how do you say um make the most of it. Yes, you need to make the most of it. And also performance is like people don't care about performance when it's like clicking a button. But when you create something for the real world world and if you want to create something scalable like something big that is not just you know a tiny piece uh that AI can create you do really need to care about performance because you want to push the boundaries and oh yeah with performance we're nowhere near like you know a website is turning the fans of my computer on so we do need still performance we are not where you you would be like not thinking about it. You need it. You need to think about it. So AI didn't fix the the Cloudflare outage today. I'll tell you that much. Right. It might have been able to diagnose it. It might have been able to point them in the direction, but I bet an engineer was with their fingertips coding understanding like knowing what what they are doing knowing that the AI hasn't knowing that you know where where the eye is right and where the eye is wrong, where to trust it, where to not trust it, you know. So, um, I'm bullish on AI obviously, right? Everything I talk about is AI. I've got an AI podcast. I'm bullish on it, but I'm also realistic. I'm optimistic and I'm realistic, right? You know, and no one knows obviously, right? Let's just carry out everything that nobody knows. It always makes me laugh when you get people in the comments like unequivocally saying that's the second time I've said unequivocally today. And I don't think I've ever said unequivocally in my entire life. Put it that way. Unless I'm, you know, quoting someone. I've never used anyway when people were just so like your vocabulary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Someone was like um Gemini will it was a comment on my TikTok. Gemini will is not a good model. It's like I I thought it was a good model but you know it's a good model. Like what's the deal? Anyway, this is part of a larger conversation on my show Command AI which we stream live every single week. We discuss the news and all things related to AI in the world of design and web. Catch us next week and join in the banter.