AI Software Development
I’ve been a software developer since leaving university in 2007 and this is the biggest change in the job I have seen.
AI coding tools like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex are now so good they can pretty much replace the need to actually write code. Probably a year ago most models would make a subtle mistake, using an API wrong or not understanding a package its trying to use, but now you can one shot whole applications, the agent loop is much better and can understand issues and fix them.
The term vibe coding has popped up as people from any background can create software to fix their problems without having any knowledge or experience coding. And now that the models are so much better they can likely understand and fix any issues they run into, they can even learn to deploy the application to the web.
I still think there’s a situation where they are simply stuck with an issue or an inability to prompt their way to a fix.
Prompting is a new skill, being able to articulate the issue correctly and accurately so the model can do the right fix without over reaching.
Having a background in software development should allow you to think a little higher, maybe less on the implementation in code and more on the requirements and edge cases and maybe the whole application or user flow. Maybe coding by prompt will become the baseline to software development, and the skills and requirements less about coding ability and more about understanding problems and user needs.
