An ode to craftsmanship in software development

"Your coding apprentice can build, at your direction, pretty much anything now. The task becomes more like conducting an orchestra than playing in it. Not all members of the orchestra want to conduct, but given that is where things are headed, I think we all need to consider it at least."

"You can dabble as much in code as you want. You can check every line, merely review the overall architecture, or, if you are like me, you can be quite content with moving past the grind of actually writing code to orchestrating the process and ensuring the proper final result."

"I will miss the satisfaction of writing the lovely procedure that does one thing cleanly and quickly, of creating the single object that does everything you need it to do and nothing more, of getting things working just right. All of that is gone, as are the conductor's days of playing a spotlight solo."

Senior craftspeople traditionally find satisfaction in writing elegant code and designing beautiful architectures. However, with AI coding assistants, the role is shifting from individual contributor to conductor. Developers can now direct AI to build almost anything, reducing tedious work but also eliminating the personal satisfaction of crafting clean, efficient code. While some developers can still engage deeply with code review and architecture, others may prefer stepping back from the grind entirely. This transition represents a fundamental change in how experienced developers work, requiring them to adapt to orchestrating processes rather than playing individual parts, though this shift comes with a bittersweet loss of hands-on coding satisfaction.

Read at InfoWorld