AI for Development is like the Nail Gun for construction

AI for development is like what the nail gun did for construction. When the nail gun was introduced in the 50s it took a crew from 2 to 3 weeks to 3 to 7 days to frame a house. A worker went from hand nailing 300 - 400 to 3,000 - 5,000 nails in a day.

What it didn't do is replace the construction worker. It made delivery time on projects a lot faster and improve consistency, but you still needed people to put the wood together and to direct the nail where it went. Also the nail gun couldn't be used for everything and having the skill to properly pound a nail in all situations was very important.

Programmers are now learning how to wield the new nail gun of the tech world. For me, I use it as a thought partner daily. I fill in gaps faster in my knowledge allowing me to solve problems faster. I have also been able to expand out to new languages and technologies with ease. You still need to have a strong development background with years of experience writing code, but these LLMs do help take a lot of the mundane process out of our work.

Always understand what you are creating / troubleshooting. Use AI as the tool it is, to help in those more repetitive mundane tasks while using your mastery of the language and technology for more precise requirements. Don't be left behind like the construction worker who refused to use the nail gun!