Changes in programming made possible with AI

I’ve been working in programming for the last 16 years. Let’s see what changes I see in our industry that are enabled by generative AI.

Rapid prototyping

The last few months, I’ve been working on a set of WordPress plugins, related to event organization. With the help of AI, I’m able to get a minimal viable version of a feature that got to my mind in hours—which makes the whole development process more fun and faster. Before AI, I was trying to “measure twice and cut once” while programming—trying to minimize the waste, the expensive, development time. Currently, I’m building quick and dirty, first version with heavy help of Claude, and then I’m improving the code when (or if) I end up using it.

Easy technology switch

Use of generative AI makes it easy to switch technology. My professional experience in the last decade was mostly in AngularJS—an outdated, frontend framework. AI, allows me to start building things with other technologies, and learning while doing something practical—which is my favourite way of learning.

Priority shift from programming to solution building

AI makes the skill of speaking the machine’s language less important—right now, it can make the code that compile just fine in no time. But this doesn’t make the programmer’s job redundant—it just shifts the value to solution building. We can spend more time understanding the business case of users of our application, and spend less time turning it into code that can runs on a machine.

Conclusions

For me personably, the biggest shift is that as a sole developer, I can easily start building a solution and try turning it into a product. Things that before felt like a bit too much to chew for a team of one, feels much more reachable right now. The current technology opens a possibility to build and run a micro-SaaS, especially if combined with affordable prices for the customers.