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I remember when I started my career — there was no TypeScript, no React, no Angular. There was Prototype.js, where you’d need to understand how the inheritance chain works in JavaScript. Several years later, React dominated frontend development, and many new joiners only knew how to write in React. They didn’t understand JavaScript itself; they didn’t even realize that everything you can do with React is possible in pure vanilla JavaScript — just slower.
Slower, quicker — that’s what it’s always been about. Last week, I started using Claude Code heavily just to try it out, and it’s been mind-blowing. It makes me 2x, 3x quicker to deliver, and under the right guidance, it can write code as if I’d written it myself. Just… you don’t need to code anymore. And one can easily imagine that the new generation of software engineers won’t code anymore either. They won’t go through the same pain we did. They won’t need to think about how to write this function, what that error means, or internalize the pain into experience, into instinct.
There’s a certain beauty in writing code yourself as well. To some, programming is a means to an end — the product. To others, coding itself is the end. It’s a process of laying down your thoughts and translating them into an alien language, a kind of witchcraft only certain wizards can master. The new generation may not get the chance to experience that beauty of coding.
We are the last generation of coders, and we’re all living in the shadow of agentic AI.