I’ve been hearing the narrative for two years. Everyone thinks AI is coming for all the jobs, starting with programming. But I am a developer, and from where I stand, the hype is settling down. I am seeing a very different reality. This Generative AI is not a replacement for human intelligence. I think it’s just a powerful tool, but a deeply flawed one.
Problem with AI Code: It’s Just Error
I hear people say AI is the end of coders. I really don’t think so. My experience is completely different. When I try to use GenAI for any real coding, I find it fails constantly.
The biggest problem I find is that its code looks right, but it’s just plausibly wrong. It’s full of subtle errors that take time to find. As you said, it’s like a frustrating game. I fix one bug the AI made, and that “fix” just creates a new bug somewhere else in my project.
If my project is small, maybe it’s fine. But I’ve found that when my codebase gets big and complex, the AI is just hopelessly lost. It doesn’t get the architecture. It doesn’t understand the business logic or the dependencies. It just can’t handle real-world complexity.
The Huge Security Risk
For me, the biggest flaw, and honestly a massive security vulnerability, is that AI can’t keep pace with the real world. Security has to be my highest priority for any application I build. But the AI models I use are trained on old, static data.
This creates some crazy problems. I’ll be working on a project with Next.js 16, and I am shocked when the AI confidently gives me code using the old, deprecated router from version 14 or 15. I ask for help with Tailwind v4, and it gives me a v3 config file. That config system is completely different now and incompatible.
I don’t see this as a simple “bug.” I see the AI as a liability. It actively puts technical debt and security holes right into my projects.
Why I Think “Cheap” AI Isn’t Really Cheap
So I ask myself, if this tool is so flawed, why is everyone pushing it so hard? I think the push is coming from non-technical management. It’s people in HR or SEO departments who don’t code but do want to cut costs.
They are sold a simple, alluring idea. They think they can just lay off expensive human coders and buy a “cheaper” AI subscription.
But I believe “cheap” is cheap for a reason. What’s the real cost? I’ll tell you what I think the real cost is. The real cost is my salary, a senior developer’s salary, being spent debugging the AI’s broken code instead of building new features.
AI is artificially inexpensive right now. So those companies like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic in a race. They are not trying to make a profit. They are just burning billions in investor money to try and capture the market. This has made the whole thing feel overrated.
We’re Misunderstanding What AI Is
I believe the fundamental misunderstanding is about what this thing even is. I feel we’ve been led to believe this is a thinking machine. It is not.
As I see it, Generative AI is a statistical model. It’s just a profoundly complex system for predicting the next most likely word or piece of code based on all the data it was trained on.
It has no “intent.” It has no “understanding.” I know it cannot “architect” a system for me. It cannot grasp why a piece of code exists. It is just mimicking the patterns of intelligence.
This is why we don’t hear anyone in serious R&D talking about AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, arriving soon. Maybe it will come in seven, ten, or fifty years, but I am not holding my breath. What we have on my desk right now is a tool. It is not a colleague.
For programming job, let’s dont worries about a direct human replacement. Our job is just evolving. I have to be an editor, an architect, a skeptic, and a security auditor who checks the AI’s work. We can think the human element, my ability to understand the purpose of the code, has just become more valuable than ever.