The thing is, I love coding

I recently came to understand the sentence “the value has never been in the code” during one of the meetings we’ve been holding lately in my team. Now, with AI doing a lot of things, meetings are less and less formal. Or, should I say, we need fewer and fewer formal meetings. Fewer SCRUM or other agile ceremonies, to the point that we’ve had to add meetings just to see each other and not lose contact as a remote team.

So we’re in a “free talk” or “team chat” or whatever, and the conversation is about... AI, you guessed it. Someone says he’s happy, and states that agents now do everything he didn’t want to do anymore. Namely, coding.

That was kind of a eureka moment for me. You know, the dev wasn’t a junior seeing an opportunity to escape his imposter syndrome at little cost. He was an engineer with 20+ years of experience, with the grey beard, the glasses, the hoodie and all. I mean, the guy was probably born with a headset bearing a “Born to code” sticker. (End of the cliché moment, sorry -_-‘)

So, I’m there, facing the man, boiling inside. I mean, I get that the market wants AI. I get that AI is driving the market, and that even trying to weigh or question it would be like jumping off the wagon right before the tunnel. And I play along, learning, teaching myself, etc., so I have no problem saying that the job is changing, and that, at least if we want to keep doing it, maybe the best thing average devs like me can do is ride the wave as well as we can. But here I was, facing someone who was candidly saying that coding wasn’t his thing.

After a few moments of surprise, I ended up smiling to myself. The thing is, I still love coding. And I believe that’s a very powerful thought.

I can’t put my finger on it yet, but I truly believe this has something to do with maturity. Loving the craft is separate from whether AI is good for the world. The environmental, security and social issues that AI creates or makes worse aren’t a day-to-day professional decision. But huge factories churning out low-quality furniture don’t stop thousands of woodworkers around the world from doing amazing work.

But beyond that: I adore being a father, and still, I don’t feel the need to work as a preschool teacher. I love dancing, and you won’t see me on a stage anywhere. I love cooking, and decided a long time ago that working long hours while everyone else is resting isn’t compatible with my wanting to be a present father. So... why should coding be any different?

In the long run, the field is wide open for people who want to code and don’t spend all that enthusiasm on their day job. Open source, robotics, side projects, even self-teaching are all very good ways to spend time coding. And I even believe that keeping your hands dirty will probably still make you a better engineer, whether your day job is coding everything in assembly or managing a dark factory.