How Buzzwords Breed Fear in Budding Devs
From my room — December 9, 2024
Hello World!,
I still remember when I started programming for fun. ChatGPT was not a thing, but after some time it dropped, and the whole internet was just full of people misleading younger devs that development is gone. In this blog we'll see why AI won't be replacing human devs anytime soon.
We'll talk about the following things:
- How It started
- Things People claim "AI" would do
- Why You shouldnt worry about it
1. How It Started
One evening, I was learning HTML, and I came across a video on YouTube about ChatGPT. I was blown away after using it. As a newbie, I was a bit scared of it (okay, honestly, a lot scared), but I still continued programming (yes, I used to debate with people that HTML is a programming language) because it was fun.
Then I started using it and loved it. I was sure that it's not that good to replace humans, but it was more of a co-worker.
2. Things People claim "AI" would do
In recent times, if you are not living under a rock, you must have seen those advertisements on YouTube where random people are making enormous claims that in 30 days you can be a Python professional if you use AI, or you can make a website with AI using Python in 15 minutes. They say anything they want, like using AI for programming makes debugging 90% faster.
And some amazing packages (who doesn't like money, right?) They interview someone who claims that they have 40-50+ LPA of salary, and they reached there using AI. You see, that's already a red flag because salaries like these are given to senior devs and mostly in MAANGs, and they don't even allow using AI because they don't want their code to be saved to the AI company's servers.
And secondly, do you really think that AI took them from a junior dev to a senior dev? I mean, if they are a senior dev, they must be a lead and solving problems that not a lot of people are tackling. So AI probably isn’t even trained for that use case.
You can see for yourself that everyone saying AI would replace you doesn’t talk about how AI works behind the scenes, how it is made, or educate you about it. No! These people are mostly of two types:
- People selling courses of something using AI, claiming that you’re wasting time and money without using it.
- People saying that AI will replace devs—or rather, a certain kind of dev—and then cleverly placing a banner for their course.
You see, all these people are just trying to make money off you. They themselves know nothing about AI; they just use big buzzwords to sell their courses. Old layoffs and bad market conditions always seem to come with a new buzzword.
I understand that you have to make money, but misleading people and fearmongering in young devs is not a morally and ethically good thing. Making these enormous claims about AI is just a way to make money, as they never actually show you the studies that prove their claims. Most of these people don't even seem to know what they are talking about and if they are really a software engineer or just a marketing person.
See, I am not saying that AI is not good; it is. It makes you way more productive, but it is not good enough to replace humans, and also I am not saying that software devs should be the ones to talk about AI in these ads (actually, I am), but people without knowledge or experience with development don't know what they are talking about.
So that's all bullshit basically.
3. Why You shouldnt worry about it
Not many people remember this, but when WordPress was first released, the same thing happened. Devs were scared it would replace them. But now, it’s not as big a deal—rarely used for everything. The same thing happened when ChatGPT was launched and again when Devin was introduced. It’s all hype to get funding and VC money.
Tools like ChatGPT and Claude are all like co-workers and friends to us and more like coding buddies. At least they are not going to take our jobs.
When AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is released, it might be a game-changer. It could replace jobs, but hey, that’s probably more than a century away. So, don’t worry about it.
Everything will be fine if you work hard and use AI as if it's your friend and not your enemy.
Conclusion
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and remember, just put in more hours and don't worry.