I’m a Principal Developer and I haven’t written a line of code in a year.
I’m a Principal Developer and I haven’t written a line of code in a year.
That’s a strange sentence to write.
A year ago, I was still deep in C#, TypeScript, APIs, infrastructure, architecture reviews, debugging production systems, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines.
Today?
I mostly describe systems.
I talk to AI.
I architect with AI.
I review with AI.
I direct, refine, test, challenge, and iterate with AI.
But physically typing code?
Almost never.
The last thing I manually “coded” was tweaking a bit of Terraform. Even that now feels one voice command away from disappearing entirely.
And honestly, it’s unsettling.
I genuinely feel like an accountant in 1863 who’s just been handed a MacBook Pro and a subscription to Xero.
Not because it’s impossible to comprehend.
Because within minutes you realise entire industries are about to change around it.
And then the terrifying thought arrives:
What could somebody from that era have built if they’d truly understood the tool they were holding?
That’s the uncomfortable part about the current AI wave.
Not the hype.
Not the demos.
The speed.
Because we’re rapidly moving toward a world where a non-technical person says:
“I want a CRM system that connects warehouse operations, customer service, complaints, sales, marketing, IT, security testing, and technical teams” and I want it to solve operational problems.
And increasingly, the answer is no longer:
“That will take a team of developers 18 months.”
The answer is:
“Okay.”
That’s the shift.
Not years away.
Months away if not days.
Software development itself is becoming abstracted.
The value is moving higher up the stack:
Understanding systems
Understanding businesses
Understanding people
I’m obsessed with AI because I understand what it can deliver.
The closer you are to the technology, the less theoretical it feels.
I sit there sometimes thinking:
What do you even tell your children to learn now?
What skills still compound?
What does society look like in 18 months if this pace continues?
For decades we built society around knowledge accumulation.
Go to university.
Build expertise.
Become specialised.
But what happens when intelligence itself becomes massively accessible?
What happens when execution collapses from years into days?
It’s beginning to feel like the bottleneck is no longer software development.
Delivery is rapidly becoming commoditised.
The people who win over the next few years probably won’t be the people who produce the most output manually.
They’ll be the people who can identify valuable problems and direct intelligence effectively.
That’s partly why I’m so focused on AI now.
Because it feels inevitable.
And honestly, the biggest challenge no longer feels technical.
The challenge is figuring out where to apply all of this capability before the rest of the world catches up.
Because for the first time in my career, I’m not sure where the ceiling is anymore.
And I’m not sure anybody else does either.