GoKawiilNot so long ago, six months, perhaps, I was seriously convinced that AI would not replace us, the programmers. It would just help us; it would be our assistant. Back then I was mostly firing off one-off prompts in ChatGPT to help me with the odd algorithm, but to my delight, I still hand-crafted nearly all of my code.
Six months later, I’m not sure I can do my daily job without Claude. And I’m not alone: 84% of developers now use or plan to use AI tools, and as far back as February 2023 GitHub was already measuring 46% of the code in Copilot-enabled files as AI-generated, with its CEO predicting 80% “sooner than later”.
I got to test this against real people recently at DevBcn, where we were presenting GolemUI. I made a point of asking every single developer who stopped by our booth how they were using AI.
My deeply unscientific poll, around fifty developers from different companies and different parts of the world, yielded some genuinely scary uniformity. They basically all said the same thing:
“Nowadays I mostly write specs/prompts, and review PRs.” Around fifty developers, different companies, different parts of the world. Basically one answer.
This lines up with Gartner’s prediction that by 2028, 90% of enterprise software engineers will use AI code assistants, up from under 14% in early 2024, with the developer’s role shifting from implementation to orchestration.
84% of developers use or plan to use AI tools Stack Overflow 2025 46% of code AI-generated in Copilot-enabled files, as early as Feb 2023 GitHub 90% by 2028 enterprise engineers using AI assistants Gartner
Not sure about you, but for me, after almost 30 years of writing software (yes, I’m old!), this is a little sad. Though I’m afraid it’s only sad because it means the industry is going through some major changes, and we humans don’t like change. So I, for one, would like to stay positive and believe this might turn out to be good, hopefully in the long run.
Will it? The answer probably depends on your favourite AI YouTuber.
The age of token efficiency Section titled “The age of token efficiency”
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