AI Didn’t Kill Coding. It Killed Typing!

Typing was never the work. Solving problems was.

or decades, the myth persisted that coding was mostly about keystrokes — raw typing speed, memorizing syntax, grinding out boilerplate. But anyone who's delivered scalable systems, solved hard production issues, or built resilient software under real constraints knows better: the real work has always been deeper than typing.

Typing was never the work. Solving problems was.

The common thread in every impactful engineering effort? The tedious grind of typing slows the real work down.

The value isn’t in the keystrokes. It’s in:

• Diagnosing system failure points
• Architecting solutions under constraints
• Solving high-stakes technical problems
• Designing resilient, scalable software

For anyone tired of the grind, AI-assisted development — Vibe Coding — isn’t a threat. It’s the long-overdue escape hatch from boilerplate, letting us stay locked into where we add real value — deep in the problem space.

AI Unlocks Idea Velocity, Not Just Code Generation

In practical terms:

• Exploring new ideas? AI drafts prototypes in minutes.
• Testing technical patterns? AI scaffolds the structure, I focus on the logic.
• Building small utilities or integrations? AI collapses weeks into hours.

This isn’t about laziness. It’s about maximizing time spent where it matters:
Problem space, not typing space.

Yes, maintenance is still real engineering. AI isn’t removing the need for clean architecture, modular design, or thoughtful interfaces. If anything, AI-assisted output creates more pressure to engineer well — because when you move fast, technical debt accumulates faster too.

But now, I spend less time fighting syntax and scaffolding. I stay focused on the hard questions:

• Will this system survive production?
• How does this integrate with legacy constraints?
• Where does the architecture buckle under pressure?
• Can AI accelerate without compounding maintainability risks?

AI Is Splitting the Industry Wide Open

The uncomfortable truth? AI-assisted development will shake out the fakers — and even many of the barely-makers — the tutorial-driven devs who survive by Googling boilerplate and hiding in the layers of abstraction.

But for those of us who’ve:

• Solved distributed failures under pressure
• Designed systems that others couldn’t stabilize
• Learned to ship, adapt, and own technical outcomes

AI doesn’t replace us — it multiplies us.

The grind of typing? Gone.
The work of engineering? More critical than ever.

AI didn’t kill coding — it killed typing.
The real engineers are still here.