.jpg)
I saw this headline the other day. My first instinct was to laugh. My second instinct was to edit the image and put a dumpster fire underneath it. Because that is exactly where 90% of the projects started by people who believe this headline are headed.
The hype machine is screaming that coding is dead. As a professional developer who actually ships real products, I am here to tell you that is a lie.
The "Amateur Hour" Problem
Let's be real. The market is currently being flooded with wantrepreneurs armed with a credit card and an AI subscription. They see tools like Lovable not as power drills but as magic wands.
They don't want to learn the technology. They want a quick win. They skip the fundamentals of how systems actually work, generate thousands of lines of code they don't understand, wrap a stripe integration around it, and call it a startup.
The result is that they are polluting the ecosystem with brittle wrapper apps that fall apart the moment a user tries an edge case the AI didn't predict. It is bad for users, and it ruins trust for those of us building legitimate tools.
Where the Time Actually Goes
Here is the hard truth the marketing pages won't tell you. AI doesn't replace the need to sink time into a project. It just changes where you sink that time.
The amateurs think they are avoiding development work. In reality, they are just doing bad development work intensely.
When you use an AI agent to build a complex app without knowing how to code, you spend 10% of your time prompting it to create the happy path. You then spend 90% of your time in a panic loop trying to figure out why the database connection fails only on Tuesdays or why the authentication token is leaking.
If you are spending hours debugging code, tweaking configurations, and agonizing over system architecture, guess what? You are a developer. And if you don't have the foundational knowledge to do those things, you aren't a founder. You are a passenger in a self-driving car with no steering wheel headed toward a cliff.
How Pros Use the Tools
So is coding dead? Absolutely not. But typing syntax is dying rapidly.
If you are willing to actually learn the fundamentals, like how APIs talk to each other, database structures, and security basics, then this is the greatest time in history to be a builder.
At FlowDevs, we use these AI tools every day. But we use them as force multipliers, not crutches. The AI handles the boilerplate that used to take us hours. We spend that saved time on high-level architecture, user experience, bulletproofing security, and ensuring scalability.
We succeed because when the AI inevitably hallucinates a bad piece of logic, we have the expertise to open the hood, spot the error instantly, and fix it. We are the pilots directing the autopilot.
The Verdict
Don't buy the "Replace Devs" hype. These tools aren't replacing developers. They are raising the bar for what a developer is expected to deliver.
If you just want to play around, have fun with the agents. But if you want to build a real business product that can handle real users and real money, stop trying to shortcut the process. You don't need a better prompt engineer. You need a real technical partner who understands the iceberg below the surface.
I saw this headline the other day. My first instinct was to laugh. My second instinct was to edit the image and put a dumpster fire underneath it. Because that is exactly where 90% of the projects started by people who believe this headline are headed.
The hype machine is screaming that coding is dead. As a professional developer who actually ships real products, I am here to tell you that is a lie.
The "Amateur Hour" Problem
Let's be real. The market is currently being flooded with wantrepreneurs armed with a credit card and an AI subscription. They see tools like Lovable not as power drills but as magic wands.
They don't want to learn the technology. They want a quick win. They skip the fundamentals of how systems actually work, generate thousands of lines of code they don't understand, wrap a stripe integration around it, and call it a startup.
The result is that they are polluting the ecosystem with brittle wrapper apps that fall apart the moment a user tries an edge case the AI didn't predict. It is bad for users, and it ruins trust for those of us building legitimate tools.
Where the Time Actually Goes
Here is the hard truth the marketing pages won't tell you. AI doesn't replace the need to sink time into a project. It just changes where you sink that time.
The amateurs think they are avoiding development work. In reality, they are just doing bad development work intensely.
When you use an AI agent to build a complex app without knowing how to code, you spend 10% of your time prompting it to create the happy path. You then spend 90% of your time in a panic loop trying to figure out why the database connection fails only on Tuesdays or why the authentication token is leaking.
If you are spending hours debugging code, tweaking configurations, and agonizing over system architecture, guess what? You are a developer. And if you don't have the foundational knowledge to do those things, you aren't a founder. You are a passenger in a self-driving car with no steering wheel headed toward a cliff.
How Pros Use the Tools
So is coding dead? Absolutely not. But typing syntax is dying rapidly.
If you are willing to actually learn the fundamentals, like how APIs talk to each other, database structures, and security basics, then this is the greatest time in history to be a builder.
At FlowDevs, we use these AI tools every day. But we use them as force multipliers, not crutches. The AI handles the boilerplate that used to take us hours. We spend that saved time on high-level architecture, user experience, bulletproofing security, and ensuring scalability.
We succeed because when the AI inevitably hallucinates a bad piece of logic, we have the expertise to open the hood, spot the error instantly, and fix it. We are the pilots directing the autopilot.
The Verdict
Don't buy the "Replace Devs" hype. These tools aren't replacing developers. They are raising the bar for what a developer is expected to deliver.
If you just want to play around, have fun with the agents. But if you want to build a real business product that can handle real users and real money, stop trying to shortcut the process. You don't need a better prompt engineer. You need a real technical partner who understands the iceberg below the surface.
Related Blog Posts
