This weekend, while I was working as a mountain hut keeper on Mount Resegone (in Italy), I talked to someone who had decided to quit being a developer and completely change his career: one of the main reasons was AI.
This guy was demoralized seeing how new hires were pretty good at building software with AI, he felt like his nearly 10 years of experience had been stripped of its value, and he started wondering if it really made sense to keep doing this job in 2026.
That same day I ran into another person, an old colleague of mine and his eyes start to shining when talking about AI, he told me how this revolution had given him a ton of new energy to get back in the game and reignite the passion he had inside.
Two people. Two completely different perspectives. Two reasons to reflect.
Personally, I believe AI is reshuffling the deck, but is what someone has learned over 10 years of experience really useless today? I really don’t think so. I feel like I belong to those people who are genuinely excited about AI, and in my own small way I notice that the knowledge I’ve built up over these 12 years as a developer is still one of the most valuable things I have and can truly make a difference.
Sure, these days we often hear about people building applications with zero programming knowledge, telling us how they launched their app on the web and now feel like unicorns among the many who didn’t make it. But what happens when the application is put under stress? When it needs to scale? How are they doing from a security standpoint? How do they handle application monitoring? Do they have CI/CD pipelines or did AI tell them to just copy-paste the build artifact? What did they end up with in terms of architecture?
I believe experience truly makes a difference. In my own way, I’m the one guiding AI through development, and every day I notice how often AI tends to overcomplicate things or drift away from what I consider good software. I frequently run into code duplication or small inefficiencies that, when you add them up across a large application, make a real difference in terms of cost and performance, especially when it comes to cloud applications.
The bottom line is: thanks to AI, anyone can build an application in a short time, but we are still the ones who make the difference, with our experience, with the mistakes we’ve already made, with what we’ve already learned.
Today, being a good developer means being skilled at both software development and mastering AI.
Our experience is what can truly set us apart. With that said, I’ll leave you with a deep-dive read on my blog about clean architecture 😉
<a href="https://www.thinkasadev.com/en/clean-architecture-2/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://www.thinkasadev.com/en/clean-architecture-2/</a>

Giorgio

A developer reflects on two contrasting reactions to AI among experienced engineers — one demoralized, one energized. The author argues that years of hands-on experience remain highly valuable in the AI era, as seasoned developers can guide AI tools toward better architecture, security, scalability, and efficiency. While AI enables anyone to build apps quickly, experienced developers still make the critical difference in production-quality software.

Knowledge in the age of AI