--- title: We mourn our craft | daily.dev description: AI coding tools are fundamentally changing software development, forcing developers to choose between moral principles and career survival. While AI can... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/we-mourn-our-craft-rhdtuknzs twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: We mourn our craft | daily.dev og:description: AI coding tools are fundamentally changing software development, forcing developers to choose between moral principles and career survival. While AI can... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/we-mourn-our-craft-rhdtuknzs og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/RhDtuknZS.png og:image:alt: We mourn our craft og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # We mourn our craft **[Read the Tea Leaves](https://daily.dev/sources/nolanlawson)** · 3 min read · 57 upvotes · 21 comments ## Summary AI coding tools are fundamentally changing software development, forcing developers to choose between moral principles and career survival. While AI can generate code faster and potentially better than humans, this shift transforms programming from a craft into code review and oversight. Senior developers face pressure to adopt these tools or risk being outpaced by junior colleagues using AI assistants. The transition marks the end of hand-coding as a craft, similar to how blacksmithing became obsolete, leaving experienced developers to mourn the loss of creative satisfaction and personal ownership in their work. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@yaireo** · 11 upvotes > No WE don't. don't speak for others **@dmitriylezhnev** · 2 upvotes > The progress just handed the author a tool that makes him 10x more productive, what is he mourning about? **@byteoutlaw** · 2 upvotes > So code review and oversight is not a craft? ;) **@godieph** · 2 upvotes > As an engineer who suffered a stroke but continues to work with the help of AI-assisted code writing, I can attest that these tools have been almost a godsend. > > However, they still lack a crucial aspect of problem-solving logic. One significant flaw is that AI tools assume each tool they use is perfect, and if the tool they're using has bugs, the AI will continue to loop and try to use it, blaming itself for the error rather than identifying the issue with the tool. > > It took me just two minutes to write a bash script to wrap the tool and fix the bug by properly escaping double quotes. > > This... **@coppnic** · 1 upvotes > > similar to how blacksmithing became obsolete > > And here we are, with our mass produced quickly breaking things that are not anymore made to last, or even made to inherit. Fast fashion, just what the industry wants us to do with our code. Why make it perfect, if we can quickly replace it, right? > > This is just another cancerous US-influenced industrialization of another craft that we, in a few years, will regret heavily. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Death of the Software Craftsman](https://daily.dev/posts/the-death-of-the-software-craftsman-ae0ea4mxj) · RUBYLAND · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Is the craft dead?](https://daily.dev/posts/is-the-craft-dead--q7u0m8yfu) · Scott Hanselman · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI is slowly munching away my passion](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-is-slowly-munching-away-my-passion-ny3obiud2) · Lobsters · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#career](https://daily.dev/tags/career) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/we-mourn-our-craft-rhdtuknzs) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"We mourn our craft","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/we-mourn-our-craft-rhdtuknzs","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/we-mourn-our-craft-rhdtuknzs"},"datePublished":"2026-02-07T16:52:58.552Z","dateModified":"2026-02-08T04:16:06.011Z","description":"AI coding tools are fundamentally changing software development, forcing developers to choose between moral principles and career survival. 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Bonde","url":"https://daily.dev/byteoutlaw","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--veTChHK7--/f_auto/v1733220070/avatars/avatar_5cQvIZKr5tDFDotVDjulg"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"As an engineer who suffered a stroke but continues to work with the help of AI-assisted code writing, I can attest that these tools have been almost a godsend.\nHowever, they still lack a crucial aspect of problem-solving logic. One significant flaw is that AI tools assume each tool they use is perfect, and if the tool they’re using has bugs, the AI will continue to loop and try to use it, blaming itself for the error rather than identifying the issue with the tool.\nIt took me just two minutes to write a bash script to wrap the tool and fix the bug by properly escaping double quotes.\nThis is what makes human valuable, we dont try to appease our prompts :3","datePublished":"2026-02-13T01:50:02.342Z","dateModified":"2026-02-13T01:51:16.913Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/RhDtuknZS#c-h6cirCCjO","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Roger Filomeno (GoDie)","url":"https://daily.dev/godieph","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--8w20T68w--/f_auto/v1737970591/avatars/avatar_nuz2DyOpOCneY1So04Kic"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"similar to how blacksmithing became obsolete\n\nAnd here we are, with our mass produced quickly breaking things that are not anymore made to last, or even made to inherit. Fast fashion, just what the industry wants us to do with our code. Why make it perfect, if we can quickly replace it, right?\nThis is just another cancerous US-influenced industrialization of another craft that we, in a few years, will regret heavily.","datePublished":"2026-03-24T12:43:44.261Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/RhDtuknZS#c-VPUsMp3Tc","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"coppnic","url":"https://daily.dev/coppnic","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--8VyNl1cb--/f_auto/v1732889303/avatars/avatar_z5bNZJIOpNguomDjmmrE2"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}}]} ```