While working on my latest hobby project, I realized something surprising: AI has completely changed the way I write code.

I can literally add new features and fix bugs just by asking AI to do it. It feels like having a team of smart junior developers doing everything I ask them to do. They never complain. They give well-thought-out suggestions based on what they’ve learned from their vast training data.

It’s similar to what I would do myself, but at a much faster pace. Over the years, I’ve developed the skill of Googling the internet for answers to my problems and applying those answers to my project. AI does that as well. Since it has already been trained on a large portion of the internet, it can update my code, add new files if needed, and even test the changes to make sure everything works.

At first, I just used ChatGPT to ask questions, sometimes pasting snippets of my code when I needed help. Then I discovered GitHub Copilot. I was impressed because it not only suggested solutions but also modified my code directly. Unfortunately, I quickly reached the monthly free limit, so I started looking for alternatives.

I then tried Google Gemini, which had a much higher limit and was capable of handling more complex tasks. However, it often switched to an older version of the AI, and many times it took too long to finish tasks. Last week, I started using OpenAI Codex, and so far it’s the one I’m happiest with. It’s fast, comprehensive, and I haven’t hit my limit yet—even after giving it many tasks and asking a lot of questions. There were even some problems that only Codex was able to solve, which really impressed me.

These tools are evolving incredibly quickly, and by the time you read this, newer and better versions of these coding assistants may already exist.

Admittedly, there are still cases where AI can’t help. But to be fair, that’s also true for real human developers.

Whether AI or human, I often have to engage in long conversations until we arrive at the right solution. Sometimes I even go back to my old strategy of Googling for answers to help steer my conversations with AI in the right direction.

It also helps that I’m a developer myself, so I can usually tell when AI is giving me nonsense—what they call hallucinations. That doesn’t happen very often, though, unless the topic is extremely niche and there’s very little information about it on the internet.

What seems more important now is not necessarily the ability to program everything myself, but the ability to prompt AI effectively so it can complete the task I want it to do. Dare I say it—I think we’re reaching a point where programs can be built even without knowing how to program. You just need to be a good manager who knows how to communicate with your “team” and get the best out of them. Once you unlock that skill, it can be incredibly rewarding.

A few years ago, I would never have thought AI could replace developers. Now, I think it can… quite easily.

Whether that’s exciting or a little scary, one thing is clear—we’re stepping into a completely new world.