AI moves programming's core from syntax to clarity, expanding the developer's role instead of ending it.
The resistance to AI is grief, not fearDevelopers are not afraid of the tool; they are mourning the process they fell in love with, like a carpenter replaced by a robot.
AI is another abstraction layer, not a replacementJust as languages freed him from registers, memory addresses and machine code, AI changes the level at which he works instead of shrinking his role.
Clarity is the new bottleneck in every professionSyntax is no longer the constraint: describing intent, giving examples, setting constraints and testing the result is now a universal requirement, from lawyers to designers to managers.
Executive SummaryAI
Leonardo Silva opens with an evening at his desk preparing coding exercises for the students he mentors in his spare time, when the thought struck him that AI might be making all of it meaningless.
He traces the feeling back to 1987, when as a teenager he got a Commodore C128, typed programs from computer magazines line by line, and even demonstrated his nested-loop pattern program on display machines at the Hartlauer in the old Pluskauf.
He argues the resistance among experienced developers is not fear of technology but grief, like a carpenter watching a robot do the same work faster and without breaks: what is lost is not the result but the process.
Working with AI every day, he instead feels powerful because the distance between idea and reality has shortened, which made him realise he was in love with developing rather than coding, and that AI is just another abstraction layer like the programming languages that freed him from registers and machine code.
He concludes that programming is only the first frontier, with designers, writers, lawyers, accountants and doctors facing the same identity question, and that the thesis to remember is that the new programming language is clarity, so he now teaches agency and clarity rather than syntax.
Key Quote
“isn't AI making all these things meaningless?”
— Leonardo Silva
Key Quote
“The problem is that AI takes away the part that many of us fell in love with.”
— Leonardo Silva
Key Quote
“This resistance isn't fear of technology, it's grief.”