The Death of Code as Craft

Are developers artists, or are they cogs? If they are artists, individual care and craft—the hallmarks of great work—are prized, and handcrafting code would be highly profitable. If coding is just a cog in the industrial machine, then the job of the software engineer is diminished. For many years, Jon Christensen—a software engineer himself—argued the former, but with the rise of AI, he worries that the latter is becoming true. It signals a profound shift in the economics of the tech industry and our relationship to the labor of technology company building. I found his perspective honest and refreshing. —Evan Armstrong

I have a confession to make.For the better part of two decades, I've been a card-carrying member of the code-as-craft cult, which espouses the belief that deeply considered, finely honed code can create better products. I used to evangelize the ideology to anyone who would listen. I’ve waxed poetic about the sanctity of clean code. The nobility of well-architected systems. The pride of a perfect pull request.

As the founder of Kelsus, a software development services company that has built products for more than 40 startups and large companies, including Chewy, Intel, Equifax, and Splunk, I've browbeaten teammates to adopt rigorous coding standards and argued myself hoarse in conference rooms fighting for more time to hone our digital craftsmanship. I've even rage-quit projects where management failed to recognize the value of well-honed code.

Code as craft was my religion, my identity. And among developers, I was not alone.

But a blinding light on the horizon of technology has made me question everything I once believed. The meteoric rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) has cast a shadow over the concept of code as craft, threatening to eclipse it entirely.

In this piece, we'll embark on a journey beyond the horizon and into the land of AI-driven development. We'll explore the far-reaching implications of LLMs on the way we write, design, and think about code.

And I'll make the case for why—as painful as it is to admit—code as craft might just be a relic of a bygone era.