If there’s one industry that’s in the midst of disruption due to AI it’s software development. As AI tools like Cloud Code become almost human-like in coding work, many people have started thinking about the future of software development jobs and coding. Now famous software engineer Ryan Dahl, best known as the creator of NodeJS, has added to this debate. His viewpoint? Dahl says the era of manually writing code with syntax is over. He says that software developers and coders should now focus on ideas and concepts instead of writing word-by-word and command-by-command so that they can use AI tools to do the boring part of the work.

In a recent post on X, Dahl wrote that “the era of humans writing code is over.” Dahl, the mind behind NodeJS and considered one of the most influential technologies in modern web development, suggests that AI is not making software engineers irrelevant, but the act of manually writing syntax line by line is no longer the core of the job.

However, unlike many others Dahl does not say that tools like cloud code make software engineers and coders irrelevant. His suggestion is that they should spend their energy in doing something different and better.

more opportunities for humans

Dahl admits that this transition away from manual coding is “troubling” for many engineers who identify with coding as both a skill and an identity. However, he argued that engineers will also have a lot of work in the future, just not the same kind as they used to. The role will evolve. Instead of writing code, software engineers of the future will increasingly focus on higher-level tasks such as defining system architecture, reviewing AI-generated code, validating output, and deciding what should be built rather than how it should be written.

In some ways, we are already seeing this shift in the tech industry. Tech giants like Google and Microsoft have publicly stated that about 30 percent of their production code is now generated by AI systems. In fact, a recent internal revelation from Anthropic revealed that about 80 percent of the code behind its cloud code tool is written by AI itself, with humans stepping in primarily for reviews and complex decisions. In short, in the world of tech, AI is no longer just assisting developers, it has already started to become the primary creator as far as writing code is concerned.

Dahl isn’t the only prominent voice predicting this AI-led future. Its impact is not limited to just coding or software engineering jobs. According to Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the “Godfather of AI,” this AI-led transformation is part of a much broader labor shift. Hinton warns that AI systems are advancing so rapidly that they could replace millions of jobs as early as 2026, including roles that require complex reasoning and long-term planning. In terms of coding, he believes AI will soon be able to complete projects that currently take humans months, in a fraction of the time.