The Mantra to Thrive in the AI Hype

If AI can do it in minutes, it's not special.

AI has made coding accessible.
You don't need a degree or bootcamp to have something working.
A few prompts to an LLM can replace hours or days of work.

That's good news...and bad news.

A portfolio with the same to-do apps no longer stands out.
Anyone can do that with AI in a few minutes.
Maybe the alternative is a "build/learn in public" YouTube channel.
Or contributing to non-trivial open source projects.

A take-home challenge doesn't work for hiring.
Again. An easy task for AI.
Maybe whiteboarding interviews won't go away.
Or we're back to onsite interviews.

Only crafting clean code isn't enough

Forget about syntax, lines of code, and only crafting clean code.

Don't burn your copy of Clean Code.
You still need to tell whether what AI spits out is good code.

You need to do what AI can't:

• Ownership when code breaks
• Collaboration to build trust
• Communication to present technical problems clearly

That's what you can't automate.
That's what makes you special.
That's what AI can't do.

Those skills worked 10 years ago and will work 10 years from now.

To help you build the skills to stand out, I wrote Street-Smart Coding—The roadmap I wish I had on my journey from junior to senior.