I have had many discussions about this over the last few months. I’ve read both pro and anti-AI perspectives, but last night I had a thought that I couldn’t stop thinking about until I wrote it down. Here I am, typing this at 2 AM because my brain won’t let me sleep until I capture everything it has to say.

I have been building software for a while now. I learned HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as a way to kill time during my 8th-grade summer vacation. The idea of writing a few HTML tags in Notepad and then seeing things appear in a web browser excited me, and I haven’t stopped since.

Adding CSS to the HTML made what I saw on screen look better, and sprinkling in JavaScript improved the interaction between me and the page. Then came backend programming to build more logic into the page. The more I learned, the more there was to learn.

It’s been a while since I’ve hand-written HTML and CSS from the ground up. I remember when Microsoft FrontPage was all the rage and people said we wouldn’t need developers anymore. I remember when ThemeForest and other sites launched, and people questioned why we would hire designers. I remember Squarespace and Wix launching template engines with drag-and-drop editors, and people again questioned why we would need designers. The benchmark for what we could do on the web kept increasing. If hundreds could create sites before, now the web was open to thousands being able to build. I remember being very excited because more people were building and there would be more opportunities.

LLMs and AI give me the same feeling. This time, drag-and-drop is replaced by text prompts. No-code solutions and data connectors are replaced by text prompts. More people are going to jump on board and make the web a better place. There is room for more. There is room for so much more. Tools have always excited me because they help people get started. More tools will be built to help you begin and then help you build whatever you want to create.

What about jobs that will be lost because of these tools? I’m sure there will be some losses. There will be more. One thing I know about the tech industry is that things are always changing. You need to be open to change and keep learning. There’s no sticking to one thing. If you want to be part of this industry, you need to be constantly learning.

Get excited. Start building. More people want to see and interact with what you create.