Trying Not to Feel Left Behind by AI
š A diary entry from a slightly unsettled developer
Lately Iāve been feeling something that I suspect a lot of developers are quietly wrestling with.
AI.
Not in the dramatic āthe robots are here and itās overā sense.
But in a quieter, more persistent way. A kind of background anxiety that sits there while youāre working, scrolling, or trying to relax.
The feeling that everything is moving incredibly fast.
And that if youāre not careful, you might get left behind.
Iāve spent about fifteen years working as a developer, and I donāt think Iāve ever seen the industry move at this pace before.
ā” The pace is overwhelming
Every day there seems to be something new.
- š¤ A new model
- š§° A new tool
- š§± A new framework
- āļø A new workflow that apparently turns one person into the productivity equivalent of an entire engineering team
And the demos are impressive. Genuinely impressive.
People spinning up agents that write code, automate tasks, build products, run businesses, connect APIs, orchestrate workflowsā¦ sometimes all from a handful of prompts.
If you work in tech, itās impossible not to feel the pull of it.
But the pace can also be overwhelming.
And I look at it all thinking:
How am I supposed to keep up with this?
I have a full-time job.
I have responsibilities at home.
I have a life outside of tech.
Yet the industry conversation sometimes feels like the only acceptable pace is constant experimentation, constant learning, constant adaptation.
Realistically, thatās not possible.
So you try things. You experiment. But often it feels like youāre just scratching the surface before the next wave of tools arrives.
And when there are hundreds of things you could learn, knowing where to spend that limited time becomes surprisingly stressful.
š± The moment it hits hardest
For me, the feeling tends to hit when Iām scrolling tech blogs or watching YouTube.
Which is ironic, because I genuinely love that content. Iāve always enjoyed seeing what other developers are building. Itās inspiring.
But lately itās also becomeā¦ slightly exhausting.
Every other video seems to be:
āThis AI tool replaced my entire workflow.ā
āDevelopers who ignore this will be obsolete.ā
āBuild a SaaS in 20 minutes with AI agents.ā
And after a while you start to feel like youāre constantly behind.
Not because youāre doing badly.
But because the goalposts appear to move every single week.
š¤ The uncomfortable question underneath it
If Iām honest, the thing underneath all of this is a pretty simple fear.
Becoming obsolete.
Iāve spent around fifteen years building a career as a developer. Learning the craft. Building systems. Solving real problems. Slowly developing the kind of judgement that only comes with time.
So when the internet starts shouting that AI can suddenly do everything developers do, itās hard not to question what that means.
Not intellectually.
Emotionally.
You start wondering whether those fifteen years still hold the same value they did before.
š¤ My current relationship with AI
The funny thing is, I do use AI.
Quite a lot actually.
I use it for:
- š¬ General questions
- š Debugging ideas
- š Exploring solutions
- š§āš» My coding sidekick
Itās genuinely helpful.
But Iām still a long way from the āAI agent empireā level of usage that some people seem to be operating at.
And thatās another strange tension.
You can see the power of the toolā¦ but youāre also aware that youāre not using it anywhere near its full potential.
Yet.
šØ What I worry about
Thereās another thought that occasionally sits at the back of my mind.
I worry that AI could slowly erode some of the joy of the craft.
Programming has always been creative and exploratory. Sometimes frustrating, but deeply satisfying when you figure something out.
Good engineering is:
- curiosity
- experimentation
- problem solving
- understanding messy systems
- gradually bending them into something better
If too much of that thinking gets outsourced to machines, I do wonder what happens to that part of the craft.
Not overnight.
But slowly.
And that would be a shame.
Because that curiosity and creativity is what brought many of us into this field in the first place.
š The doom posts donāt help
Another thing that fuels the anxiety is the constant stream of āAI will take all our jobsā posts.
Every week there seems to be a new prediction.
- Developers are finished
- White-collar work is collapsing
- Entry-level jobs are disappearing
Maybe some of those predictions will prove partly true.
But the reality today is far messier than the headlines.
AI still hallucinates.
AI still produces code that needs careful checking.
AI still struggles with context.
And developers donāt just write code.
We:
- design systems
- make trade-offs
- understand messy real-world constraints
- own the outcomes when things go wrong
That part hasnāt disappeared.
š The part I donāt say out loud very often
If Iām being really honest thoughā¦ I am unsettled by it all.
Not panicked.
But pretty unsettled.
Because the pace of change feels genuinely different this time.
And I donāt yet know exactly what the next ten years of our industry will look like.
I want to grow in my career.
I want to move further into technical leadership.
But I also donāt fully know what that role looks like in a world where AI becomes increasingly capable.
At the same time, I donāt just want AI to be a work tool.
Iām genuinely interested in how it could help with:
- ā” Personal productivity
- š Side projects
- āŖ Things in my church
- š§¾ Life admin
Thereās potential there, but I still find myself asking:
- Am I learning the right things?
- Am I focusing in the right places?
- Am I already behind without realising it?
Thatās not a comfortable place to sit.
And if Iām honest, itās something Iāve had to take to prayer more than once recently.
Because ultimately, I believe God sees a bigger picture than I do.
Even if the tech industry occasionally feels like itās moving faster than the human brain was designed to process.
š§ So what do I do with all of this?
Right now my approach is fairly simple.
- Stay curious
- Learn the tools gradually
- Use AI where it genuinely helps
- Ignore some of the noise
And remember that good engineers have always adapted to change.
We adapted to:
- š The web
- āļø Cloud
- š± Mobile
- š¦ Containers
AI may well be the biggest shift yet.
But the core traits that made good engineers valuable ā curiosity, persistence, judgement, and problem-solving ā havenāt disappeared.
If anything, they might matter even more.
š§¾ The honest ending
What does the future hold?
I genuinely have no idea.
Iām both excited and anxious about the role AI will play in my career, in technology, and in the world more broadly.
But for now Iām trying to choose curiosity over panic.
Learn what I can.
Use what helps.
Ignore some of the noise.
Trust that the skills built over fifteen years still count for something.
And quietly pray that God knows what Heās doing with all of this.
Because if the last decade of technology has taught me anythingā¦
Itās that none of us really know what the next one looks like.