AI vs Programmers: 4 Critical Skills You Need To Win the Race

Imagine this. You are a developer who's been coding for years. You mastered your programming languages.

You know your frameworks. And you take pride in your ability to solve complex problems. Then one day you watch as an AI assistant writes a function in seconds that would have taken you 20 minutes.

That moment of realization is happening in engineering teams everywhere right now. and it's exactly why we need to talk about how the developer landscape is changing and what to do about it. We created a custom handout for this video.

So, if you're interested in this topic, grab your copy below. With AI tools flooding the tech landscape, the question isn't anymore whether they will impact our work. The question is how we can adapt to stay relevant and valuable as engineers.

So in this video I want to give you a clear road map for how to navigate this new reality where AI tools are becoming increasingly capable at tasks that were once exclusively human. The tech world never stands still. New versions of existing tools are released constantly.

Entirely new technologies and frameworks emerge regularly. So, as engineering professionals, we've always had to adapt to new frameworks and languages and paradigms popping up in our industry. But now, we need to be strategic about where we focus our learning efforts because this shift feels different.

It feels more fundamental. It's not just about learning a new tool. It's about completely redefining our role in the development process.

So, let me share four critical skills that will help you not just survive but even thrive alongside AI tools. So, by the end of this video, I want you to have a clear understanding of exactly which capabilities to focus on that will make you irreplaceable and extremely valuable in this changing IT world. Now, creating these videos, especially the more technical ones, actually takes us a lot of time and effort.

So, if you find this video valuable, please give it a like and your subscription genuinely helps me continue providing this knowledge for free. Plus, it ensures that you won't miss future videos that could give you that critical edge in your tech career. Now, let's dive in.

Skill number one is to evolve into an architecture role. Let me explain. Imagine you are part of an engineering team that's been asked to scale your application to handle 10 times its current traffic.

Your product is successful. Users love it, but now it needs to grow and it needs to grow fast. A junior developer on your team immediately opens their code editor and starts optimizing database queries.

A mid-level engineer begins researching load balancers and horizontal scaling options and so on. But you take a step back and ask different questions. Is our current architecture even suitable for this scale?

Should we consider maybe breaking down our monolith application into microservices? Do we need to rethink our data storage approach entirely? This situation reveals the first critical skill which is architectural thinking.

So while AI tools can generate optimized queries or even help with implementing a load balancer, they cannot make fundamental architectural decisions that shape the entire system because these decisions require understanding not just the code but also the business priorities and the operational constraints of your project or company specifically as well as long-term technical strategy. So when an engineering team needs to decide between investing in vertical scaling versus redesigning for horizontal scaling, that's not just a technical question. It's a business decision with significant implications for cost and maintainability as well as future flexibility for the system.

So when your team faces performance issues in production, AI might suggest code optimizations, but it cannot determine whether the real big picture solution would be to maybe change how your application talks to databases so it gets information more efficiently, which will make everything faster for users as well as cut down on database costs. Or maybe the solution would be to add caching so that frequently used information is read from quick access memory instead of repeatedly asking the database for the same data which will again make the pages load faster. the application much more performant or move to an event-driven architecture so that different parts of your system can work independently by sending messages to each other rather than waiting in line which keeps your entire application running smoothly even if one part of your system crashes or gets overwhelmed during busy times or as I mentioned before break your large monolithic application into smaller microservices that teams can update separately which will let you release new features faster without having to test the entire system each time one micros service changes.

So these architectural decisions shape everything that follows. They will determine how effectively your team can implement new features or how quickly your application can scale and how resilient it will be to failures. As AI tools get better at writing code, the value of coding skills alone will decrease.

Very logical, right? But the value of architectural thinking which is the ability to design systems and make very strategic technical decisions that align with your business goals that skill will actually increase dramatically. Now after making these architectural decisions the next critical skill is implementing them efficiently with modern DevOps practices and cloudnative technologies.

So let's continue with our scaling scenario. Let's say you've decided on an architecture that includes breaking down your monolith into microservices with a caching layer. Now how do you actually bring this vision to life in a way that's reliable, scalable, maintainable um and secure?

This is where DevOps expertise becomes absolutely crucial. And that's why we see a huge demand for software developers who know DevOps tools. But here's an important thing.

DevOps is not just about knowing some tools and technologies or automating a few processes here and there. It's actually about creating an entire system that enables continuous delivery of value to your users. And in today's cloud native world, this would mean mastering technologies like containers, Kubernetes, cloud services, CI/CD workflows that fundamentally transform how applications are deployed and scaled.

So as a DevOpsware engineer, first you would containerize each micros service using Docker ensuring that they can run consistently across any environment from your laptop to production servers and so on. Next, you would deploy these containers to a Kubernetes cluster which automatically handles the scaling, self-healing, load balancing which will ensure that your application remains available even when individual components fail which is again part of the architecture decision that we are making. You implement infrastructure as code.

So your entire cloud infrastructure including those radius instances even the Kubernetes cluster can be deployed consistently and reliably across environments. If you have dev uh testing prod environment and so on. You also set up CI/CD pipelines that automatically test and deploy your microservices whenever changes are made.

And this means that new features and fixes will reach production in just hours or maybe even minutes instead of days or weeks. And very importantly, you integrate automated security checks at every step of your pipeline uh which is scanning for vulnerabilities in your code, containers, infrastructure configurations and so on. And as a result, your architectural decisions do not just remain as diagrams or documentation.

and they actually become a living evolving system that continuously delivers value. While AI can help generate code for individual components, it cannot design and implement this holistic cloudnative approach that connects development, operations, u business outcomes with each other. And companies are desperately looking for engineers who understand not just how to write code but how to build these efficient delivery pipelines on modern cloud platforms.

Why? Because in today's competitive landscape for the companies themselves, the speed and reliability with which you can deliver features to users is often a huge differentiator between success or a failure for that company. And of course engineers to help the company implement those things will be extremely extremely important.

And because DevOps has become such a crucial part of software developers work but at the same time can be very complex and almost overwhelming for software engineers. We actually created a DevOps road map for software developers specifically that walks you through in detail exactly what you need to learn in order to acquire those skills. And we're going to link it under this video so you can grab your copy there.

Now, speaking of AI tools that enhance our productivity, I am really excited to share with you an amazing tool that embodies everything we've been discussing so far. Jet Brains has developed Juny, which is their autonomous coding agent that's really changing how developers work with code. What makes Juny different from other AI coding assistants is that it doesn't just generate code snippets.

It can actually modify complex parts of your project and it can execute tasks autonomously or even take over certain responsibilities completely. The way Juny works is by pairing with your IDE to solve tasks, which means you can delegate the simpler repetitive stuff while you yourself focus on the more interesting and challenging parts of coding and application development. This is exactly what I've been talking about in this video.

Using AI tools strategically to enhance your productivity. What impressed me the most was how Juny actually understands the context of your project. You give it a task and it analyzes your project's structure to find all the relevant information it needs.

And I appreciate that it doesn't compromise on quality. When it edits your files, it leverages the full power of your IDE to run syntax and semantic checks on everything it generates. That ensures that your code quality remains high.

Now, high code quality means that it's not just functionally correct, right? It also has clarity and flow and it's easy to maintain. So, Juny helps you refine and rethink your code as well, which gives you capability to focus on creating that perfect architecture while it handles the implementation details for you.

If you've been hesitant about trying AI coding tools, Judy might just change your perspective on how these technologies can work alongside your expertise rather than replace it. Now, let's get back to the next skill that will help you stay relevant in an AI powered world. Now that we understand how to architect solutions and implement them with DevOps practices, let's talk about the third critical skill, creating and demonstrating measurable business impact through your technical work.

Again, let's imagine two different engineers presenting the results of the scaling project that we've been discussing. In the first scenario, an engineer reports, we've broken down our monolith into microservices. We containerized them and deployed them to Kubernetes cluster with automated CI/CD pipelines.

The work is technically sound but presented purely as a technical achievement. In the second scenario, another engineer implements similar changes but reports the following. Our microservices architecture with Kubernetes has reduced our average response time from 700 milliseconds to 150 milliseconds.

Decreased our database load by 65% and we will save approximately $5,000 per month in infrastructure costs while supporting our growth targets. Additionally, our automated security scanning has already detected and prevented three critical vulnerabilities from reaching production, potentially saving us millions in breach related costs and preserving customer trust. This contrast highlights the third critical skill, creating and demonstrating measurable business impact through your technical work.

In real world engineering teams, this difference is very strong. Many engineers focus exclusively on technical implementation without connecting their work to business outcomes. They might spend weeks optimizing a component without being able to articulate why it matters to the organization.

AI tools have no understanding of business objectives or the ability to connect technical implementations to company specific business outcomes. And this is where human engineers have an enormous advantage. Let's consider a continuous integration pipeline that takes 45 minutes to run.

Many engineers would accept this as normal. But an engineer focused on business impact would recognize that this translates to slower release cycles, delayed feedback, and reduced developer productivity, and potentially more bugs ending up in production. By implementing very targeted improvements to reduce the CI pipeline to 10 minutes, they're not just making a technical improvement, they're actually enabling faster iteration cycles that directly translate to the business's ability to deliver features quickly.

As AI tools get better at writing code, your skills in spotting real business problems and fixing them with clear results, as I mentioned before, will become worth much more to companies. Now, let's return to our scaling project. The architecture is planned, the business case is clear, and it's time to implement the changes.

And this is where the fourth critical skill comes into play which is effectively using AI capabilities in your engineering work. So let's say we need to now implement a distributed caching layer with radius as part of our implementation which was part of our architectural decision. Without AI assistance, we would need to go and research Rady's implementation patterns, write the cache client code, implement cache invalidation strategies, add metrics and monitoring, write automated tests, document the implementation and so on.

So will be a pretty large task. So basically researching on the internet and putting together some functioning implementation and trying to document as well as possible. But with AI, our approach changes, right?

Because now we have AI to help us do all of that faster and better. So we prompt the AI to generate a draft implementation based on our architectural requirements. AI produces code in seconds probably that handles the basic radius integration.

Also has cachin invalidation logic in that and even includes tests. Thanks AI. Now this is where your engineering expertise comes in.

Again, you need to review the generated code with your architectural knowledge instead of blindly accepting the solution. So, let's say you notice that the cache expiration strategy from AI does not really align with your data update patterns. You also identified that the error handling does not consider situations where network connections break between your application and the reddis cache servers which could cause data inconsistency or it doesn't account for application failures where parts of your system cannot communicate with each other during a temporal network issues.

You also recognize that the monitoring is not capturing some critical metrics that you will need like memory usage spikes before failures. So this means that engineers who are able to use AI and then adapt the AI generated results to their project specific requirements will have an enormous advantage because you're able to do quality work fast. So tasks that might have taken days now take just hours with potentially higher quality and more comprehensive test coverage.

So it's about developing a workflow that combines AI assistance with your unique human judgment. So you use AI to handle boilerplate and routine coding tasks. Then you apply your expertise to refine and validate generated code and you focus your time on the most complex aspects that require human judgment.

I have to say that engineers who resist these AI tools out of fear or maybe skepticism are actually putting themselves at a significant disadvantage. So they're kind of playing against themselves. The best engineers will see AI as a force multiplier that takes care of the boring tasks so that they can work on more important things.

Now these four skills do not exist in isolation. They actually complement and reinforce each other. So let's return to our application scaling scenario one last time to see how these skills actually work together.

First with architectural thinking you determine that implementing a caching layer and restructuring your data access patterns as well as breaking down monolith into microser application is going to be the most effective approach to handle increased traffic. In the second stage, using your DevOps skills and knowledge, you design the entire system. You select the right combination of technologies and you design your system technically to give you those results.

In the next stage, using your business impact focus, you now analyze the business impact of that technical implementation. And you analyze that these changes will actually reduce response times by, let's say, 70%, decrease infrastructure costs by $5,000 per month. And on top of that, it will support the company's growth targets, which directly impacts revenue potential.

And finally, once we know exactly technically what the architecture should look like, how we're going to restructure all of these, and what business impact it will have, we will need to implement those changes by leveraging AI tools so that instead of weeks or months of work, we can actually get the work done in just a few days or sometimes even hours. So with this workflow, you are making the key architectural decisions tied to positive business results while using AI to handle much of the implementation work. And this makes you extremely valuable to your company than just being good at coding.

Now in DevOps, as I very often mention in my videos, it's not just about knowing how to code. It's about seeing the bigger picture. You become the person who can identify bottlenecks in the delivery process, who can automate repetitive tasks and connect technical solutions to business outcomes.

Like when I demonstrate CI/CD pipelines, the value isn't just in writing the pipeline code, but in understanding how that pipeline impacts deployment speed or developer productivity and ultimately the company's ability to deliver features faster to customers. This broader perspective is exactly why DevOps professionals are so highly demanded because you are literally solving problems that affect the entire organization, multiple teams underneath it. Now, here's a very important point I want to highlight.

Many engineers make the mistake of trying to compete with AI on its own terms, which is writing code faster or memorizing more syntax. This is a losing battle because AI tools will continue to improve at generating code often faster and with fewer bugs than humans can manage. Another common mistake is focusing exclusively on technical aspects without considering the broader context and the big picture understanding of architecture and how those tools actually connect with each other and what business impact they have which is exactly what DevOps engineers do.

So engineers who work in isolation without understanding how their work their specific work and tasks impact the overall project or business will find it increasingly difficult to demonstrate their value. Now some engineers also swing to the opposite extreme either completely avoiding AI tools out of fear or skepticism or on the other side overrelying on them without proper validation just blindly accepting solutions that AI returns. So you need to find a sweet spot viewing AI as a collaborative tool that handles routine tasks while you focus on judgment design and business alignment.

So as the AI becomes more and more powerful at traditional engineering tasks, the most valuable developers will be those who develop strong architectural thinking that goes beyond just writing code, understanding systems holistically and making sound design decisions that align with business goals. also who focus on creating and communicating business impact through their technical work. Connecting the efforts directly to metrics that matter to the company as well as ones who master AI tools as productivity multipliers integrating them into workflows while maintaining control of critical decisions.

Now, I'm curious to hear about your experiences with AI coding tools. Are you already using them? And which of these four skills do you think you can start practicing right away?

Share your thoughts in the comments. And remember that as an engineering professional, learning never stops. The tech world is constantly changing with new tools being released and new approaches being developed.

So adopt the mindset of continuous learning to stay upto-date with the industry developments. This is the best way to make sure that you always stay highly demanded and valuable as an engineer. Now, if you found this video helpful, share it with one friend or colleague who you think will benefit from this information as well.