When AI come out, I wondered if my last 8 years learning to build good software was wasted

People are now building entire apps in minutes without knowing how to write or even read code

Published: August 18th 2025

When AI come out, I wondered if my last 8 years learning to build good software was wasted.

People are now building entire apps in minutes without knowing how to write or even read code.

Vibe coding is here to stay also. There are money generating apps that have been entirely vibe coded. And its only going to get better over time.

I use AI all the time now as part of my development workflow. It would be so painful without it.

It's like getting your first smart phone. Going back is too dreaded to even think of.

I did start wondering if knowing about good software design practices was even important anymore. Is it something still worth learning about?

After using AI a fair bit, and seeing how things have played out in the ecosystem, I do now feel that having good software design skills is still important.

AI can create very verbose, and unnecessarily complicated code.

That can make things hard to understand.

It can also make it hard to change the code over time, which is also important, because having flexible software means you can keep adapting to new requirements as time goes on.

So for writing specific features it is really good I would say. But can struggle a little more in keeping an overall well designed code base.

So, FOR NOW AT LEAST, good software designs skills are still useful in the age of AI generated code.