Programming Is Becoming Prompting

a “prompt engineer.” People are building Full Stack apps with three sentences and a screenshot. Job posts ask for experience with LangChain before they ask about JavaScript. And you're there like… wait, do I even need to code anymore?

Let’s talk about it.

Prompting Is the New Programming (Apparently)

Back in 2020, if someone said “prompting,” I’d assume they were talking about CLI flags or asking a user for input. Now? It means writing the perfect sentence to coax GPT into generating an entire microservice with error handling, tests, and documentation.

And let’s be real: it's kind of amazing. I’ve used prompts to scaffold codebases, generate test cases, refactor legacy nightmares, and even write bash scripts I didn’t feel like Googling. It works. And it saves time. And yeah it’s fun.

But it’s also a little... strange.

Because when you start writing prompts instead of functions, you stop flexing those problem solving muscles that got you into programming in the first place.

Are We Still Devs or Just API Wranglers?

Something changed over the last couple years and I’m not just talking about the layoffs (though we definitely felt those too). The vibe of being a dev shifted. Suddenly it’s less “crafting software” and more “assembling outputs from models and APIs.”

You write a bit of glue code. Prompt an LLM for a function. Copypaste some Stack Overflow answer into ChatGPT to "clean it up." Ship it. Move on.

Is this bad? Not necessarily. Tools evolve. Abstractions stack. No one codes in assembly anymore (unless you’re very, very cool or cursed).

But something feels different. I don’t get the same joy writing a bulletproof prompt that generates a Stripe webhook handler as I did just… writing it myself.

I miss zoning out with VS Code. I miss reading docs. I miss thinking through edge cases in my head. Now I just ask the AI to “handle edge cases” and hope it understood what I meant.

Why It’s Still Worth Learning to Code

Here’s the thing: prompting is powerful. But it’s not magic. And the moment something breaks or needs to scale or has a weird race condition, you’ll need to actually understand what’s going on under the hood.

Knowing how to code is still the superpower. The prompt is just a shortcut.

It’s like knowing how to drive vs. relying on autopilot. Sure, let the AI help you on the highway. But if you can’t parallel park manually when the system glitches, you’re toast.

I’ve seen this play out in real teams. New devs who only know how to prompt get stuck fast when debugging, testing, or building something non trivial. Senior devs are still the ones untangling those last 10% problems that the AI couldn’t predict.

So yeah. Learn to code. Learn to build. Learn why things work. Then prompt all you want.

But Also... Don't Be a Dinosaur

That said, refusing to adapt is a great way to become irrelevant.

I’ve seen devs mock prompt engineers like they’re not “real developers.” These same people once mocked front end devs too. And before that, mocked people who used Rails generators. And before that, mocked people who didn’t write in C.

See the pattern?

Prompting is programming now just a new flavor. It’s part of the toolkit. Ignoring it means ignoring a really powerful abstraction layer that can make you more efficient, creative, and productive.

The key isn’t to pick one side. The key is to know when to use the AI and when to be the AI.

So What’s Lost?

Creativity, maybe.

When we let the AI write our code, our job becomes editing instead of inventing. Curating instead of crafting. It’s like going from painting to photo editing. Still art, still skill, but… something's different.

We risk losing the joy of building from scratch. The tiny design decisions that add up to big differences. The unique fingerprints you leave in your code. When everything starts to look like GPT output, all apps start to feel the same.

And hey, maybe that’s fine for CRUD stuff. But the best software, the stuff that feels different, usually comes from human weirdness, not robotic predictability.

Closing Real Talk

Prompting is here to stay. Programming won’t ever look the same. The line between “developer” and “AI wrangler” is officially blurred.

But if all you do is prompt, you’ll miss the soul of building.

So:

👉 Keep coding.

👉 Keep asking why, not just how.

👉 Use AI, but don’t let it steal your curiosity.

At the end of the day, creativity still comes from the mind behind the prompt—not the model spitting out text on your screen.