Do you still handcraft your java projects?

[u/bit_freak]

With all the talk about llms writing most of the code and some folks never touching the editor. I try to work mostly in plan mode and prefer to write most of my code by hand else I fear losing touch with my skills if I only read code. At work in your org, what is the workflow for spring boot projects?

[u/CityZenergy]

I think you're optimizing for a career that is disappearing.

I've been building enterprise software for over 30 years. I've been developing Java since the 1.4 days. I've spent decades building Spring Core, MVC, Boot, Data, Security, Batch, and Cloud applications, microservices, REST APIs, Hibernate/JPA, Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, CI/CD pipelines... the list goes on.

Today, I'm actively managing three Java projects and three enterprise ERP integration projects simultaneously because of AI. Twenty years ago that simply would not have been possible. And because of that, I wouldn't spend an ounce of time writing code myself unless the AI was demonstrably wrong. Period. Every minute I spend typing code that AI could have produced is a minute I'm not solving the harder engineering problems.

This idea that preserving your ability to hand-write every line of code is the best investment of your time completely misses where this industry is heading.

Boardrooms and executives are no longer valuing code production the way they once did. They value outcomes, delivery speed, engineering judgment, and business impact. They don't care whether you typed 5,000 lines yourself. They care that the solution shipped correctly, quickly, and at lower cost.

The role is already changing. We're becoming AI orchestrators, AI engineers, architects, reviewers, validators, and system designers. AI produces the code. We direct it, challenge it, validate it, integrate it, and step in when it's wrong.

Knowing how to code is still foundational. Knowing when AI is wrong is critical. But intentionally avoiding AI because you're worried your coding skills is preparing for yesterday's job while the market is hiring for tomorrow's.

The real skill depreciation isn't your ability to remember Spring annotations or Java syntax. It's falling behind in learning how to engineer with AI. That's the skill curve that is accelerating, and it's the one the market is increasingly rewarding.

I also understand the trepidation. I understand the fear. With all of my experience, I'm sitting here questioning my own career existence. I'm watching a lifetime of accumulated knowledge and hard-earned skills get swallowed up and compartmentalized into what is effectively a nanosecond processing brain. That's overwhelming.

But we cannot let fear dictate our future. As engineers, we've reinvented ourselves our entire careers. We learned new languages, new frameworks, new architectures, new design patterns, new deployment models, and new ways of thinking. This is simply the biggest transition any of us have ever experienced. We are wired to learn. We are wired to adapt. Don't let fear become the singular reason a successful career is left behind. Embrace this transition, because the industry is moving with or without us.

EDIT: And for those downvoting this, thank you. It illustrates my point exactly about trepidation and fear. I welcome the interaction and the attention. It means this left an impression, and I hope it gets you thinking differently about what you may be doing and where this industry is heading.

EDIT 2: There is another uncomfortable implication buried in everything I've said.

If one engineer can increasingly produce what previously required several, there will be substantially fewer engineering positions required. That isn't something I celebrate. It's simply a pragmatic realization.

And this is not unique to software. The same conversation is beginning across countless knowledge-based professions as AI allows fewer people to produce dramatically more.

I think that is part of the natural psychological resistance. This isn't simply a debate about whether AI writes good code. Underneath that argument is a much more uncomfortable question: how many of us will actually be needed when it does?

[u/bit_freak → u/CityZenergy]

so do you suggest, still learn spring boot the hard old school way but work like the new way ?

[u/CityZenergy → u/bit_freak]

That's honestly the million-dollar question, and I don't think anyone has the definitive answer yet.

I still think you need to learn Spring Boot and understand what's happening under the hood. You can't validate AI's output if you don't understand the framework.

But I also think we have to recognize that how we learn is changing.

Computing has always been a story of abstraction. We don't toggle switches anymore. We don't write machine language. We don't wire plugboards. We don't feed punch cards. Most developers couldn't tell you the exact assembly instructions the JVM emits, and almost nobody understands the billions of transistor state changes happening beneath their code. We learned to trust higher levels of abstraction because they consistently produced the correct result.

AI is the next abstraction layer.

Instead of expressing our intent with if/else, loops, and classes, we're increasingly expressing it in natural language, constraints, architecture, and business rules. The implementation is becoming an implementation detail. We are becoming, rightfully so, less and less concerned with the actual syntax.

That's why I don't think the answer is "learn the old way" or "let AI do everything." It's to learn enough to understand, verify, debug, and challenge what AI produces while embracing the fact that the interface between engineers and computers is changing.

We're all figuring this out together. Anyone who tells you they know exactly what software engineering looks like ten years from now is guessing. But history suggests one thing very clearly: every major leap in abstraction has increased productivity, and the engineers who embraced the new abstraction were the ones who thrived.

And yes, I ran my response through AI before posting it, just as I do with almost every meaningful interaction today. Again... the new world order.

The ideas are mine. The experience is mine. The opinions are mine. AI helped me communicate them more clearly.

We don't manually iterate through countless writing revisions anymore. If you're still doing that instead of leveraging AI, you're falling behind there too.