Developers, Reinvented (ashtom.github.io)

Interviews with 22 frontline developers reveal a clear, present-day shift: AI is moving from a curiosity to a core part of engineering practice. The report outlines a four-stage evolution—AI Skeptic → Explorer → Collaborator → Strategist—culminating in developers who architect, delegate and verify agent-driven work rather than write every line themselves. Many expect AI to produce the majority of code soon (developers split between ~2‑year and ~5‑year timelines), but view this as a reinvention of their role, not a loss: higher-value work becomes designing agent workflows, prompt engineering, and rigorous verification. Technically, successful teams are building multi-agent, planning-and-coding workflows integrated into AI-enabled IDEs, switching models/tools strategically, prompting for plans first, and amplifying test/quality control to catch AI errors. Core skills shift toward AI fluency, delegation/agent orchestration, systems architecture, product thinking and verification—while fundamentals (algorithms, debugging, system reasoning) remain essential to evaluate AI output. Education and assessment must follow: teach abstraction, prompt engineering, critique of AI-generated code, and collaboration with agents rather than rote syntax. The practical takeaway: measure success not just by time saved but by the higher ambitions AI enables, and invest in advanced agent capabilities and verification practices accordingly.