There are a lot of misconceptions about what AI development actually looks like. It's not all VIBE CODING. Real developers know what they need to do and just need a little assistance to get the job done faster.

The Daily Reality

Contrary to popular belief, real developers using AI tools aren't able to just let the AI do everything. They have to make a lot of changes to the code to get the best results. But that doesn't mean they aren't heavily reliant on AI tools. Here are some of the things that AI really helps with:

• Autocomplete is a godsend. It can literally save you hours of work.
• Filling in the gaps in your expertise. You don't need to be an expert in everything to be able to do almost anything.
• Adding complex animations and effects is way too easy with AI. I want to do it all the time now. Probably too much.
• Making changes across multiple files at once is stupid easy now. Where I used to get lost in a sea of tabs, I can now ask the Cursor Agent to make a change and it can create files and make changes to them all at once.

The Challenges

AI still generates a ton of trash code. No matter how much you embrase the exponentials, less is still more when it comes to code and the best solution will always be the simplest. For some reason, AI doesn't like deleting code so you end up with a lot of code that you don't need.

The Rewards

Despite the challenges, AI development is incredibly I would never want to go back to the old way of developing software. It would be like trying to communicate through the US Postal Service instead of email.

Getting Started

If you're interested in AI development, here's what you should focus on:

• Get an AI IDE like Cursor and just start telling it what to build.
• Ask it about things you don't understand about the code and you'll learn a ton of very relevant information very quickly.
• Start with Next.js, Tailwind, and TypeScript. It's a great combination for building anything you want because AI is great at generating and understanding it.
• Push to Github and deploy on Vercel so you get the immediate dopamine hit of seeing your work out in the world.
• Don't be afraid to share your work with as many people as you can.
• Make sure to let people know AI helped you build it.

Conclusion

AI development is here to stay. It's not going to replace developers, but it will make us all more productive.