“Code Was Never the Hard Part” Is an Insult to All Programmers

avaitopiper · x · 2026-08-09

As the AI revolution sweeps through software development, a common narrative has emerged: "LLMs are good at coding, but coding was never the hard part." Author Senko Rašić argues this is a gross insult to all programmers.

The article uses a series of rhetorical questions to prove the inherent difficulty of coding. If writing code is truly easy, why have programmers been in high demand with large salaries for years? Why do doorstopper books like Clean Code exist? And why are figures like Carmack considered geniuses?

The author also challenges the idea that figuring out what to build is the only hard part, questioning the competence of many product managers. The piece pushes back against the narrative that devalues the technical craft of programming in the age of AI.

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