James Q. Quick: AI is a developer-enabler but also a learning blocker

AI tools help developers build things better, they can do boring and repetitive tasks instead of them so they can build more and achieve more than they have ever imagined they could, said James Q. Quick in his presentation ‘”AI Is Revolutionizing Developer Experience – Are You Ready?’ at Shift conference.

On the other hand, what worries him the most is the learning aspect:

If only copying and pasting code from ChatGPT, we will do it automatically and not delve into the process. Therefore, we learn less and repeat mechanical actions more.

That’s the same problem Stack Overflow ran into. And, again, it turned out that it allowed us to do even more than we could. So, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Will AI replace developers?

According to James, it won’t because there is something called personal touch that separates human beings from artificial intelligence. If AI were perfect and could replace humans, it would be a terrifying world, he says. But it’s not and probably will not be for a long time.

James began his career as a technical evangelist at Microsoft. He gained experience in public speaking, workshops, and generally working with the community there. After that, he moved to FedEx, where he worked as a full-stack developer for a couple of years, only to realize that he missed speaking at conferences and meetups and creating content for developers. That’s why he returned to his original passion five years ago and became a full-time developer and content creator.