I’ll never forget the first time I heard Linus Torvalds say, “Talk is cheap. Show me the code.” It was 2000, and he was firing back at someone bragging about some tricky Linux kernel trick. Me? I was a gangly teen copy-pasting Perl and VB snippets, thinking I was a wizard.
Back then, the message was clear: ideas are nothing without actually building them. Writing software was just mentally exhausting. Even with a solid plan, a project could take weeks, months, sometimes years. Humans were the bottleneck: our brains, our schedules, our sheer burnout set the limits. Most great ideas stayed on a never ending to do list.
But now? LLMs can spit out production code, tests, and docs in seconds. Stuff that once took weeks of grinding can now happen in hours. The old markers of careful commits, clean READMEs, thoughtful architecture, they don’t carry the same weight. Code is everywhere. Code is cheap.
The real skill now is thinking. Developers who can understand the problem, map out a system, and tell AI exactly what they want have a huge edge. Typing fast? That barely matters anymore.
It’s exciting, but there’s a catch. For juniors, leaning on AI too early risks building a generation that can write code but doesn’t really get it. The AI can crank out anything, but without learning how to debug, architect, or reason about systems, you’re missing the foundation.
For the experienced dev it’s liberating. Ideas that would have taken months can be prototyped in days. Code is cleaner, faster, and frees you to focus on design, architecture, and innovation. “Programming is 90% thinking, 10% typing” isn’t just a saying anymore, it’s reality.
So, what actually makes code valuable in a world where anyone (or any AI) can generate it? It’s not the lines themselves, it’s the human thought, accountability, and intention behind them. A PR written by a human carries experience, empathy, and effort. AI? Functional, sure, but emotionally neutral.
We’re stepping into a new era: code is cheap, thinking is priceless. For seniors, it’s a chance to level up creativity. For learners, it’s a reminder: master the basics before letting the genie do the work.
The game has changed. Coding is easier than ever, but the ones who’ll shine are the thinkers, designers, and communicators. Typing speed? That’s just a footnote now.
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