The Birth of Ctrl+C Development
There’s a problem with software development in the age of AI. It’s not that we are in a bubble (whatever that is). It’s not that it’s going to eat our jobs.
It’s that AI is solving problems we don’t have.
This is explained by OpenAI’s new ChatGPT-powered browser, Atlas, that promises to “redefine search”. Do we need to tell it that we stopped searching years ago?
If you wonder what I’m talking about take a look at this video: https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-search/?video=1024930683
The Browser as Museum Piece
So ChatGPT makers OpenAI want to reinvent the browser. Great, but most developers use browsers to test not to learn.
Documentation lives inside tools now, and GitHub Copilot answers your (rather naive) syntax questions. Your search through Slack DMs effectively replaces forums. Even Stack Overflow looks like a ghost town run by bots yelling “duplicate question”.
These days developers don’t browse, they context switch between different methods of finding a solution.
If OpenAI really wanted to help, Atlas wouldn’t remove the address bar; it would remove developer meetings.
Yet Juniors Still Search
The last group of developers who actually use the web to learn are the junior devs who type questions like “how to fix git merge conflict” at 2 a.m. We all know nobody would help them with that type of question anyway.
In the past they would grow through trial and error, one Stack Overflow copy-paste at a time. They could search the internet looking for similar problems to the one that faces them.
Nobody does that anymore. You can combine AI with a search, but junior developers now look for complete solutions in the same context that they can simply drop into their code. This is a substitution for learning.
When learning gets automated, so do the people doing it.
That’s why the first developers AI will replace aren’t the senior architects or the DevOps cynics, it’s the juniors. The ones who used to Google their way up the ladder.
That’s tragic, because those people are how every one of us started. So where is the next generation of developers going to come from?
Senior Developers Need Peace
Once you’ve hit senior level, you don’t need another browser. You need time.
You’re not looking up “how to write a recursive function”. You’re reading five internal Confluence pages to figure out why the feature exists in the first place.
Atlas can’t help with that, and even if it could a real senior developer is there faster and can play in real-time.
Atlas can summarize an article; it can’t deal with a dysfunctional team and half-baked ideas.
AI Solves Problems We Don’t Have
Developers never asked for an AI-powered browser. We asked for fewer meetings, clearer specs, and less broken tooling.
Atlas solves the main pain point from 2013, when Google search was part of our daily workflow. It’s like a self-driving car for people who already take the train.
Most modern developers are already siloed in ecosystems that do their thinking for them. Frontend engineers live inside Next.js docs, backend engineers in API specs, mobile developers in Xcode. Nobody “searches the web”. Their tools incorporate AI. They are already light years ahead of Google search.
Atlas is on course to replace curiosity.
Conclusion
Developers Don’t Need a New Browser. They Need a New Culture.
Atlas is really a mirror showing how far we’ve drifted from the craft.
AI search isn’t killing software engineering because corporate short-termism is and AI is a shiny new justification for it.
If you really want to help developers, don’t give us a new browser.
Give us back time to learn, space to think, and permission to write bad code until it becomes good. Then we’ll learn. Then we’ll ship better features. Wouldn’t that be nice?
About The Author
Professional Software Developer “The Secret Developer” can be found on Twitter @TheSDeveloper and regularly publishes articles through Medium.com
The Secret Developer wishes they were an AI.