Is Coding Still Worth It in 2026 — Or Is AI Replacing Developers?

Hey, hey. How you guys doing? It's been a long time. Let me know if you can hear me. H in the comments, please say I can hear you. I can hear you. And give me a thumbs up. Uh welcome to the stream. It's been a while. I decided to come on because um I've been putting out a lot of videos and people I think might be misinterpreting or maybe I'm not clearly stating my intentions in those videos. with regards to software development, AI, coding, should you learn to code, and so on. So, I thought I'd just pop on, address that, answer a few questions, see how many people come on. This is a pop unexpected live stream. So, uh we'll see. I'm not going to make any promises about any other streams until, uh I decide what I'm going to do. Um yeah. So let me know in the comments if you can hear me so I can uh move ahead uh with confidence that it's clear. Can you hear me clearly? Let me know. Also let me know where you're watching from. Say um you know Steph from Montreal. You know Nancy from uh I don't know Miami wherever you happen to be. Let me know in the comments and then we will go on go on and I'll answer some questions as well. Hey, how are you? How are you? Can you hear me clearly? Let me know if you can hear me. Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, can you hear me clearly from the UK? Very good. Okay, I suppose you can hear me. All right. So, I assume somebody give me a thumbs or let me know if you can hear me. Uh, I don't want to start getting into it until I get some confirmation about that. All right. Uh, Uncle Steph, loud and clear. Cool. Cool. Hey guys, how you doing? Thanks for popping on the stream. H Yeah, just when you pop on, let me know where you're you're from. So, we got somebody from UK, from somebody from New York City, from somebody from Zambia. Very cool. you know, maybe because I'm I'm old, but I find it very uh entertaining that we got people from Turkey, Los Angeles, Zambia, New York City, the UK. Fantastic. Very cool. So, hope everything is well. Um, I wanted to address small group. So, I wanted to address something that I've been talking about more and more in my videos to help uh people understand what I'm getting at here. So, when I I've been putting out a bunch of videos recently saying, you know, concentrate on AI, don't learn don't be so heavily weighted on coding. So, when I say you shouldn't learn C++, what I'm trying to say is that the market is changing. I still think you should learn the fundamentals of code because it teaches you system design and will help it will help you with that with proper training. But you have to understand every now and then in software development things change the level of abstraction changes. Uh so for example the amount of code I used to have to write back in the 90s very different from today. Um much less code versus the amount of app and it's just changing again. So, when we're looking at jobs, and I think most people here are interested in jobs and job opportunities, um you always want to go wherever market is growing big time. So, if you're an experienced dev, intermediate level dev, you're going to find lots of jobs as a software developer. But if you're experienced intermediate intermediate level dev and you learn about the AI tool sets, then your value is just going to increase incredibly. It's just like it's it's monstrous. I'm seeing it out there. Um, if you're a junior and you want to get into the game, you learn your fundamentals, then you should learn the AI stacks. AI is very, very, it's evolving very quickly. There's a massive demand. There's a massive amount of work that you can do with AI that you could not do prior. And there's a huge demand for it, as I said, from people. Whether you want to freelance, get a job, developers who know AI are going to get the jobs over people who don't know AI and it's evolving. So there's AI first and then AI augmented traditional development. Then there's prompt engineering that is going away now. It's, you know, it's still there, but there's more advanced ways of interacting with the AIS. It's not trivial, dudes. So what does that mean? That means they're going to need AI experts. Developers who are AI experts. It's kind of you got to think of AI developers or AI or or developers who are AI experts the same some much in the same way as web devs who are experts at React, right? It's the next level. So there are React jobs, there are C++ jobs, there are Java jobs, but if you know AI, then your value just increases exponentially. So that is the first thing I wanted to uh bring to your attention. Okay. So if you're learning how to code now, yeah, learn the basics. Like in my own mentoring program, I kept my coding courses there. I remove I'm removing all the project courses because those are now out of date. But I kept the foundational coding is still important. I don't know how long it's going to be important in terms of actual how much code you can write, but every year the amount of code you need to write has continued to diminish even from the 90s and it's just accelerating now. So at some point you're going to need to know what you're doing. You're going to need to understand the concepts and the abstractions and the systems and how the systems work together, but the amount of code you're going to actually write daily is going to be less. You're going to be more like an overseer, like a manager. So, uh, yeah, I was just talking to somebody today who's got a, uh, travel tourism company. He's a friend of mine, and he's using AI now to augment and automate processes. He's been telling me that he is now able to do things that with traditional development, they just couldn't do. and he would hire a person right now that could uh help him uh implement put into place all his AI based systems like he would pay him big money to do that. So for example, let's say uh let's say you wanted to be you wanted to go out there as a freelance developer, but you're a freelance developer who's a master of implementing marketing systems for companies. That's going to be a huge niche, right? [clears throat] So you can't just come with your knowledge. You come with you and your trained AI agents. That will make you super valuable. That's just not just my opinion. The Microsoft CEO was talking about that last year and uh so he I have to give him credit. He clued me into that one. And he said so people are going to be hired not just for their own skill sets but the agents that they have trained uh based on whatever specialization. So you may be a developer who specialize in building systems for uh accounting, bookkeeping, accounting and what you'll have is maybe a bunch a few agents that you trained to facilitate that. So you'd go into an accounting firm and start automating all their processes using a AI tool sets. So you know the AI landscape, you also know a little bit about codes because you have to go in there and look at the their older stuff and the current stuff that they have. And but you also have your agents who are trained in that. So I do a lot of marketing work for brands and I have a a couple of agents not they're not agents or custom GPTs. So they really make my life easy and and I've trained them in what I do and my protocols and so they take like so I have one agent I get so many requests on a in a daily basis. So I have one uh custom AI. I just send them an email uh of uh the request for sponsorship and it goes through all this criteria of you know things I used to have to do manually. It would take me 25 minutes for each uh sponsorship request. Now the AI does it for me in like a second. Boom. Saves me a lot of time. So I hope you're getting an idea of what modern development is going to be about. Modern development is going to be about people who know systems and coding and development. So you should know the foundational languages uh for now anyway. But more importantly they understand the AI tool set and landscape. You got to look at AI as like the new JavaScript libraries front end back end or the new uh framework if that makes any sense. So I'm going to go through some comments and I'll continue and if you have any questions ask them. So what do we got here? So, what's up? What's up, Mo Muhammad? All right, cool. Uh, Ferds, very clear. Good. Hearing you loud and clear from New York City. Very cool. From Zambia. Thank you. All right. Uh, very cool. Uh, hello from Turkey, Los Angeles, Slovakia, Romania. Should I learn Flutter nowadays? Flutter is uh I would learn it if you have a project that is required. See the days of you learn your foundations then you learn Flutter or then you learn React. Those days are I think gone. I think what you do is you learn your foundations, then you learn AI and then if a project comes up where Flutter makes sense then you get the basics of Flutter under your belt. You see one thing you have to understand why do I emphasize the foundations because once you understand the foundations well uh learning a flutter or react or review or any other library will become very trivial pretty trivial you know um especially when you have AI now my my strings are out my strings are out of whack here we go bothers me I like balance for my martial arts anyway when um when you have a good understanding of the foundations then to learn these new things like a flutter so on it's not hard so I would not learn flutter unless there is a flutter project understand what flutter can do for you maybe you know watch a 10-minute video on it or a five minute video or ask AI say give me the advantages of using flutter and what are the competitors so you understand it so you can make the choices so when you go in to for a job as a freelancer or maybe you're at a company and you're working at least you'll know when it makes sense to consider Flutter. You see, because of AI, the need to know the mechanics of all these things are becoming less important where your judgment and your overall knowledge of systems and the choices in the ecosystem, the software development ecosystem become far more important. So like in my mentoring program, that's what I'm doing. I'm creating new uh modules now. I put a modules on introduction to AI and software development. understand AI first and AI augmented development etc and so forth and I'm going getting more deeper into that keep in my foundations because it's very important but to pre-learn a flutter to pre-learn a react I would not do I have put those technologies into my category I've had for many years called the need to nerd category it's something that you learn if it comes up you don't pre-learn it because I made that mistake by the way back in the day I learned a bunch of stuff that I never used in commercial projects. I just never used it. So for example, when I was doing a lot of Java, for some reason, I decided to learn Java Swing, which is their guey framework for thick client development. Never used it. I spent uh a few weeks learning it and I just never never came up in my entire career. What a waste of time. I wasted a lot of time on other technologies as well. So I'm just trying to save you that pain. Learn what's key, what's fundamental, and develop a good understanding the principles and the architectures and then uh you'll be good. Okay, where we going? Flutter. That was the Flutter. Libya. Very cool. From Canada, too. What part of Canada, man? Uh, hey, you're famous. Well, only with my family. Southshore, Montreal. Very cool. Kenya, Egypt. AI AI hybrid developers 100%. soon. Now they're called AI hybrid developers. They use AI and they use code and deote. So soon it's just going to be developers and AI is just going to be the trend. Uh what should I do as a junior? Learn your foundations and then jump into the AI stack. Matthew is always positive. Always a positive guy. The end is nine. Hello from Myrtle Beach. Mr. Beach could so Matthew uh one of my uh one of my mentees he's now uh I think you're senior dev now right a multinational a major opportunity in SEO AEO GEO dev's data has to be structured all new ways now yep you need to know how to code so you can check the AI work 100% 100% that's so you got to know your foundations let's see problems finding legit jobs for us Africans we can mostly just be remote, but the internet now is so filled with ghosts and fake jobs. Well, what you got to do is you got to keep building your reputation, maybe work for some nonprofits and uh and again, the key to getting ahead in any market is to go where the demand is. The demand today is in the AI augmented development, AI hybrid development. I like that. I'll use that term. It's understandable. Trust me guys, I've been approached multiple times by people say Steph will you help me develop something with this AI tool please Steph please and I'm like too busy. So there's a lot of opportunity but nobody's coming to me say Steph can you do react you know no you also here's a trick you got to think about any project you're working on whether for employer or uh you're going to be a contractor or maybe develop a product you got to think of it in terms of what is their perspective right what are they looking for right you you can there's no clients are not going to say we want react you know unless there's some large organization where they have a react infrastructure that's going away. That is becoming less and less important. You got to think about what they're looking for. So, for example, I'll use this example recent I've been using a restaurant owner I know owns three big restaurants. He wants an AI phone system that will take orders, route orders to uh the kitchen, yada yada yada yada. That's an enduser thinking. That's what they're looking for. He's not saying I need React. He's not saying I need chachi. He's not saying I need rock. He's saying I need this this implementation here. So you got to start thinking in terms of that. And then you look at the technology choices you have out there like tools that can be used to implement these things. That's all. Uh yeah. So 69 70 people. If you give me some thumbs I would appreciate it guys. What about for what about forran cobalt and other leg? There's probably work there. Again, there's probably a lot of work there because nobody cares about these tools, but there's pro there's a lot of infrastructure. But I would learn how AI and Forran and Cobalt go together. that will make you super powerful because a lot of companies are now like there's a recent news where um Anthropic said that they their AI can now rewrite and fix cobalt code and a IBM stock dropped like 13% because that's big part of their business is just maintaining old systems. Thanks for the thumbs ups guys. So again, I'm not saying no code. I'm saying less code, more AI, more low code systems, low code. You know, WordPress would be an example of that. So or Wix again. So if I was looking at Forran and Coobo, I would be in other legacy language. I was looking at how you can uh write those legacy languages, update systems based on these legacy systems using AI. That's how you're going to get your foot in the door. That's actually a good hack because not a lot of developers are looking at forran or cobalt. So right there it's great competition wise, right? Because you're always looking at how many jobs versus how many developers. There may be 10 million jobs in I don't know react but if there's 10 million developers going to be hard to get in but if there's only 500 jobs in forran but only 200 forran developers then you're going to get a job for sure. So you always got to look at uh relative demand to supply with everything. So that's that's that would be my suggestion. If you're going to if you're interested in forran cobalt look at and legacy languages and and updating those old systems look at it in terms of how you can combine that with AI. Hello from Pakistan. Pakistan how are you? How are you guys? Hello Steph. I'm a CS computer science third year student regular watching your videos. Should I still focus on? Yeah, I would focus on building things now. As I just said, if you got your coding, you're doing it. Start going hard into the AI stuff. It's complex, dude. It's not like you can sit there and drink your coffee and AI will do it all. It's super productive, but you got to know what you're doing. Matthew, uh, this guy here, he can speak to that. He was telling me about, uh, how he had some lingering, uh, tickets in his company and he was able, I think he would something would have taken you a couple weeks to do or six weeks to do, I think you told me, and you got it done in two hours because of AI. But he still needed to know what he was doing. So just because AI speeds up the process, it just it doesn't mean that there's going to be less need for developers. There's going to be huge need for developers. In fact, I know this is going to be controversial for some of you because of AI. There's all these different things that companies are going to do now that they couldn't do prior is going to create a huge amount of jobs, a huge amount. I think we're in a transitional period now. We're dealing with the postcoid uh over overhiring and they're reducing some CEOs have admitted that we just actually we're saying it's AI because we're laying off people, but actually reality is that they just overhired uh because of COVID. So, they're kind of correcting that. But now you seen now we're starting I saw a report they're seeing job posting starting to spike again you know so again it's all about that it's all about uh going into the new stuff so what's going to happen instead of you working on a project for two years on the same system the project time cycles will be reduced that's my guess my get my thinking that uh instead of you working one year on something you you work on it for two months and then you work on the next week and the next week and the next year there's unlimited software to be written. There's unlimited processes to be resolved now. So in the end, I think there's going to be a lot more jobs. I think the skill set's shifting. So if you're like a what DSA guy, data, data structures and algorithms guy, you're you're out of luck a little bit. Uh but you you you go into understanding architectures, understanding AI systems, how data flows, security, all this kind of stuff. That's where you're going to see a huge opportunity. So yeah, so keep learning to code, but I would jump into the AI stuff and start learning to build things. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. Just don't think we're in 2025. You know, if you were a typewriter manufacturer and the typewriter jobs were going away, um, you know, it doesn't mean there's no other jobs. Any Sorry, I got distracted by a text here. Um, hi from Poland. My favorite uncle keep my anxiety in check. Yeah, no worries about it. Trust me. Listen, I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I don't have um you know what I'm I would tell you if I thought coding uh software development was over. It's just it's just mutating as it always has, right? Best freelance platform. I don't know. The best freelance platform is word of mouth. Once you get um some reputation, once people start getting to know you, then uh next thing you know, you'll be doing pretty good. So, I would just start doing some searching, looking around. Depends on what part of the world you're in. Uh yeah. Uh yeah, appreciate the thumbs guys. How are 85 people? Small group. I'm a Java developer with three year experience but had four year gap in between with 1.5 years of freelancing. Now due to a lot of advancement I'm not sure what to learn Java e was it or add front end as well. So what I would do look at the market like study the job market spend a spend a few days a week use AI start scanning job opportunities scanning the job markets go to uh wherever developers hang out see what they have to say and then make your choice based on that. Now while we working with most using agents we software must still review code. Yeah. You think time will come when we don't really need to review code that will be so precise. I I would guess eventually code review will will not be so required. If you learn how to use AI properly you need less code review but you still have to do it. Actually, I was just working with AI today to fix something in one of my views in my Laravel app and it was not great. It helped. It helped, but it wasn't great. I still needed to know what I was doing. Like a a junior would have had trouble with it. Uh since but because I'm an ancient hairless nerd, I was able to use it and it was a useful tool. but it still wasn't great. Other times it's fantastic. You know, I personally found in my experience is that AI takes care of the boring stuff in development. That's my experience anyway. Uh so yeah you still so yeah so I think long term uh developers are going to be kind of like system architects judgment decision makers people who have agents highly trained and refined workflows I'm learning backend Python Django fast API postgrad and then moving forward into AI engineering what do you suggest is a good path in this AI era I just said it you know jump into AI AI is complex and it's everchanging. So that's why uh I think there's a huge opportunity there. I would uh learn the basics of the of the full stack. Don't go too crazy. Don't do just understand you know but working with postgrade learn how to set it up. Learn to set some databases normalize a little bit the databases but that's it. But jump in AI heavy duty AI. So the you once you have your fundamentals of code, you should be shifting to AI systems and AI workflows. That's if you want the jobs and they're going to be paid he very nicely. Like I said, I'm talking to people, they would pay they they're looking for people who understand the AI ecosystem. Hey Steph, what do you think about PHP stack versus JavaScript full stack on a neutral side? I prefer PHP. I have I just don't like MPM. Uh I I found PHP to be uh overall for my needs better. It's actually easier to set up too for a lot of people. That's just a personal choice. They're all good these days. You know, I would, you know, for small medium-sized projects, I'd stay away from Java, stay away from .NET. Not that those the C and Java are bad languages. I just find are heavy but they're widely used in the enterprise meaning big legacy stuff. If I'm developing something new I'd be PHP JavaScript Python third. So he says uh should newbies who are taking career in Tekken 26 and beyond learn the former or the latter? It depends what you're looking to do, right? Look at the market. Do a little market study. Like you got to be a little proactive in terms of studying uh the market now and seeing where the demand is because you find that different parts of the world there's a different uh demand mix. You know, there's no point in specializing in one language anymore. Yeah. There was never a point to be honest with you. You know, I've been talking about this. I've been teaching this for years and years and decades. fact uh once you learn one programming language the rest become pretty self evident um yeah meaning once you learn let's say JavaScript for you to learn Python you'll learn in a few days you know how much CSS should I know for freelancing enough so that you can build a responsive website once you can build a responsive website the rest you learn as you need you Uh, JSAP. I don't know what that is. Maybe SVG not needed. Waste of time. Again, those are I don't know about I don't know what JSAP is, but SVG I know what that is. Scalar vector graphics. I think it is. It's uh Anyway, yeah, these are neat to nerd. It's like for every SVG uh project there's probably 10,000 PHP projects you know doing DSC DSA on lead code and making full stack products used to be the primary focus of computer science freshers to land your first job would you recommend it given the AI boom no uh don't waste your time with that go into AI DSA is actually become is actually I thought thought since the inception that DSA was way overemphasized because for 90% of jobs DSA is not important uh for 90% of jobs if you're developing big systems where you really have to optimize the uh data structures and the algorithms yes but for most web apps no in terms of optimizations the only thing that really counts uh on the web anyway is the database for the most part uh no forget DSA and lead code you want to go into AI by big time. That's where if you want a job. Hey, uncle, is Django plus React stack still worth it? Um, I would say forget about learning React. Uh, maybe learn the basics of Django just to understand what MVC is. So, it's about principle, but just learn the basics. I would be again once you know your fundamentals, I would be focusing on the AI stacks. Think of AI as the new React, the new Django, the new uh Larave valve, a new uh you know, Vue on steroids times a thousand if you want to make money. Again, it's just a new form of development. I from Bosnia and H cannot pronounce it graovia. Sorry, I I want some my brain can't pronounce it today, but I know where you are. Is Shopify dev viable? It's I consider Shopify one of those uh low code, no code tools that just understand what it can do. Understand when it makes sense to use it, but don't be don't spend too much time on it. Spend maybe a day understanding the basics. Um it's one of those need to nerd technologies. And would you also learn some marketing stuff on top of coding? If you want to get into that, if you want to get into that, if like as as in my earlier example, if you um if you were a dev who implemented marketing uh systems for companies, which I think there's going to be a huge market for that, and you came to it with AI agents that assisted you in that, you would be super valuable. I hope that helps. What do you think is right, Iran or the United States? Oh, I don't get into politics here. I don't know. I don't have enough knowledge. I'll just say this. In speaking to Iranians, I know up here in Canada, they're all ecstatic. Everyone, I've only spoken to three, but all three of them, it's not much of a sample size, they're super happy about it. So, I don't know. Personally, I don't know. I don't know enough about that part of the world. Yep. I am a SR dev in little less than four years working on my first SAS. Ah, very cool. Yes, sure. Yeah, we'll talk about how that's going. Will demand for software engineering increase? I think it will, but it's not going to be the old stuff. It's going to be uh the AI hybrid developers and AI um specialized developers. That's going to remember people conflate. They assume that coding is development. It is not. code is a tool of development. any experienced developers will understand that completely as [snorts] so just because coding is is shrinking as it always has been in my career long before AI it's always been shrinking um it doesn't take away from development so yeah so I think it's going to increase in the new stuff the basics are needed links hre yeah you have to know those basics There's still some work in older languages. If you can work with AI, it would make your life easier. Exactly. Any tips on being able to quit a 9 to5 job, become financially free, hopefully with code. Thanks for all your videos. Um, that's a big subject. Yeah, it's I haven't had a job working for somebody since I was 18 years old when I was a bouncer. So, I've done it. The key is um uh you got to be proactive. You got to have discipline to be able to work uh you know without somebody telling you what to do. You have to uh also have good money management discipline. Money management discipline. So the key first thing you got to do if you want to be uh quit the nineto-5 first you have to build as a freelancer about a year's worth of uh fu money emergency money. So you don't have to worry about a gig for about a year. So you got to build that year of cash and then you got to start building your reputation out there and start and you want to eventually get like a a pool of clients that you can rely on. I've talked about at length in other videos. You can go look at my other videos and thanks for your stuff. We love your work. I appreciate it. Thanks. See, I'm not here like when I tell you, you know, you got to step away, pull back from React, pull back from code, and go here. I'm not attacking code. I've done it for decades. And uh I'm just here, my main goal has been always to guide you in terms of career. I'm not, you know, even though I I've been a I've been saying uh a pumper of PHP because I just think it was super productive. Still is, but now I'm pumping AI because that's where the money is. That's where the opportunity is. So I don't attack. I'm just trying to guide you based on best of my knowledge. Uh so I have like a friend of mine who's at the travel tourism business. Here's something cool. So he's built his AI. He gets clients come in. He knows a little bit of code. He knows a little bit of code, but he's not a coder. So he's an owner of the business. So he got he has uh clients come to a site. They request a quote for a particular package. Its AI reads that, checks what they have in their roster, and then it generates a live uh Porto website, and then sends out an email to the client so they can go check it out and see what the quote is and so forth. Now, it's taking him a long time. It's not working perfectly yet, but uh he he was the guy who was telling me I was just talking to him earlier today. He said, "If I could find somebody new AI, well, I would hire him in a second so he could implement all these things." He's got tons of things to do. So, yeah, he's not hiring somebody anymore to design a web page. He's hiring people and he's willing to pay top dollar who can do all these AI things and automations and so forth. Um, I got a super chat. I answer that question. Thanks for the super chat. Uh what is the best way to learn AI? I would start with looking at what they're they're called the frontier models. So uh I would learn I would go to chat and ask it what can what can you do for me? Give me ask it very specifically. One thing with with the AIS you got to be very specific with them. So what can you tell me about as a developer? What advantage you provide for me? Very tursly. This is you're talking to chachi that you can do for me. What are the advantages? How you're different? Give me a summary of what you could do versus Gemini versus anthropic code and see what they say you know and do what Gemini start comparing. So first thing you want to learn about the these these foundational models or the frontier models that's chachi gemini clo and uh grock and find out and you're going to see each of them have different things and then there's all these tool sets. Clo has all these cool tools in there that make that do all kinds of cool things. So that's what I would do. So that's the first thing I would do. uh if you're in the mentor if I don't know if you're in my mentoring program or not but if you're there I did put a module on there it's a like 11 video course giving you an overview of AI and how to look at it how to approach it and stuff but in a nutshell I just gave you what the uh what the deal is hold on uh what should I learn for a new grad become AI aware assume you know the fundamentals of code though because the AI is going to make all kinds of mistakes with coding And you need to know what you're doing. You need to know architecture. So you need your foundations. You got your foundations. You're ready to go. How much security do I need to know to start building websites? Not much. Most of the security and web apps are locked down on the server side. So the hosting companies will take care of that. Um like one thing to understand as a developer, the different types of hosting, right? Do you go with cloud? Do you go dedicated? Do you shared hosting? Depends on the project. So just knowing that is like one of your values, right? uh uh so much security. So you just need to know the basic you know SQL injection but ask the AI. I always end up rewriting code from tutorials rather than writing myself. Yeah, you got to get away from tutorial hell. You know you got to get into real world development. That's the key. So find a project, build it from scratch. Don't worry if you don't know everything. When I b my built bert when I built my first um web app for a client, believe it or not, uh I had never used a relational database before. I had built web apps, procgi stuff, but I was doing it to u simple text files. Um that was I was storing my data in CSV files rather. Um, so I get this project as client and I never used a relational database before. So what did I do? I just went out and I bought a book at that. This is pre uh, you know, YouTube and stuff. So I went out and I bought bought a book. This adjusting my lighting here, guys. Hold on. So I bought a book and uh, learned a relational database and got paid to learn. You know, that's how that goes. Hope that's useful. Um, so yeah, get away from tutorials. start building things. If you know your foundation, so in the web, if you can do build a responsive website and you can do basic CRUD, you're ready to go. I'm learning backend in Python, Django, Fast API, Procre moving for Yeah, I think I answered you. Yeah. What are your suggestions on UI UX field? It's very specialized. Again I would be looking at AI tools and other low code no code tools in terms of UIUX understand your basic principles of UIX UI and UX understand you know colors how they impact psychology uh information flow alignment whites space these are principles that you should know right so again in in the modern era of development it's less about code and mechanics AI will do that. What you have to bring to the table as a prodeveloper is judgment and understanding of principles and systems. If you focus on that uh then you're going to be doing fantastic lots of opportunity but you just got to re you got to reconfigure your focus. You know, one of the things I put I like one of the things I got to put out on the uh mentor program. I got to put a course on um on system level thinking. That's so important today. System level thinking in coding. You still have to guide AI 100%. That's it's why don't worry guys if you learn to code you learn to code it's not a waste of time. It's very very good. Steph, do you have an option for your website do one- on-one booking? Yeah, you actually you can do that now. You can go to uh where I think it's under the uh this video. You can actually book me for a consult if you want. I just got my AZ900. I really interested in cloudspace. Cool. Uh [groaning] okay, we enter that. I'm a dev dealing with client scope creep. Ah, there you go. Yeah, that's very important. That's part of the skill, by the way. That's one of these skills in software development people don't talk about enough. Being able to deal with uh project scope creep or client scope creep. That's a skill because um a big part of being successful as a developer is making sure the client is happy with what you got. And that has a lot to do with controlling expectations and scope. I know it has doesn't sound intuitive as a nerd but trust me it makes a huge difference. I need consultant how to stand my ground. Yeah. The key is um clear communication with clients written so you have a track record. So, what's important when you're dealing with clients and bosses and co-workers that it's clearly stated and written in an email what you're going to deliver at what time. Uh, project creep scope creep as he's talking about is so common. Do at our company architecture, systems design, data engineering, our security became more of the focus. We didn't have people getting fired. We instead build way more products now. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Thanks for that comment comment of the day. So he's talking about AI. So they brought in AI. So it just changed the focus as I've been talking about as I've been suggesting at our company architecture systems design data engineering security became more of the focus 100%. And as he said, we in instead of getting rid of people, we're in building way more products now. Software developer jobs are not going away. Just learn the new stuff and you'll be doing fantastic. I'm a dev and I'm dealing with client scope creep and I need a way to stand my ground. Yeah, we got that. There was a feature request that wasn't high priority. So I prompted AI with that I needed and how I needed viable product I could test quick. Then I refined my prompt and cleaned it up. So he had to know what he was doing. Mafia he's talking about some lingering project that somebody wanted to have done and in the company he works for so he had some time. So AI allowed him to do it. A lot of companies there's so many things that have to be done. Uh, are all AI programs paid? No. Do you have to pay to use any AI? No. Even just for practice? No. Some IDEs are paid, others free. You can do a lot with free ones, but I don't know if it's the same with AI. Um, yeah, you there's all of them have free access level, right? Um, it's just a question of uh how many times you can prompt them in a day, how many times you can work with them a day. But they're not super expensive. So start with the free stuffs. Go to Gemini, try it out. Go to Chadik, try it out. Go to Gro, try it out. You know, but if you start using them a lot, you're going to have to pay. But you can get a like I just used the $20 a month program. Simple. Hi, Uncle Steph. Hope you're doing well. I'm working for building AI agents like chat plus voice bots also in CRM management, marketing automation. Well, worried. No, I wouldn't. Don't be worried about the future. Plenty of opportunity. Trust me. Trust me. I've seen these worry cycles before. I'll give you a classic example. when uh content management systems hit the scene, WordPress and so forth, a lot of um contentrich site developers, if you will, they were worried because, oh my god, we're going to lose all our jobs because they used to build their HTML uh pages by hand or they would use like PHP with server includes um and then WordPress made all that stuff, you know, not needed anymore. But it just created huge opportunities. It it just exploded the industry. So I remember I remember friends of mine they were that's their that was their job. Their job was to to update magazine sites with raw HTML or PHPbacked HTML or something and then all of a sudden boom. So no don't worry about the future. A lots of opportunity. 40-year career changer. I've completed the foundations on your website. currently building my website along with few of us as how do you figure out what to target for jobs? Very good question. Part of it depends on a what you like to do, b uh where you happen to live in the world where the demand is. Um yeah, the market is vast. There's so much opportunity if you just get into the new stuff. If you forget about if you stop having kittens over um you know React or Vue or Django jobs and you just think about where the jobs are now, you're going to see these massive opportunities. So what I would do is I would start poking around and see what people are interested in, talk to them. Again, use the AI to uh to open doors for you. That's how you open doors as a junior is just leverage the AI stuff, man. and then see what happens. You know, is it okay to use lampstack in 2026 to build MVPs? Sure, why not? The stacks are becoming less and less relevant. The languages are less and less relevant nowadays. I was talking to a guy a friend of mine used to work for me and he has he did a lot of research for Facebook and AI and he has a startup now AI startup and the languages are becoming less and less relevant because with AI you can point an AI at let's say Python and then say you know create this the equivalent in C++ it's not perfect but it's coming right again it's not about the mechanics of matter. So lampstack that's fine. Lamp is fine. You know AI style a couple years behind newer concepts in tech. I talked to AI like a junior dev. Mia is too bloated nowadays. Yeah, agreed, agreed, agreed. Your advice to CS freshers? Um, start working with AI daily. I would stick Hey, we got ourselves an X comment. I would stick to one or two main languages. I would agree with that. You don't need to know all but one. That's very common. I agree. That's I agree. I agree 100%. That's why in my my mentoring I teach JavaScript, PHP, and Python. So, you got the you got you got you're pretty much covered with all that. Uh is there no translator for YouTube live? I don't know. See, there's an example. You know, YouTube uh you know, they should have a translator for life. [laughter] It's coming, I'm sure. I find uh that the magic numbers three. Once you've gone into three RDBMSs, you see the difference between databases and specific platform. Same for programming languages. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. I think it's not a coincidence that uh our brains are very good with three. That's why there's uh what is it the father the son and the holy ghost or whatever the mother son and holy you know three is like one of these numbers that our brains are seem to be well mapped against jay's app is green sockjs animation ah okay there you go yeah very very niche stuff animations SVGs fun but jobs I put those in the need to nerd category fun useful. But how many people need that? When hello. When you say learn AI stack, what exactly are you referring to? Well, start with the frontier model. Start learning what Jad GPT chat GPT can do for you. Start look at code and there's tool sets. Start looking at agents. Uh an advertiser, a company, an AI company that I put out an ad video for him soon. Replit. They got all these highly refined AIs. So uh [groaning] yeah that's what I'm referring to. So start with the the the big models like that like I said chip te's and so on take it from there email development highly specialized need to nerd is system programming a good career C or Russ um if combined with AI I'm sure what is your honest opinion of become a developer of 50 years old in a sense of real opportunities I think that if you depends what your background is so if you're like I don't know an accountant getting into it then I would combine AI development and bringing to forth accounting accounting based um tools or expertise it may maybe you're a marketer and you want to get out of marketing you want to get into develop I would combine marketing with AI and um traditional development I hope that makes sense um AI is a big game changer because there's such opportunity there because there's such a demand and maybe you can come in as a consultant, a freelancer. My experience has been AI does a great job at recreating stuff that's already exists. >> True. >> But fails miserably at creating new software tech and has never been written before. Very true. Potentially, how about Flutter? Flutter of GoDev is it learns again the language is um that is again whether you learn this language, that language, this framework, it depends on the jobs. The key is fundamentals, AI, low code, no code. And then you decide if you're going to learn go dev or flutter if uh if a job comes up. [laughter] Plumbing will be around. So I got the Okay, I got that. Definitely old school um watcher. Thanks for joining the stream. How about learn go 2026? to answer that. Do you think you can learn just by YouTube or do I need to be an engineer? You can learn from YouTube, you can learn from AI plus YouTube. The key is to um the key the key the key with learning this stuff is just to get your foundations and start building real things as quickly as possible. That's the key. No worries. Hey, thanks man. What about NexJS? Again, need to nerd. People really like it. Learn what it can do, understand, and then use it if it need be. Uh, I'm going to have to put out a video on the need to nerd texts versus the mustle learn tech. So, must learn foundations, AI stuff, different models, what agentic is, etc. Uh, need to nerd next react Laravel Django. Hey Steph, do you get just to get my foot in the door in 26 27 with an entry- level position? What do I need to know in terms of language including AI? Again, foundations and then understand AI. So you can come in and be a developer who knows how to work with AI. That's going to make you super value. valuable. Excuse me. Does learning AI mean learning how to build ML models? No. How it means learning how to work with the models or does it mean learning how to effectively use AI tools like cursor GPT? What do there you go? That's it. Just being able to use the models. Now, what they're going to do in interviews, I don't know. It depends on the company, right? This is also new. If you know these models well and you understand them, um, you'll have no problems getting jobs. I'm I'm I'm fairly confident of that. So, tell something about fast API of learning if you need it. That's what it is. I'm trying to I'm I'm I'm I'm restating over and over again what my thinking here. [snorts] I have never had so many inbound clients. have I had in the last year just being able to help them leverage AI to build faster whether it's pox or helping them move legacy projects. I love AI. There you go. Flight deck dad proving my point. All the people crying is that there are people, you know, it's like the people looking at old tech. Look at the new guys. Lots of opportunity. That's why in my own uh mentoring program, shameless plug, unclestef.com, I keeping my foundation to code and how to freelance and how to manage your money and so forth. But I've added modules on AI. I'm adding more and more modules. That's where the jobs are. So again, let me emphasize that. I'm going to put this really big so I get the message here. And my my computer's running slow for some reason. Here we go. I have never had so many inbound clients as I had in the last year just by being able to help them leverage AI to build faster. Right? There you go. You know, I I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it myself. It's just like it's unbelievable the opportunity. I believe I believe this is the best opportunity in decades to be a software developer. 100%. I am so optimistic about this time. We're in a transitional period. People are having problems now is because they're looking at old stuff. Just like when I got into the web in 1994 and it was brand new. Bill Gates was saying the web is a fad. I said no, no, that's the future. I didn't go after what was current. Current at that time was like VB6, uh, CDROM programming and C++ sick client apps for Windows mostly. There's some Mac OS and some Linux, but I went web and I had like the world was my oyster. Projects were just coming at me left and right. AI is now that AI is the new development. Like this guy just said, flight deck dad. Flight deck dad. He's got all these projects coming in because he's doing the new stuff. Stop with the old. [laughter] [snorts] Uh I found myself I don't code anymore. I only use AI agents to write my code. But I carefully plan and review the code is I think is okay or should I maintain skill rate? No. See that's one that's a good question. So he's wondering if he starts using AI agents to write out a code and just manage them he's going to slowly lose his ability to code. He'll forget things. And actually Enthropic uh who makes code they they just released a study. They found that developers who are doing that their they their score on tests was 17% lower when people were still actively coding. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter even Alex forget about AI even in within the software development um itself when I would move from language A to B or stack A to B and even though I was an expert but for example when I move from Java and I and I did a many months of C.NET net I'd go back to Java and I'd forget things. I think how do we do this in Java now? And I would confuse it with some the way we did innet. Did that make me a bad coder? No. Just go. That's why you have idees, right? That's why you have Google now. That's why you have GPT or AI. Doesn't matter concepts, principles, uh system level thinking. That is the key. So it doesn't matter if you forget because it's normal to forget. All that matters you understand the concepts and the principles. Once you have that the details are not important because the details can be retrieved in a moment with AI, right? So no, I wouldn't be too concerned about that. Use open code in your CLI. They have free models. Oh, there you go. Uh hello from Argentina, Buenosis. Hey, how you doing? Thanks for joining the stream. All right, how are we doing here? O, almost an hour. I'll be wrapping this up after an hour. Let me know if if you like live streams, give me some thumbs and comment after this video. I'll leave it up live. And as long as I'm feeling good, I'll do more. Uh, companies don't want randomness. For true business management applications, you always need a software engineer to add the right amount of intelligence. No magic. Yeah, you you still need judgment. The key today is judgment. In the AI development time, this time you need judgment, architectural skills, uh, good communication skills. That's the key. If you run clos captions on your computer, it will probably make subtitles live. Don't use YouTube for live captions. Turn live captions on your phone settings or your computer sense. I have to look into that, man. Thanks for the tip. How would an employer differentiate between someone who just knows how to prompt AR to write code versus someone who can actually build systems? Well, they're going to see what you've done. That's why I always tell people once you learn your foundations, start building things. Start with simple projects, then move up from there. So, the employer is going to be able to judge you based on what you can portfolio. That's all. What is hot in Montreal area? What is hot in the Montreal area currently? I don't know. I don't know p I don't pay too close of attention to the local development market but I can tell you what's hot universally around the world AI development. Uh it does seem like AI writes 90% of the code where we just end up needing to review and guide on patterns. Yeah, but again, uh, coding has always been an aspect, a part of development, not the whole thing. I turn live captions on my cell phone and the live captions are working for the cell phone settings that can be found in Vibes. Okay. On your machine. Okay. So, if you want captions, just use your cell phone. There you go. Good tip. Thanks, Nick. AI vibe code is already used by the clients. It's a lot of hype. They end up with buggy simple prototypes. Yep. Websites and after search search developers, serious companies don't include AI in developing. It has to be done properly. I was just thinking about that in terms of uh so let's say I had an I haven't experimented with this, but say I had an AI and I wanted to have it start writing code for a particular app of some note. What I would do is I would set up some sort of I guess you call it a manifest, some sort of guidelines about how to write their code. So I would say no inheritance. We're going to use this language for this project. We're going to use composition as a design pattern. We're going to use dependency injection or as they like they call it in in the uh Java world, the filter system. Yeah. just by telling it to do that, you're going to reduce a lot of spaghetti code potential there. So that's one thing you could do and that's like the new version of where you set up uh protocols for the AI in terms of how to write the code because if they're writing code without uh inheritance uh using composition um uh using dependency injection as a design pattern using MVC uh when makes sense um you tell it what language to use depending on the project then you're going to have a much better a much cleaner code base. Now, here's the thing. You have to know this stuff to be able to, you know, uh tell the AI what to do, right? I know these things. Um and it's not universal, right? Uh it depends on what you're doing. So, anyway, uh can I be hired as a junior dev with 40 with 48 years? potentially. But again, I've talked about that. If you look early on in the stream, I I I gave the uh the mindset. Now, here's a another super chat. Thanks for the super chat. Appreciate it. All right, we'll be closing off. How are we doing at the stream? 100 people. Not bad. If you can give me some, we have 45 likes and 100 viewers. Uh can help me out there. Concepts and principles. One needs to know how to build. The tools that one uses to build are secondary. It's like a farmer who doesn't want to use a tractor but still only wants to plow with an ax. Yeah, exactly. You know, a tractor uh excuse me, a farmer still un has to understand how to work the field, what seeds to plant, how to prep the uh the earth. I suppose whether they're using a tractor or an ax to plow, they still got to know what they're doing, right? Uh what do you think the future is like for mobile app developers will be replaced? No. Again, it's just going to be mobile app developers using AI tools to speed up the production. So you spend instead of spending six months on a mobile app, you get it done in you know three weeks and you move on to the next thing and you iterate much faster. That's all. I sir am a 12 finished student. I am a 12finnish student. How do I know what skills in backend develop to get employment at Sunnis? Any suggestions? Study your local job market. See what they're looking for. That said, jump into the AI. That's the hack. The hack for juniors is to become an AI/developer, hybrid developer. They'll hire you much more quickly than if you don't know AI. Independent study found that professional girls using AI were 19% slower. Could be depends how you use it. I have you have to use it properly. You know, is it possible to get hired as a developer without a university degree right now? 100%. 100%. I think that degrees are going to become less and less and less and less important as time goes by. Matthew, who's a senior developer, you just commented earlier. He doesn't have a degree. Uh, yep. And he's a senior dev, so it's all about skills. Hey, Bitcoin JC, man. Long time no see. Ah, is it possible to hire? I did that one. I've been worried if I should uh use cursor to build a SAS. Would this be a good idea for a junior full stack? Why not? Why not? I made a silly mistake. I made a silly mistake back in the early days of my software career. So, what was my mistake? And it relates back to what we're talking about here. My mistake was I refused to use an IDE, even a code editor. In my first two years writing Java code, I was um a purist and I just used Notepad to write my Java code. And then I would um I would compile the code with Javacia by a command line. And I did this for two years because I felt that I was if I was going to use the IDE it was going to write code for me. I was going to forget blah blah. So eventually I acquiesced and I decided to use an IDE and not only did I start developing uh much more quickly. Um I learned a lot more because the ID would give me the IDE would give me hints and so yeah I hope that helps. Don't make that mistake. People who ignore AI now because they feel threatened they're making a mistake. It's a great opportunity. uh is webdev the best time to learn right webdev is great webdev gives you a widest range of opportunities because deploying to the web is like that's the platform of deployment so understanding the webdev and the full stack what websites are and request response model these are things you have to understand even with AI [laughter] so Okay. [snorts] Concepts and principles. One of the most popular selling points for a job applicant is adaptability. If one isn't well versed in AI in 2026, evidently they aren't adaptable. Yeah, you got to be adaptable. All right. What's we do? Oh, over an hour questions coming in. I'll answer a couple more questions. I'm going to head off. My coffee is cold. Hey Steph, I have to say C is heavily utilized in central and eastern Europe for small to medium-sized businesses while the rest of the world uses it for enterprise. Huh. It's a phenomenon in the CE region. So there you go. It's very regional. As I say, language use and technology use is very regional. That's interesting. Um again, same rules. start looking looking at AI and how AI will augment your C um implementations and that's how you're gonna advance at the game. I'm a mid-level I'm mid-level I'm starting a new row and job at a banking company. Hey, congratulations. Good stuff. You know what you got to do. Not many people even know how to use AI effectively nor understand LLM's agent skills etc. That is why uh AI is the uh is the hack now. That's you hit the nail on the head man. Phil Bushman 9744 hit the nail on the head. Hey hey hey how you doing man? Hope everything is good. What is your opinion in learning Java? I'm trying to transition in my bank. Should I continue or go Python? See what the demand is at your bank. See what the demand is. If you haven't s written code before, I would do Python first simp simply because it's more approachable. It's easier, you know, and once you understand Python, then you could pivot to Java pretty quickly. What is your opinion? Uh, I did that one already. Most of the people said that the limitation with AI is that refactoring and writing is that refactoring and writing code scalable code. How to master refactoring writing scalable code as selftaught. I would uh buy the seinal book on refactoring. I have a link to it below. And I would uh scale is overemphasized in web apps. most of the scale is in the database really most of the time not all the time but most of the time so understanding how to write u how to design good database tables um if you uh work with the AI properly you'll be able to write um maintainable code if you use it properly you got to learn to use it properly you give me hope in the opportunity in front of all it's a huge opportunity. I wouldn't you. If I thought the opportunity sucked, I'd let you know. I think it's a huge opportunity. It's like it's just exploding if you go into the area I'm talking about. So, all the doomers out there, don't listen to them. I've been I've been at this game for so long. I used to have long hair when I started. So, this is how long I've been coding. So, it's uh yeah, it's huge opportunity. I googled co's nani's Microsoft moved early into CE rooted in even small to mid business just naturally moved from the original Microsoft infrastructure into net while Java focus on US market ah there you go all right guys I hope you like the stream I I love doing the streams I don't know why I stop you know I'll try to do them more often I hope you like the stream if you did give me a thumbs up um it's fun answering questions anyway That's it. Um, if you don't know me, I'm Uncle Steph. That's what people start to call me, Uncle Steph. So, people are starting to call me Grandpa Steph, which is not good. But, um, anyway, I hope you found this useful. Thanks for joining. And, um, yeah, we'll see you in the next one. Comment below, like, share, all that stuff. Oh, since he's a Bitcoin JC, since he's an OG uh viewer, I'll answer his question. I'm still amazed daily at how Copilot suggest and autocomp completes my code, even long pieces as I type it in Visual Studio IDE. It just knows what I want to do. That's it. That's good. All right, guys. Cheers in honor of Aussie. Poor Aussie. Double guns. Thanks for joining the stream. Have a good one. Enjoy your day. Don't worry about the jobs. Just you follow what I'm suggesting. I again I'm not exaggerating. I think it's the greatest opportunity since the inception of the web to got into software development if you do the new stuff. And I'm telling you the new stuff um is so much more fun. It's so much more fun. That's it. I uh yeah, there you go. Cheers. Uh, you know what? I'll lead off with my um, do I still have it? Oh, yeah. My old This is I'm gonna end with my ASMR Cape Elizabeth main ocean view video that I filmed a few years ago. I'll end off with that. See you guys.

Is Coding Still Worth It in 2026 — Or Is AI Replacing Developers? #LearnToCode #AI #Programming #SoftwareDeveloper #CodingCareer #TechCareers #AIForDevelopers #FutureOfWork 🔥 DEVELOPER MENTORING PROGRAM: https://unclestef.com 💪 Fit Over 50 — Psychology-Based Fitness & Performance Program — Get leaner, stronger, and build lasting habits: https://fit-over-50-join-page.grwebsite.com/ 🦎 Lizard Wizard Course: https://school.studioweb.com/store/course/lizard_wizard POPULAR & EASY CODING COURSES: Full stack web developer course: https://school.studioweb.com/store/course/complete_web_developer Python 3 Foundations & Certification: https://school.studioweb.com/store/course/python_3_foundations__&_certification_package Complete Freelancer: https://school.studioweb.com/store/course/complete_freelancer ************* 📚 BOOKS TO READ: My Beginners HTML5, CSS3: https://amzn.to/2wKsVTh … Complements Studioweb courses on HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (2nd Edition) https://amzn.to/3o5cTbw HeadFirst Design Patterns: https://amzn.to/2LQ0Gdh Java Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (1st Edition) https://amzn.to/3a9nSsZ The Naked Ape: https://amzn.to/3fhS1Lj ✉️ STAY IN CONTACT: Stef's social links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stefanmischook/?hl=en Twitter: https://twitter.com/killersites Stef's business channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZdr0ql_B240VBVINAX7Acg 👉 GOOGLE REVIEW: https://g.page/studioWebedu/review?mt Leave a Google review about Stef. READ MY GOOGLE REVIEWS: https://bit.ly/2MUii8x MY MOUSE & KEYBOARD: Logitech Keyboard I use: https://amzn.to/38jYDqE Logitech mouse I use: https://amzn.to/2IeVvBj SUPPLEMENTS THAT WORK AMAZING FOR ME: Protein Essentials Beef Gelatine Powder: https://amzn.to/2Pf52vL ... Healed my very bad knee. If you have joint problems, this *could do miracles for you. Webber Naturals 88862 Glucosamine Chondroitin https://amzn.to/3ss9WEa Thanks! Stef #unclestef #softwaredevelopment #webdevelopment #devjobs