I have previously written how I predict a rise in citizen developers with the increased capabilities of AI programming assistants.

If you haven’t read that, or can’t be bothered, here’s the TL;DR:

AI programming assistants have given rise to a new era of citizen developers—people who can now build their own software without formal training. But with great power comes great overconfidence.

Why is this a major problem? Here are some reasons.

Software Development Means Scope Creep

If you have never built software, chances are you can only guess how destructive scope creep, or feature creep, can be to a project.

In short, scope creep means that you keep adding One More Thing ™ to your project until it has become so complex, it’s impossible to maintain and release.

This happens to seasoned developers too, especially when they are under the control of non-technical or inexperienced managers.

The problem here resides in how each new feature often doubles the impact on the existing codebase.

Add one new feature, let’s call it Feature A, and you need to review your existing code for that one change. Add another feature, Feature B, and you need to investigate both the two existing features, but also how any changes to Feature A impacts the original codebase.

With Feature C added, you have impacts from Feature A on the original code, then how Feature B is impacted, and how that impacts Feature A, and now how Feature C impacts features A, and B, plus then how those impacts affect the original codebase.

In short, you end up with a massively complex codebase that has dependencies where you don’t want them. One small change in one small feature can break your entire solution.

Which brings us to the second reason why inexperienced developers can land in deep waters.

Maintaining Software

Part of building and having software is that it isn’t static. If you have ever even heard about Windows Update, you know what I mean. Even the best software companies continuously update and fix issues in their software.

This isn’t easy. Again, as for scope creep, you end up needing extensive testing, careful planning, and often quite a bit of luck, especially when you are using third party software, like React, Entity Framework, or Django.

You can very easily find yourself in a situation where something that worked yesterday now is a major security risk.

Want an example? I’m writing this in February 2025, a few short months after a serious security issue was discovered in 7-Zip, one of the most popular compression solutions. It affects every version that has been released over the 25 year history of 7-Zip.

And guess what? The AI and LLM won’t know that until months or maybe years from now.

An experienced software developer might know because it is their job to know. And, now that AI is doing much of the boring and largely already automated code generation, they have more time on their hands to be better at that.

You Get More Time To Be Better

Did you know that some of the first programmers had to learn knitting? It’s true, the code that was used to send Apollo to the moon was woven, literally. Look up rope core memory.

How much time do you use to weave your memory these days?

In fact, how much time do you spend building your own computer? Because that’s largely what we did just a few short decades ago.

We don’t do those things anymore, as programmers or computer users so clearly, we’ve been replaced now that machines largely do those things for us, right?

No. Of course not. We spend our time learning new things, being more productive, and, most of all, working less to accomplish the same results as 20 years ago.

Note: This does not mean we work less overall, just that the amount of time we have to spend doing the same task, such as compiling a program, building a computer, or getting our memory, is much less.

That means we get better. And AI doesn’t evolve in the same way, so although automation can do many of the tasks beginners do today, it only means that beginners can start doing things that more advanced users do now.

When I started programming, I had to learn how to tune a TV first and later, build my own RF cable, to connect my computer to a real black and white television set. I programmed for a year before I realized computers had color output.

Today, as a beginner, you can spin up a website, available to anyone in the world, in a matter of minutes.

Try telling that to a young junior programmer in 1984.