The World of Coding Has Changed Forever... and I just realized this today.
The World of Coding Has Changed Forever... and I just realized this today.
Monroe Mann
Published On: Oct 4, 2026
Editor’s Note: On all blog posts, we try to edit the writing as little as possible to preserve authenticity, personality, and writing style. We typically fix spelling errors, but minimally modify grammar and sentence structure (just enough to ensure readability).
Name: Monroe Mann Break Diving Level: Level 2 Number of Certified Dives: 17 From: United States In: United States
Dr. Monroe Mann is the founder of breakdiving.io and... used to be a coder???
I've been coding since 2016. The old way. I just watched this video:
(25) Learn Visual Studio Code in 15 minutes: 2026 Official Beginner Tutorial - YouTube
because I know little about AI coding except that I use AI to help me understand code and find bugs. But I always did that in CoPilot or ChatGPT itself.
Many people complained on YouTube about this video as not being 'a beginner tutorial' because it didn't talk about coding as much as it talked about AI.
I explained that I understood this video only because I'm already a decent enough coder. And after watching it, and doing more research, I'm finally realizing that 95% of what I have been doing as a coder is now... obsolete.
Yes, it's helpful to know what's going on under the hood, but I am about to become 3000% more efficient and productive... by not writing coding and fixing bugs myself anymore.
And when hiring coders on Upwork now, I am no longer hiring 'coders' as much as I am hiring 'prompt engineers who understand some code'. And that is (for better or for worse) what I am now becoming too.
The good news is that it's going to be easier than ever for me to launch business ideas and launch features. And breakdiving.io is going to likely see a massive increase in features released, bug fixed, and issues resolved... with far fewer people (i.e. coders). So we can focus on the vision and fulfilling the mission, rather than looking for a comma in a sea of code lines. I'm also realizing that AI is to modern coding, what modern coding was to machine language. Real language coding made it virtually obsolete to learn machine language. And now, AI 'prompt writing' is making it virtually obsolete to learn national-language coding. And I am realizing for Break Diving to remain relevant, and for me to remain relevant as a coder, and for me (and Break Diving) to keep up with the competetion, I need to learn everything I can about Github Copilot, Agentic Coding, etc. My/our coding productivity is about to soar! This all means that within the next 6 months, we likely will have released the same amount of code as we have in the last 6 years. That's how amazing this is.
The bad news is that traditional coders are going to be left behind. It will be helpful to understand what is going on under the hood, but... it's not as crucial as before. I had Github Copilot connect to our repo on Github via VS Code, and I asked it to explain what the repo does. It was incredible how much it could gather just be looking at every file. I then asked it to review a very long but simple CSV file I have been working on and tell me the feature for which it will be used. Unbelievably, just using that one CSV as a starting point, it was able to map back to every part of the codebase where this CSV would be relevant, and was able to summarize exactly the full feature for which the CSV would used.
Morever, because of agentic coding, and the connection to the Github codebase via something called the Github MCP server, I believe the competition in the marketplace is about to explode... because you can describe the feature you want to add and... it creates the code for you. You just test it, verify it, and then push to Github. How is this going to make the marketplace explode? Well, just like digital filmmaking filled the marketplace with a lot of slop that made marketing of films far more important and breakthroughs for quality work far less likely, so too is AI doing the same for coding. Because it's becoming so much easier to 'code', it's going to result in the marketplace filling up with a massive amount of slop projects being released by very poor visionaries and creators. As a result, just like with the advent of the digital filmmaking era, because there will be so many projects released into the world that stink, so it will also be tougher for genuinely good platforms and products (like Break Diving) to break through.
This is why I have started to become as much of an expert in AI coding now as I can. It took me a few years to catch up, and only tonight did I fully realize the ramifications of delaying any longer: coding is no longer the bottleneck in projects now (or at least it shouldn't be). Now, the shift (just like with the advent of digital filmmaking) has moved to a) artistry, b) system and UI/UX design, c) vision and strategy, d) marketing, e) execution, and f) awesome ideas. Of all of those, (d), marketing, is now probably the most important aspect. But hey, hasn't it always been that way? They say Tesla actually invented the lightbulb, but that Edison was the better marketer. True or not, it shows that marketing beats everything else, almost every time.
Did the advent of digital filmmaking mean that the artistry of filmmaking was now irrelevant? No. The tools just changed from 16mm and 35mm film. The people who knew how to light for those formats, and knew how to develop that film in a dark room... basically became irrelevant. There are still some films shot that way, but not as many anymore. The way films are made has changed, but filmmaking is still the same. Similarly, those who are coding purists are just not going to find as much work anymore. The way applications are made has changed, but making applications is still the same.
That all being said...
Here we go!
Off we go!
To the victor go the spoils.
PS - I still think those who know how to code will do a much better job using AI coding agents. Why? If you let the AI do everything, it may overwrite other code you need without telling you. You may have a specific way of doing something, but AI will choose the way that it wants to code it.
Photo by Photo Boards on Unsplash
Read More Blog Posts on the Break Diving Blog Homepage
(25) Learn Visual Studio Code in 15 minutes: 2026 Official Beginner Tutorial - YouTube
because I know little about AI coding except that I use AI to help me understand code and find bugs. But I always did that in CoPilot or ChatGPT itself.
Many people complained on YouTube about this video as not being 'a beginner tutorial' because it didn't talk about coding as much as it talked about AI.
I explained that I understood this video only because I'm already a decent enough coder. And after watching it, and doing more research, I'm finally realizing that 95% of what I have been doing as a coder is now... obsolete.
Yes, it's helpful to know what's going on under the hood, but I am about to become 3000% more efficient and productive... by not writing coding and fixing bugs myself anymore.
And when hiring coders on Upwork now, I am no longer hiring 'coders' as much as I am hiring 'prompt engineers who understand some code'. And that is (for better or for worse) what I am now becoming too.
The good news is that it's going to be easier than ever for me to launch business ideas and launch features. And breakdiving.io is going to likely see a massive increase in features released, bug fixed, and issues resolved... with far fewer people (i.e. coders). So we can focus on the vision and fulfilling the mission, rather than looking for a comma in a sea of code lines. I'm also realizing that AI is to modern coding, what modern coding was to machine language. Real language coding made it virtually obsolete to learn machine language. And now, AI 'prompt writing' is making it virtually obsolete to learn national-language coding. And I am realizing for Break Diving to remain relevant, and for me to remain relevant as a coder, and for me (and Break Diving) to keep up with the competetion, I need to learn everything I can about Github Copilot, Agentic Coding, etc. My/our coding productivity is about to soar! This all means that within the next 6 months, we likely will have released the same amount of code as we have in the last 6 years. That's how amazing this is.
The bad news is that traditional coders are going to be left behind. It will be helpful to understand what is going on under the hood, but... it's not as crucial as before. I had Github Copilot connect to our repo on Github via VS Code, and I asked it to explain what the repo does. It was incredible how much it could gather just be looking at every file. I then asked it to review a very long but simple CSV file I have been working on and tell me the feature for which it will be used. Unbelievably, just using that one CSV as a starting point, it was able to map back to every part of the codebase where this CSV would be relevant, and was able to summarize exactly the full feature for which the CSV would used.
Morever, because of agentic coding, and the connection to the Github codebase via something called the Github MCP server, I believe the competition in the marketplace is about to explode... because you can describe the feature you want to add and... it creates the code for you. You just test it, verify it, and then push to Github. How is this going to make the marketplace explode? Well, just like digital filmmaking filled the marketplace with a lot of slop that made marketing of films far more important and breakthroughs for quality work far less likely, so too is AI doing the same for coding. Because it's becoming so much easier to 'code', it's going to result in the marketplace filling up with a massive amount of slop projects being released by very poor visionaries and creators. As a result, just like with the advent of the digital filmmaking era, because there will be so many projects released into the world that stink, so it will also be tougher for genuinely good platforms and products (like Break Diving) to break through.
This is why I have started to become as much of an expert in AI coding now as I can. It took me a few years to catch up, and only tonight did I fully realize the ramifications of delaying any longer: coding is no longer the bottleneck in projects now (or at least it shouldn't be). Now, the shift (just like with the advent of digital filmmaking) has moved to a) artistry, b) system and UI/UX design, c) vision and strategy, d) marketing, e) execution, and f) awesome ideas. Of all of those, (d), marketing, is now probably the most important aspect. But hey, hasn't it always been that way? They say Tesla actually invented the lightbulb, but that Edison was the better marketer. True or not, it shows that marketing beats everything else, almost every time.
Did the advent of digital filmmaking mean that the artistry of filmmaking was now irrelevant? No. The tools just changed from 16mm and 35mm film. The people who knew how to light for those formats, and knew how to develop that film in a dark room... basically became irrelevant. There are still some films shot that way, but not as many anymore. The way films are made has changed, but filmmaking is still the same. Similarly, those who are coding purists are just not going to find as much work anymore. The way applications are made has changed, but making applications is still the same.
That all being said...
Here we go!
Off we go!
To the victor go the spoils.
PS - I still think those who know how to code will do a much better job using AI coding agents. Why? If you let the AI do everything, it may overwrite other code you need without telling you. You may have a specific way of doing something, but AI will choose the way that it wants to code it.
Photo by Photo Boards on Unsplash