Every time I see someone dismiss AI as “slop,” I wonder if they understand what they are actually arguing against.
Because the uncomfortable reality is that software development has been moving toward commoditization for decades. AI didn’t start that movement. It just made it impossible to ignore.
Companies didn’t move development to India, Vietnam, Brazil, Poland, and Mexico because they hated developers. They moved because writing code was becoming separable from the deeper engineering decisions around architecture, requirements, and business context.
This is how I operated for years. I was software lead, in the USA, but my developers existed near-shore in Mexico. They cost a quarter of a developer in the USA. They were in the same timezone (or an hour different throughout the year, since Mexico was smart enough to get rid of Daylight Savings Time). I would lead the team, design the systems, and be the point-of-contact for the customer. My developers wrote most of the code. I made most of the decisions.
When I first got into IT consulting, they hired a bunch of poeple for a government contract they just won. In the first week, we had a meeting with a dyed-in-the-wool consultant, an old guy in khakis and blue oxford.
He taught us about consulting, the dichotomy of “do extra work for your customer” but “get a change request”. The biggest thing that stood out for me was “don’t become a commodity”. It took some time until I could figure out what that meant.
This wasn’t unique to my team. It was happening across the industry. Companies were learning that writing software wasn’t a single skill. It was really two jobs: deciding what to build, and implementing those decisions. The second could increasingly be done anywhere in the world.
That’s what my old consulting mentor meant when he warned us, “Don’t become a commodity.” At the time, I thought he was talking about billable rates or contract negotiations. Years later, I realized he was talking about something much more fundamental. Commodities compete on price. If the only thing you offer is something that someone else can do cheaper, faster, or in greater quantity, you’re eventually forced into a race you can’t win.
AI is cheaper and faster than humans. And it never sleeps! That is the essence of the commodity argument.
What I’m seeing online is a lot of younger people dismissing AI as hype or slop. I’m much older, with a 30-year career behind me, and I see it differently. AI helps me solve problems for my customers more quickly and more cleanly, and it gives me the documentation and tests that are too often left undone. In the waning years of my career, it feels less like a threat than a godsend. I use it, and I still define how it should work.
I don’t know whether AI will write 50% of the code in ten years or 95%. Frankly, I don’t think that’s the important question.
The important question is whether we’re willing to redefine what it means to be a software engineer.
If your identity is tied to typing every line yourself, the future is going to feel very threatening.
If your identity is understanding thorny business problems, making difficult trade-offs, and delivering systems that work, AI isn’t your replacement.
It’s your next power tool.
Ignore it if you want.
Just don’t pretend the rest of the industry will.