\n \u201cWe should de-skill on syntax. I have always loved programming languages and I always use a lot of them. … I\u2019m now using Go, which I didn\u2019t know six months ago. I conceptually understand the strengths and weaknesses of Go, I understand the concepts behind Go. I can read it, but I probably could not write a significant number of lines of Go myself right now because I haven\u2019t learned the syntax. I\u2019ve learned to read it, I\u2019ve learned the strengths and weaknesses, I\u2019ve learned the concepts, but I don\u2019t really bother with syntax.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n \u201cI would say five years ago, in the industry there was a lot of religion around the tech stack people would use, and the frameworks people would use, and the libraries people would use. People would have very strong opinions and they\u2019d feel like they were part of a particular community. And getting someone to switch from one solution to another is something that often came with friction and a lot of effort. I think over time what we\u2019re seeing is, if an agent can help you not have to worry about that problem, I think that means that maybe we spend less time behind the scenes worrying about what framework we\u2019re using.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This all resonated with me because I\u2019ve seen this shift in my own work. I can reach for unfamiliar tools more easily now than I could a year ago. I still have preferences and the things I know best, but the breadth of things I can do has grown.<\/p>\n
The Happy Hour<\/h1>\n
Later that evening I attended an App Dev Hangout, where a bunch of Google dev communities gathered for dinner and drinks. There were open source communities represented (Angular, Flutter, Go, Genkit) as well as some Google dev tool communities (Firebase, Antigravity, Cloud.)<\/p>\n
I spent the evening hanging out with a group of devs from the Flutter community. Several of them had built their career paths around wanting to work specifically on Flutter apps. If a Flutter project got shuttered at one of their employers they would move on to a new company so they could work with the tech they wanted.<\/p>\n
The juxtaposition between the content of the session and the happy hour gave me a lot to think about. What does it mean when at the same conference we have conversations about the need for decoupling developer identities from the tools they use while also having events to celebrate and build developer communities focused around specific languages, frameworks, and tools?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one thing to say that AI tooling means you no longer have to focus on syntax. But saying \u201cI am a Flutter developer” is so much more than saying you know the syntax. Being a Flutter developer is also being part of a community, having a career path, and using the framework as a preferred way of seeing and solving problems.<\/p>\n
What happens to all these components of identity when AI changes the developer\u2019s relationship with the tool?<\/p>\n
It turns out that the Flutter devs I was hanging out with were in the same session as me, and they agreed with the panel\u2019s sentiments about deskilling on syntax. They had similar experiences to mine, and told stories about AI enabling them to put together side projects in other languages that they wouldn\u2019t have been able to do before.<\/p>\n
They did not view AI as a threat to their identity as Flutter developers because Flutter was still their core competency. They saw AI as broadening their skills, not threatening their identity in the skills they already had.<\/p>\n
But I still wonder what this all looks like going forward. I have a hard time envisioning a happy hour for the \u201cI\u2019m a T-shaped developer with a historical preference for Flutter but a willingness to use any tool that solves the problem\u201d community.<\/p>\n
And what about early career devs who haven\u2019t yet established these identities? Are we still expecting people to form these \u201cI\u2019m a Flutter developer\u201d identities when they are agnostic to the syntax and specifics of the tool?<\/p>\n
And if so, what does that mean for DevRel? So often the Developer Relations job involves community management. What does that look like when the nature of the community changes, and the bonds that have historically held us together have become weaker? People who want to attract developers to their platforms have a whole different set of questions to answer.<\/p>\n
So, So Hard<\/h1>\n
The process to redefine communities is going to be rocky. Around which principles do developers organize now? How do we create bonds when the old ones have weakened? How and where do we reach people? These are all open questions in 2026.<\/p>\n
I want to close with one more moment from the Google I\/O session, starting around the 35:00 mark<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n Richard Seroter:<\/strong> \u201cHow do we go from \u2018I write code\u2019 to \u2018I write intentions that get turned into code\u2019? That\u2019s almost an identity shift.\u201d
\n
\n Aja Hammerly:<\/strong> \u201cIt is 100% an identity shift. And it\u2019s a mental model shift because you have to give up some control on the path that the code is going to take to get to the solution.
\n
\n For me, it finally clicked about a year and a half ago when I sat down and watched someone who was really good at this, and they were describing the end state.
\n
\n And I got into computers because I wanted to build cool stuff; I think that\u2019s probably true of most of us. And then I got into the fact that I had to think about \u2018okay, how do I build cool stuff? what\u2019s the syntax? what\u2019s the language? what\u2019s the framework? what do I need to pull in as dependencies?\u2019
\n
\n They had switched back to \u2018I\u2019m here to build cool stuff\u2019 and they were describing in detail the end state they had in mind. The idea that you have to up level your thinking and get out of the syntax, get out of the particular libraries potentially, and be very focused on the problem you\u2019re trying to solve.
\n
\n And it seems so obvious, and it is so, so hard.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\nDisclosure<\/strong>: Google is a RedMonk client and paid for my T&E to I\/O. However, all opinions are my own and this piece was not commissioned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019m a Java dev.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m a Python dev.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m a React dev.\u201d Our tool choices used to be a shorthand definition for our professional identities. Communities formed around the tools. But these old certainties are breaking down because of AI, and it’s not clear what’s going to replace them. Generative AI tools are now a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[40,118,23,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-culture","category-developers","category-google"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/rstephens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/rstephens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/rstephens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/rstephens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/rstephens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/rstephens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/rstephens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/rstephens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/rstephens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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