How do I adapt to AI?

Get solid on the basics. Some aspects of computing are transient (react-router, the PDP-10) others are part of math and are eternal (some aliens who live under the ice in a moon somewhere know it takes N log N comparisons to sort N items as well as you do.)

The CS curriculum contains classes like: comparative programming languages, compilers, algorithm analysis, etc. You want to learn these things not to have them memorized but to have the outline of the fields and the skill to, faced with a tough problem, look at the literature and benefit from other's experience (last month I wrote a simple chess program; if it wasn't for https://www.chessprogramming.org/Main_Page I couldn't have done it)

The obvious way to get into AI is a CS PhD in AI, I don't think starting one right now is a great idea in terms of career. Fields like this often have a wave of explosive growth, make a huge amount of progress in a short time, then get stuck.

What they don't teach you in CS but you learn if you get good at applications work is talking to people, understanding their mental model, realizing that their mental model is too fuzzy to build the application on, and developing a mental model that's good enough. If you've got the right ontology for the domain the application almost writes itself. If your data structures are wrong it will be a struggle all the way through and the app is going to buggy.

My impression is that hardware work is actually harder in terms of age discrimination kinds of problems than software work. If you're busting your tail on front-end work, for instance, you're probably a few years ahead of what's being taught at the university. I met a recently minted EE who'd gotten a job at a drone company working on radars. I mentioned that I'd been impressed with advances in power supplies, how what I read in 1970s books as a kid in the 1980s was obsolete. She told me her first task at work was... designing a power supply, because a freshly minted EE actually knew newer approaches to this than the average senior EE.

At first I thought the idea of AI creating websites was silly. Then https://exampl.page was submitted to HN.

You can type $foo.example.page in your browser and it will automatically create and cache a landing page for you using AI.

I “created” this for grins and giggle just by typing a URL.

https://aws-certification-training.exampl.page/#

The site above is not spam. It’s not a real site and I’m not trying to start a training company. I am studying for a cert now and it’s the first thing that crossed my mind.

The site is just a tech demo. But it’s cool.

You may say I am on a similar page as you and what I think that it is now more important to know the larger picture because smaller gaps can be filled by AI, you can't be a go/python/xyz programmer rather you need to be an architect from the beginning of the careers. I am confused if I should use AI in my day to day tasks or not, I have seen AI now a days write better small codes and I a useful in bringing out the bigger picture. But this might again change in next 5 years, at least this is what I look at now

As a fellow web dev, do something in your spare time that is not web dev. Graphics, audio, desktop apps, anything. But web dev is too easy, you dont build skills

I have been a software developer for almost thirty years. Every so often, I re-read Fred Brooks's essay "No Silver Bullet" and see if it still applies. My answer is always yes, though I'm amazed at the social, technological, and scientific advances that continue to sweep through the field.

My perspective is that every generation of software developer believes that one of these advances is going to end their career.

The dream of AI is a machine that can replace human coders. LLMs can reduce the number of human coders required for a project, which is simply a productivity advance. LLMs, if used effectively, might be able to replace an expensive coder with a low-skilled human, but you will still need coders. No software on the market today can replace a coder's job; it can only make the coder more efficient. This is as true today as it was in 1970.

The software I write today looks a lot like the software I wrote in 1995. It just does a lot more for the same effort on my part. I can create a complex, highly performant web application with almost no HTML knowledge. Frameworks can abstract all the hard parts of JavaScript. What even is SQL?

AI and similar advances only address the "accidental complexity" of software to use Brooks's term. The essential complexity remains a human task.

My advice is to learn about the history of software development and understand what you are doing when you make software. It's more than typing Unicode characters into a text editor.

As far as moving from web to something else, or incorporating AI into your personal coding practice, I don't think it matters. I have switched programming languages and technologies at least six times in my career. Yeah, it sucks to be in an area that is going away (desktop app development, like MS Word, was the Big Leagues in 1995), but most of your skills will be transferable if or when you have to switch.

I believe software development will be a good career for the next 25 years.

Of course, indie book cover design was a lucrative side project a few years ago. Now it's a struggle. Nothing is immune to the ravages of capitalism.

No & 2 be honest working in web should make it easyer 4 u