The elephant in the room • Josh W. Comeau

hello!

I want to talk a little about AI and related changes in the tech industry. I know this is top of mind for all of you, and you may be wondering if there is any point in learning new programming skills in this environment.

Let’s start with an inconvenient truth: AI models have become surprisingly good at completing a variety of programming tasks. They definitely aren’t Excellent, But in many cases, they’re good enough. I’m not happy with it for a variety of ethical/environmental/safety reasons, but it is what it is.

In this email, I want to zoom in on a specific thing: I think people are jumping to the wrong conclusions about what AI means for their careers.

Okay, so the biggest concern I’ve seen from my fellow developers is that human developers won’t be necessary in the near future, because llm?large language models Will be able to fully design and build projects of all sizes and scales. And, well, I haven’t seen any evidence of that. 😅

In fact, it’s kind of the opposite. The greatest AI success stories I’ve seen are from people who highly technical, People with deep subject matter expertise.

For example, Matt Perry recently shared in his newsletter that he was leaning toward AI in 2026. Matt is the author of several animation libraries including PopMotion, Motion One, and Motion (formerly Framer Motion). There aren’t many people on this planet who know that much about animation on a technical level. The layout projection engine he created for Motion is one of the most sophisticated pieces of engineering I have ever seen.

In his email, Matt explains that he aimed to close 60 issues in Q1, and had a goal of closing 160. He wanted to do a major refactor of Motion in Q2, and got it done in a single afternoon in January! AI has significantly increased their productivity.

This is remarkable, and you might think it’s proof that LL.M. even better Compared to the best human developers… but this implies that Everyone The same success as Matt is being achieved with AI tooling. And this is not true.

From time to time, I slip into /r/vibecoding subreddit, a place where people (mostly with little or no development experience) share their experiences with vibe-coding, and there are countless Stories like this:

Without guidance, LLMs back themselves into a corner, as they are creating code to solve individual problems, rather than thinking holistically about the architecture of an application.

So, on the one hand, I’m looking at the most talented developers I know Increase What can they do with AI, and on the other hand, I see people with less domain knowledge struggling to get past the “MVP” stage.

AI is a tool, and tools need to be used efficiently. You can give me an exact Jimi Hendrix guitar, but it will sound good Very Different if I tried to play it! I wouldn’t be able to cook like Gordon Ramsey if I had access to his kitchen, or serve like Serena Williams if you handed me her tennis racket.

we do this overweight The importance of tools, and I think this is an almost universal human bias. Marketing teams regularly take advantage of this, selling us sneakers with Michael Jordan’s “Air Technology” as if they would suddenly give us the ability to dunk. 😅

I think it’s hard for us to see AI agents as tools because we’ve anthropomorphized them. If my basketball started telling me what a great basketball player I am, I might be less inclined to view it as a tool!

When we treat LLMs like little autonomous robots, we begin to give them more credit than they deserve, and it begins to seem plausible that they might one day replace us. But this is not the correct mental model. I think of AI tools like Iron Man’s suit. It can do incredible things, but not alone.

Similarly, if Matt Perry handed me the keys to the Motion Repository and asked me to take over it, I wouldn’t have Result Even though I have access to the same set of LLM tools. If I If I tried to move at the same speed, I’d make a huge mess. ???

So, I think this is the big mistake that people are making. We look at what a skilled developer can do with an LLM and give credit to the LLM instead skilled developer. My experience shows that AI has a multiplier effect on our existing technical skills, so the more we understand web development, the more effective we can be with AI.

On Monday, I launched my brand new course, Whimsical animation(Opens in new tab). ▪️

I’ve been building websites and web applications for almost 20 years, and in that time, I’ve learned Very About how to create memorable, impactful animations and interactions. This is my favorite part of web development, and I spend a lot of time experimenting and figuring out what works and what doesn’t.

It has been a very interesting journey learning about animation. There is a vast sea of ​​information out there, but very little of it is targeted towards web developers. I’ve had to adopt many concepts from the world of game development, like linear interpolation, simplex noise, and delta time. This stuff is not part of typical “web developer” skills, and as a result, it can make our projects really different!

Learning about new topics has never been easier with a tool like ChatGPT that can answer any questions you have. But it only works if you Know what questions to ask. My course offers a curated curriculum that will introduce you to all kinds of new technologies. I think you’ll be amazed at what you can create after taking the course. 😄

Registration is now open, but there is not much time left in the launch sale. Learn more here:

I recently updated my custom course platform so that all exercises and code snippets can be run locally! This way, you can complete challenges in your normal coding environment with the same workflow you use for everything else. ❤️

that’s it for now! I hope you have a good week,