In the early years of my career, as a developer, my biggest problem was always an if condition or a complex JOIN query in PostgreSQL. In my eyes, the greatest achievement was writing and running a complex algorithm without errors. Nowadays, looking back twenty years later, I see that writing code has become the easiest part of the job.
This doesn't mean code is unimportant, of course. However, the real challenges of a project often lie far beyond the lines we type at the keyboard. The main struggle now is with people, processes, and organizational flow.
The Easier Face of Code and New Challenges
Today, setting up the skeleton of an application with modern frameworks like FastAPI or Vue/React, or generating routine code blocks with AI-powered tools, is faster than ever. There are ready-made libraries and solutions for almost every need. This situation has technically simplified the act of writing code.
When I design a new operator screen in a production ERP, writing the frontend and backend code might take me a day or two. But ensuring that screen meets the operator's real needs, correctly processes data from the production planning AI, and works seamlessly with other iSCSI supply chain integrations — these are the things I really need to think about. Code is just a tool; the real job is understanding the context and transforming it.
