Microsoft's 99 AI Skills Are Interesting. The Bigger Story Is What They Represent.

AI coding assistants already understand .NET. The next challenge is teaching them how your team builds software.

One of the most interesting things happening in software engineering right now isn't the arrival of another language model.

It's the gradual realization that intelligence alone isn't enough.

Over the past couple of years, AI coding assistants have become remarkably capable. Whether you're using GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or another modern coding assistant, it's difficult not to be impressed by how quickly they can generate APIs, write unit tests, explain unfamiliar code, or scaffold entire applications.

In many cases, they already understand programming languages better than most developers ever will.