The 3 Types of Developers in the AI Era

Type 1 — The Stuck Mindset

They have worked on some specific technologies for so long that now it is difficult for them to shift to other technologies and upskill themselves. Most of them can't learn new things because they think that now they are old enough such that their learning age has gone (I don't know whether this claim of theirs is scientifically true or not). Their reaction to AI is like the reaction of a pigeon when he faces a cat.

They will be doomed to failure if they keep up showing this behavior. For such people, I would advise that you guys have to:

• Change yourself altogether.

• Reset your Mindset.

• Work more than others out there.

• Feel young enough to learn and adopt.

• Make Friendships with young people.

• Explore More.

Type 2 — The Over-Stimulated

They have lost control for speed. They can't delay the gratification of thinking of an error using their brains rather than pasting it to Claude Code. They are deprived of critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, business thinking, attention to detail, engineering and adaptivity.

Most of them are or will stop working and leave the field because of their short thresholds bcz they don't have the patience to remain stuck at a bug the whole week, keep working at it and eventually fix it the next Monday. So they are always anxious and eventually can't stay consistent.

They are unconfident because they don't know what they are building and how AI is actually building it.

• They can't build scalable applications because they don't know how to.

• They can't maintain an application because they don't know how it works.

• They can't debug an application because they don't know its internal workflows and workings.

• They can't build a product that fits the market because they don't have any domain expertise.

• They can't optimize an application because they don't know what latency is, why some things we run in background tasks, why we use microservices, when to use Server Side Rendering rather than Client Side Rendering or how to save cost using an AWS Lambda function rather than an EC2 instance.

For such people, I would advise that you guys have to:

• Control your dopamine and learn to delay gratification.

• Stay patient, consistent and increase your thresholds.

• Take a step back and learn real engineering first.

• Learn SDLC, Architectures, Developer Tools, UI/UX, QA, Research.

• Sit with Engineers so you can understand that using Lovable or Replit is not engineering.

• Try getting industry experience at least 1–2 years with the right learning mindset.

Type 3 — Right Time, Right Place, Right Mindset

They know how to engineer an application, make architectural decisions, debug issues, iterate over it with patience, push them to production and even more importantly, they have adopted AI and use it for fast development while keeping the balance between Control and Speed. These types of people are going to succeed in this market.

For such people, I would advise:

• Don't sit with disappointed people.

• Don't try to automate something 100% at the cost of control and confidence.

• Don't fall prey to false AI Hypes.

• Keep learning, Never Stop. The world belongs to those who stay adaptive and competitive.

• Even the worst markets have opportunities for the right people. Keep seeking: Jobs, Freelancing, Startups, Businesses.

• Try learning Communication, Networking, Personal Branding, Positioning, Marketing, and Domain Expertise.

The market could be down and there could be a recession, but you have got the right mindset and skillset. So keep pushing your thresholds. There would be times when something is not working for you. But I'm pretty sure that if you keep pushing it, keep adapting new technologies, keep engineering scalable products, you are going to get great opportunities now and in the future.