Stop Being a Code Monkey: Build Credibility Within Your Organization By Telling Stories
Read time: ~3 min
Programming is not about cranking out code anymore.
It was ten years ago, not because producing code was complex but because fewer people were interested in it, and we didn’t have sophisticated tooling and hardware to do more of it–yes, AI.
90% of what you knew last year lost its market value.
1% of what you will learn will make 100% the difference.
By the way, Bitsy hit 1000 subscribers a few days ago, and it happened because of You. Thanks for being a fantastic reader of my small newsletter. 🙇
The other day, I had to create a reusable wizard component. This component will be crucial for a feature that will help us attract more customers. It will have all sorts of complex steps that we’ll build out across several sprints.
So, how would you approach building out a reusable wizard component?
I’ll leave you some time to think about it.
Do you have your final answer?
If you answered something other than using an LLM to generate a starter template you can work with, you’re in for a surprise in the upcoming years.
I haven’t read the docs, and I have never used MUI in my life. But there you have it: a wizard component.
I was proud of my StackOverflow badges in JSF, Backbone, and JavaScript. Today, you can get most of these 100 upvote answers from an LLM.
90% of what I know is worth ☁️.
So if this is no longer a skill and people won’t take you seriously for producing what a machine can produce 10x cheaper and 10x faster, then what is?
Well, think about how most programmers would code up a demo for this wizard component.
It’s a wizard, so it must have some steps, right?
So that means?
Step 1, Step 2, Step 3…
step 1 dummy content, step 2 dummy content, step 3 dummy content…
If you nodded, please read on to double your market value. If you laughed, also read on.
Most people don’t care.
They throw together something that works and passes CI and call it a day.
You’re different.
You know why management dreamed of this wizard.
Customers had no clue about using your product. The setup was complicated. The tool could do many things, but it was difficult to figure everything out from a manual, and holding a customer’s hand each time isn’t scalable.
This wizard will tell them what to do now and what to do next. Without human intervention, support, or chatbots. 🧙
You know exactly what this wizard will be about.
It’ll help customers set up a new social media bot that responds to certain triggers, such as when a comment is made or when someone likes their post.
You notice the UI is different, but there is a more significant difference between this wizard component and the one you made previously, which is not even visible in this picture.
It’s how people feel about it.
They feel:
Understood - the developer got my idea, and we’re on the same page. 💆
Supported - we’re working towards the same goal, and it’s already taking shape, even for a mockup 🦸
So, next time, don’t use step 1, step 2. It’s called dummy data for a reason:
Only dummies use it. 😬
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For generating the code, I find it faster to stay within my IDE and use something like Github Copilot. I usually would start with some clear function name, import (material UI in your case) and Copilot will do the rest.