Hey Pythonista,

What's it actually like being a Python developer these days?

I just had a chat with a Python Dev from a large U.S company and there were a couple of interesting things I wanted to share with you:

• It's way more than "just" Python. Yes, you'll code in Python, but you're expected to know the surrounding ecosystem: APIs, Gateways, all the Clouds, different editors, pipelines, AI, LLMs, and even System Design.

• AI/Coding LLMs are being pushed even more and it's creating problems.

• The fundamentals of Python are still relied upon and necessary day-to-day.

The thing that really piqued my interest was the LLM (i.e. vibe coding) uptick.

I've heard this from multiple people that companies are heavily pushing a vibe coding model where developers now have metrics around using AI to write their code.

According to this dev, while it does speed things up a little, much of that time gain is lost in the fact checking, and the surrounding environment that the code runs in.

For example, his colleagues using AI 100% of the time to write their code, consistently have issues with being able to deploy and test the code. When things go wrong, they need to keep falling back to AI to figure it out because the code is way above their heads.

Many of them no longer know how their code even works anymore. The reliance on their AI tools is eroding their skills.

Reflecting on all of this raises a few questions in my head:

• At what point do these kinds of vibe coder devs become code reviewers? If all they do is review AI code are they even developers anymore?

• If corporations are moving toward this kind of model, will we see a shift in employee/developer performance expectations?

• On that note, can we finally do away with the BS of coding interviews? At this point they'd be interviewing for prompt engineering skills, right?

• And what happens when there's an AI outage? Does everyone just call it a day and go home until it's back online?

• What are the long-term repercussions of heavy vibe coding that companies aren't considering?

• Who do companies, customers and shareholders blame when the AI code leads to a failure, downtime or a security exploit?

• How much money should Python Devs charge to bail out companies with AI created tech debt? 😆

I don't have concrete answers to these questions. It's just been very thought provoking.

What do you think?

Hit reply, or click the link below to head to our Python Community and we can chat there.

Have a great week.

Julian