New project. Fresh start. Blank canvas. Your heart races a little. This time will be different. This time you'll build it right, again 😎.

You fire up your favorite stack, maybe grab that boilerplate you've been perfecting or running the great laravel new command. The terminal cursor blinks with infinite possibility. Day one is architecture decisions and database design. The fun stuff. Day three is form validation. Day five is still form validation, plus data sanitization and field constraints. By day seven, you're copy-pasting validation logic from your last project, wondering why you became a developer in the first place.

Here's the thing nobody talks about at conferences or in those motivational Twitter threads: Most of coding is boring. There, I said it. We don't become developers to write the same validation logic for the thousandth time. We don't dream in regex patterns for email fields. Nobody's passion project involves sanitizing user input. But every project needs it. Every single one. Forms need validation. Data needs sanitization. Tables need columns. APIs need error handling. Tests need, well, tests.

I've written hundreds, maybe thousands of these. Each one chipping away at that initial excitement. Each one making me question if this is really what I want to do for the rest of my life. The grind that kills dreams isn't the complex algorithm you can't solve. It's the mindless repetition of solved problems.

I've been using AI since the first ChatGPT version, watching each release, each competitor, each new model with curiosity. But it wasn't until recently that I started treating AI differently. Not as a magic solution. Not as my replacement. But as that eager junior developer who actually likes the repetitive stuff. Now my primary tools are Claude Code with Sonnet and Opus models. And they've changed everything.

"Hey, can you handle this form validation?" I ask. Five minutes later, clean code appears. Properly typed. With error messages that actually make sense. The thing is, AI doesn't get bored. It doesn't mind writing its ten-thousandth email validation. It doesn't sigh when you ask it to create another CRUD module. It just does it. Happily. Consistently.

What I didn't expect was how working with AI would make me better at my job. Sometimes I flip the script. "You're my senior developer now," I tell it. "Walk me through this React pattern I don't fully understand." And it does. Patiently. Without judgment. Without that subtle eye-roll senior devs sometimes give when you ask a "basic" question. I ask why. I ask how. I challenge its decisions. It's like having a peer programming session where ego never enters the equation.

Let me be crystal clear though: I don't let AI write my entire codebase. Here's what actually happens. I give it a PRD for a feature. "Build me a task manager module with these specs." It codes and delivers. Then, before committing anything, I review the code using Lazygit (fantastic tool, topic for another post). When the module is done, we run tests. Automated ones and the irreplaceable human kind—me clicking around like a caffeinated QA tester.

Then I ask it to create a pull request. And you know what? I review that PR like it came from a real junior developer. Because in a way, it did. Line by line. Logic check. Security review. Does it match our patterns? Our style? The difference is I'm reviewing interesting architectural decisions, not drowning in boilerplate.

Remember why you started coding? For me, it was the puzzle-solving. The architecture. The elegant solutions to complex problems. When AI handles the repetitive tasks, I stay in that zone. The creative zone. The one where time disappears and you look up and it's suddenly 2 AM and you're not even tired because you're doing what you love. I'm designing systems again. Thinking about scalability. Optimizing database queries that actually matter. Building features users will love, not wrestling with form field validators.

AI helps you code faster. No question. But your judgment? Your understanding of the business logic? Your ability to spot when something technically works but practically doesn't? That's still all you. AI doesn't know your users. It doesn't understand your company's specific security requirements. It can't tell when a technically correct solution will confuse the hell out of your team. AI amplifies our capabilities. It doesn't replace them. You might say "well, you need to give it context." Yeah, but context will never beat your gut instinct, your years of experience. That's why we're still relevant, and honestly, I don't think this is going to change anytime soon.

Look, I'm not here to sell you on AI. Everyone's workflow is different. But if you're feeling that burnout, that loss of excitement, that "is this really what I signed up for?" feeling, maybe try this: Start small. Let AI handle one boring task. Just one. Review its work like you would a junior's. Teach it your standards. Refactor where needed. See how it feels to focus on the parts of coding that made you fall in love with it in the first place.

My point is, we're not going to be replaced by the AI but you need the AI to survive these times, AI is just another tool in our toolbox. Like Stack Overflow was. Like Google was. Like that senior developer who mentored you was. Use it. Learn from it. Collaborate with it. But never rely on it 100%. Because at the end of the day, you're not just a code writer. You're a problem solver. A creator. An architect of digital experiences.

And that excitement you felt on day one of your new project? It doesn't have to fade anymore.

That form validation AI wrote for me last week? Still running perfectly in production. And I spent that saved time designing a feature our users actually requested. Win-win.