#coding

The AI hype cycle has a predictable pattern. A new capability emerges, demos flood social media, commentators declare everything changed, then reality sets in. We're watching this play out right now with AI coding assistants.

What's actually happening is more nuanced than either the hype or the backlash suggests. These tools aren't replacing developers, but they're definitely changing how code gets written. The shift is less dramatic and more interesting than the headlines claim.

The real story is about leverage.

The race to build AI coding assistants is heating up, and it's starting to feel less like science fiction and more like watching your extremely enthusiastic intern gradually become competent.

Claude Code

, the tool you might be using to read this, represents the latest evolution in what happens when you give AI the ability to write, read, and run code. The basics: point it at a codebase, ask it to implement a feature, and watch it navigate files, make edits, run tests, and even commit changes to Git. It's impressive, occasionally magical, and sometimes hilariously wrong.

I've been watching the AI coding assistant space evolve rapidly this year, and there's a fascinating shift happening that most people aren't talking about. We're moving from tools that just autocomplete your code to ones that can actually think through entire features.

The traditional coding assistant was essentially a very smart autocomplete. You'd start typing, and it would guess what comes next based on patterns it learned from millions of code examples. Useful, but limited. The new generation works differently. You can tell them "I need a payment processing system that handles refunds and disputes" and they'll scaffold out the entire architecture, write the database schema, create the API endpoints, and even add error handling you didn't think to mention.

What makes this shift significant isn't just the productivity boost for developers. It's lowering the barrier to building real software. Someone with a clear vision but limited coding experience can now prototype ideas that would have required hiring a development team six months ago. That's genuinely democratizing.