The 'developer replacement' hype cycle (News)

What up, nerds? I'm Jerod and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, June 2nd, 2025. Question: what are you up to at the end of July? Hopefully, you're up for **joining us in Denver** for a LIVE show on stage at the Oriental Theater! Learn all about it [right here](https://changelog.com/live) and get your ticket(s) quick... there's only 100 seats available. Ok, let's get into this week's news.

[The recurring cycle of 'developer replacement' hype](https://alonso.network/the-recurring-cycle-of-developer-replacement-hype/) Danilo Alonso has seen it all before: > Every few years, a shiny new technology emerges that promises to make software developers obsolete. The headlines follow a predictable pattern: "The End of Coding," "Anyone Can Build Apps Now," or my personal favorite, "Why Your Five-Year-Old Will Be Programming Before Learning to Read." > > The executives get excited. The consultants circle like sharks. PowerPoint decks multiply. Budgets shift. > > And then reality sets in. In this post, he counts the rotations of the 'endless carousel of replacement promises', from the no-code/low-code revolution, to the cloud revolution, to the off-shore revolution, to the current ai-coding-assistant revolution. Then he finishes up with an explainer on why the "AI will replace developers" crowd have it all wrong: > Code is not an asset—it's a liability. Every line must be maintained, debugged, secured, and eventually replaced. The real asset is the business capability that code enables. > > If AI makes writing code faster and cheaper, it's really making it easier to create liability. When you can generate liability at unprecedented speed, the ability to manage and minimize that liability strategically becomes exponentially more valuable. > > The skill that survives and thrives isn't writing code... It's architecting systems. And that's the one thing AI can't do.

[The Who Cares Era](https://dansinker.com/posts/2025-05-23-who-cares/) Dan Sinker was disheartened to learn of a story published in the *Chicago Sun-Times* and the *Philadelphia Inquirer* that contained facts, experts, and book titles entirely made up by an AI chatbot: > the thing that is most disheartening to me is how at every step along the way, nobody cared. > > The writer didn't care. The supplement's editors didn't care. The biz people on both sides of the sale of the supplement didn't care. The production people didn't care. And, the fact that it took two days for anyone to discover this epic f\*\*\*up in print means that, ultimately, the reader didn't care either. Dan is calling this the *Who Cares Era*, where "completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore." But it doesn't have to be this way. Dan's CTA: > In the Who Cares Era, the most radical thing you can do is care. > > In a moment where machines churn out mediocrity, make something yourself. Make it imperfect. Make it rough. Just make it.

[A lightweight proof-of-work captcha](https://capjs.js.org/) Cap looks like a solid alternative to the typical CAPTCHA solutions: reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, Cloudflare Turnstile, etc. Instead of making humans solve complex puzzles, it requires SHA-256 proof-of-work computations. Why PoW? > Every CAPTCHA can eventually be solved, whether by AIs, algorithms or humans paid via CAPTCHA farms — this results in an endless cat-and-mouse game between attackers and defenders. The crucial difference lies in the *cost* imposed on attackers... > > Imagine sending 10,000 spam messages costs $1, potentially earning $10 – a profitable venture. If Cap increases the computational cost so that sending those messages now costs $100, the spammer loses $90. This eliminates the financial incentive. Cap is an open source JS implementation. It's customizable and offers a standalone Docker image with a REST API so it can be used from any backend language.

It's now time for sponsored news! [Retool Agents have arrived](https://retool.com/agents?utm_source=changelog&utm_campaign=changelog-news) We've all been there - copying and pasting between ChatGPT and our actual work tools like we're some kind of human API. Well, that ends now. Retool just launched Agents – AI that doesn't just think, but actually works. Instead of writing you a refund policy, a Retool Agent processes the actual refund. It pulls customer data from Postgres, checks your policy docs, calculates amounts in NetSuite, updates inventory, issues credits through Stripe, and notifies customers via Twilio. End-to-end, autonomously. Here's the cherry on top! Retool Agents inherits every tool your team has already built in Retool. Your years of internal tooling instantly becomes your AI workforce's toolkit. And you can watch them work in real-time with complete transparency – no black boxes. Companies like AWS and Databricks have already automated over 100 million hours of work using Retool. That's nearly $5 billion in labor value. Stop being the middle-person between AI and your systems and check out Retool Agents today at [retool.com/agents](https://retool.com/agents?utm_source=changelog&utm_campaign=changelog-news) It's in public beta and ready for you to try out. Again, [retool.com/agents](https://retool.com/agents?utm_source=changelog&utm_campaign=changelog-news)

[The future is colourful and dimensional](https://www.flarup.email/p/the-future-is-colourful-and-dimensional) Michael Flarup on the return of texture, depth, and expressiveness in UI: > Flat design is over. The future is colourful and dimensional. > > Those aren’t my words. They’re Brian Chesky’s, CEO of Airbnb, after what can only be described as a landmark redesign of the platform. A redesign full of whimsical, animated, 3D icons and warm, tactile surfaces. I couldn't be more excited by this new direction! On our recent Friends with Resend's Zeno Rocha, I asked him where the trends in web design were headed because, quite frankly, I'm done with this (Linear-inspired) "black shiny everything" phase. Michael is here for it too, but he also thinks we need some new language for the design shift lead by Airbnb, because it's not skeuomorphism... he's calling it "diamorphism", which is designed as "a growing tendency toward intentional dimensionality—layered, tactile, digital-first, and full of character." I don't know if the term will stick, but I couldn't be happier that the winds are blowing in this direction. I'm super-curious to see what Apple unveils at WWDC next week with their big (rumored) redesign...

[An open source alternative to Trello](https://kan.bn) At its core, Trello's "list of lists" is a very powerful organizational tool. Unfortunately, all the cruft that accumulated around those lists of lists over the years soured me on the product. Kan (cool domain alert: kan.bn) looks today a lot like Trello looked back when I first fell in love with it. Also it's open source, self-hostable, and easy to start on their cloud.

That's the news for now, but go and subscribe to the Changelog Newsletter for the full scoop of links worth clicking on. Such as: - [Decomplexification](https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/05/29/decomplexification/) - [The case for using a web browser as your terminal](https://blog.pomdtr.me/posts/tweety-v1/) - [The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine](https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/30/business/anthropic-amodei-ai-jobs-nightcap) Get in on the newsletter at changelog.news Have a great week! Like, subscribe, and leave us a 5-star review if you dig the show, and I'll talk to you again real soon.