I'm noticing AI's changing how I code. It feels more like sculpting now, not construction.
You can generate raw material in seconds. Then whittle it down into something usable.
Michelangelo said "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free". That's what coding with AI feels like to me. The form seems like it's already there, buried in that generated code, and I'm just revealing it.
But I'm learning you need both. Construction and sculpting. They don't feel like opposites, more like different tools.
Construction feels architectural. You draft blueprints, lay foundations, stack bricks. Each piece matters because moving it later costs you. Sculpting feels subtractive. You start with a block of marble, or AI-generated code, and chip away everything that isn't your vision. You're not building up; you're revealing what was always possible.
I think traditional artists get this. A painter starts with a blank canvas and adds. A sculptor starts with excess and removes. Both create, but the process shapes how they think. Painters plan every brushstroke. Sculptors discover the form as they carve.
I'm trying to embrace both. Sometimes I need to construct, to build that foundation, to architect that system from scratch. Other times I sculpt, take what AI gave me and refine it. The magic seems to happen when I figure out which one to use and when.
It feels like the bottleneck's moved from execution to vision. Anyone can generate a working component in seconds now. But can you see what's wrong with it? Can you spot the clunky logic, the awkward prop names, the generic styling that needs personality? That feels like taste. That's the eye you develop through practice.
I'm noticing this changes what it means to be good at coding. Construction rewarded people who could hold complex systems in their head and translate them into clean syntax. Sculpting seems to reward people who can evaluate generated code quickly, see the form beneath the rough surface, and iterate toward the right solution.
But the developers I'm learning from? They seem to do both. They know when to construct and when to sculpt. They can architect a system from scratch when needed, and they can take AI output and refine it into something beautiful. I'm seeing junior developers who only sculpt miss the fundamentals. Senior developers who only construct seem stuck building brick by brick while everyone else is carving marble.
The best art comes from iteration, the sketch, the study, the final piece. The best code's always worked the same way, I think. AI just made iteration the default workflow instead of a luxury. But iteration means knowing when to build and when to refine. When to construct and when to sculpt.
That feels like the real skill now. Not choosing one or the other, but learning how to combine them.