The baseline has changed

Think back to when you got your first computer and started writing code. That sense of wonder when “Hello World” appeared on your screen. The dizzying feeling that you could make this strange machine do what you told it to. This feeling is useful again. It’s much better to mess around with these new tools and get your hands dirty building stuff than to sit there having opinions about them.

If you approach these tools like that, a lot of the online AI developer discourse starts to look beside the point.

The mistake people make with AI tools is treating them as a debate topic. Hype, backlash, benchmarks, model tribalism. None of that is the main thing.

The main thing is that the baseline changed.

What felt like a very impressive software delivery 2 years ago, can now be done much faster. Tasks that used to take days can often be pushed through in hours. Prototypes appear faster. Refactors get cheaper. The distance between “idea” and “working thing” has collapsed.

That does not mean every team is suddenly great. It does mean expectations are moving whether they admit it or not. This is why so many organisations are underestimating what’s happening. They are still comparing today’s tools to the old normal. They are arguing about whether the demos are real enough, while the people actually using the tools are already being measured against a higher bar.

That is the shift. Not just new tooling.

New expectations.