More Than Syntax – Alt + E S V

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“I’m a Java dev.” “I’m a Python dev.” “I’m a React dev.”

Our tool choices used to be a shorthand definition for our professional identities. Communities formed around the tools. But these old certainties are breaking down because of AI, and it’s not clear what’s going to replace them.

Generative AI tools are now a prevalent part of the development process; as one data point, 90% of respondents to the 2025 DORA survey reported using AI at work. One reason for the rapid expansion of GenAI tool use is how effectively they broaden developer skillsets. A developer may previously have felt loyalty to a tool, platform, or framework simply because it was what they already knew; when AI lowers the cost of experimenting with new approaches, what does that mean for tool loyalty, and for the developer identities built on top of those tools?

We’ve been seeing these tensions play out for a while now but they really crystallized for me a few weeks ago at Google I/O. A couple of moments to consider.

Syntax Waning

The first was a panel about the evolution of the developer craft with Richard Seroter, Aja Hammerly, Ciera Jaspan and Addy Osmani. They discussed strategic and tactical approaches to building skills to thrive in the AI era, including identifying areas where developers may need to let go of their current habits.

It’s worth watching the session in full, but I want to highlight this exchange at the 14:00 mark, where Seroter asks about what current practices need to change:

“Can I give you a ‘deskilling’ that you can argue with me about?

I think we should fall out of love with our IDEs and programming languages in a lot of cases. … It seems like as we move to different surfaces and you want to have a little more promiscuity in your dev tools, you should not be married to just one stack, even one programming language, because you’re limiting yourself.”

Hammerly built upon the question with this:

“We should de-skill on syntax. I have always loved programming languages and I always use a lot of them. … I’m now using Go, which I didn’t know six months ago. I conceptually understand the strengths and weaknesses of Go, I understand the concepts behind Go. I can read it, but I probably could not write a significant number of lines of Go myself right now because I haven’t learned the syntax. I’ve learned to read it, I’ve learned the strengths and weaknesses, I’ve learned the concepts, but I don’t really bother with syntax.”

And Osmani added:

“I would say five years ago, in the industry there was a lot of religion around the tech stack people would use, and the frameworks people would use, and the libraries people would use. People would have very strong opinions and they’d feel like they were part of a particular community. And getting someone to switch from one solution to another is something that often came with friction and a lot of effort. I think over time what we’re seeing is, if an agent can help you not have to worry about that problem, I think that means that maybe we spend less time behind the scenes worrying about what framework we’re using.”

This all resonated with me because I’ve seen this shift in my own work. I can reach for unfamiliar tools more easily now than I could a year ago. I still have preferences and the things I know best, but the breadth of things I can do has grown.

The Happy Hour

Later that evening I attended an App Dev Hangout, where a bunch of Google dev communities gathered for dinner and drinks. There were open source communities represented (Angular, Flutter, Go, Genkit) as well as some Google dev tool communities (Firebase, Antigravity, Cloud.)

I spent the evening hanging out with a group of devs from the Flutter community. Several of them had built their career paths around wanting to work specifically on Flutter apps. If a Flutter project got shuttered at one of their employers they would move on to a new company so they could work with the tech they wanted.

The juxtaposition between the content of the session and the happy hour gave me a lot to think about. What does it mean when at the same conference we have conversations about the need for decoupling developer identities from the tools they use while also having events to celebrate and build developer communities focused around specific languages, frameworks, and tools?

It’s one thing to say that AI tooling means you no longer have to focus on syntax. But saying “I am a Flutter developer" is so much more than saying you know the syntax. Being a Flutter developer is also being part of a community, having a career path, and using the framework as a preferred way of seeing and solving problems.

What happens to all these components of identity when AI changes the developer’s relationship with the tool?

It turns out that the Flutter devs I was hanging out with were in the same...