AI Will Change WordPress Developer Workflows For The Better
Tags: wordpress, webdev, ai, gpt3
Published: 2022-12-21 15:59:52

Over the past month or so, I've been busy building [CodeWP](https://codewp.ai), an AI code generator for WordPress. Due to this, I've thrust myself into the deep end of how AI works, as well as how it may impact the community that I've been a part of for 8+ years - WordPress developers and agencies.

People are worried. ChatGPT, Codex, Copilot, CodeWP... all look like products that might make the WordPress Developer as we know it extinct. But is that truly the case? In this post, I want to dive into the nuances of the technology and look to the future 

I bring with me my perspective as a previous WordPress agency owner, fullstack developer, and now, AI "researcher".

First, I'm convinced that there will always be developers, especially for WordPress. But with that said, AI will impact how developers build, work and collaborate in the coming years. I see this impact in a positive light, and break it down into three timeframes: Short term, mid term and long term impacts.

**Short Term**
In 2023, we've made it to the point where generative AI can create code for us. CoPilot sits in our IDE and provides us with an enhanced intellisense + AI suggestions. Products like CodeWP can create oneoff snippets for use in themes, and functions that you can plop into custom plugins and projects.

But everyday people have no clue what to do with the code. It's easy to tell ChatGPT to make a solution. But if you don't know how it works, if it's right, if there are any security implications, etc.... how valuable is it? In my opinion, it's worthless.

Your jobs as they are are safe for many years to come, and will just get easier as you, the dev, can leverage AI to be more efficient and effective.

**Mid Term**
We'll eventually get to the point where AI can consistently create basic "apps" and complete functions. But even if an everyday person could generate this, they'd _still_ need somebody to implement it, and maintain it, and develop it.

More realistically, we'll (devs) will be leveraging the AI to be more efficient, and test and iterate quicker. AI will likely touch most parts of the project we work on, but it will be for the best - no more StackOverflow when you have something that can generate 10+ working examples of how to solve a problem.

But it'll be up to you to figure out what the best solution for the use case is better, and tie it into the rest of the project.

Eventually, integrated tools will come. Those that sit in WordPress, where users can generate and implement code with the click of a button. But that's a long way away - how do I know? I'm the one building it ;)

This won't be a thing until AI is advanced enough to understand an entire codebase, project use cases, context, and more. This gets into embedding and fine tuning. And, the code would need to be 100% right _and_ secure 100% of the time, or it could never be used in a "point and click" manner. Of course this (almost) is (technically) possible now, but costs, computing, and the overall accuracy of code focused AI has a LONG way to go before this is ever even more than an idea. 

The scenario outlined above will replace some of a WordPress devs tasks. Jobs for basic fixes and function additions for WordPress will eventually dry up (though I do still think that they'll exist).


**Long Term**
Systems and logical thinking - if you wiped out a developers knowledge of how to code, they'd be left with these skills that nobody in any other profession has. Of course, other careers have similar skills, but developers have trained for years and decades to think through point a to point b, specifically through a digital lens.

In the long term (I'm thinking 50-100years here), perhaps AI becomes so advanced that it truly can create entire applications. Maybe it will sit in WordPress or whatever other platform is the predominant player in the long term and change layouts, add features, build entire sites, at the click of a button. 

If that's the case, I think that the role of a developer will shift to more of a consultant. One who builds prompts, verifies codebases, iterates and tests leveraging ai... There will always be room for that, as no other career path is more suited to grow into that role.

But realistically, AI (and other tech like vr/ar, brain-machine interfaces, etc...) will probably have impacted our industry and the world so much, _everything_ will look and work drastically differently.

In the meantime, enjoy the changes over the next few years. All they'll do is serve to make developer lives easier and more efficient.