I’ve started hearing a new phrase this year, “you would be amazing with AI”. Every time someone says that to me, I hear “you would look better with makeup”.

This comment is neither a compliment nor useful advice. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what current AI technology is and how it fits into the software engineering workflow. It assumes that AI is a blanket boost to a software engineer’s productivity with no side effects, that the use of AI is nothing but a positive force multiplier. None of those assumptions are correct. AI coding is a different workflow, it’s a different way to build software from the traditional way, which I’ve written about here. You cast incantations one after another into your code generator until your software does roughly what you expect, and you might intermittently step in and make some modifications to augment the code generator. It is software engineering but it’s not programming. I’m a programmer, and programming is my craft. I have no interest in assisting a code generator to build my software.

So no, I would not look better with makeup and I would not be amazing with AI. I would look better if I went to the gym more regularly and got more regular sleep and ate healthier. And I would be a better programmer if I spent more time learning new programming skills and honing my craft.