I always say that AI is a fantastic tool, but still a tool. according to StackOverflow's 2025 survey, many developers agree: they want AI for research, learning, menial tasks... what they don't trust AI with are mission-critical responsibilities, accountability, monitoring. 

the fact is that endless hours of hard work go into being able to code consistently; and any project, no matter how well documented, involves critical knowledge and context held by key professionals. several companies attempted to replace their developers with AI, with catastrophic results. 

that's why, when tasked with fixing an events calendar for the MAAT museum in Portugal, I declined the use of AI and dove into the code myself. previous devs had modeled their event content with separate start and end date fields, instead of a daterange field, which made it difficult to filter events for selected dates. the fix was to query for everything users wouldn't be able to visit, and reverse the outcome. 

bingo. 

it may sound easy enough on paper, but the answer came to me after much thinking and tinkering. of course, refactoring the structure or revising content simply wasn't feasible, and that's where another very useful human trait comes in handy: emotional intelligence to grasp the nature of the problem. 

with the solution theoretically in hands, it was now time to use AI to develop and test it. 

I mean, we're only human after all.