In an age where artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the tech landscape, the question "Will AI replace human coders?" has never felt more urgent. Big names in tech like Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Anthropic's Dario Amodei have confidently claimed that AI is already capable of taking over many programming tasks — and maybe even all of them soon.

But not everyone agrees.

One prominent voice in the developer community, Salvatore Sanfilippo, is pushing back — and he's got the experience to back it up.

Who Is Salvatore Sanfilippo?

If you've ever built a real-time app or dabbled in high-performance databases, you've probably used or heard of Redis, the open-source data platform often praised as the world's fastest. Sanfilippo is the original creator of Redis, and he's no stranger to solving deeply technical challenges.

This week, he published a thought-provoking blog post titled "Human coders are still better than LLMs." That's LLMs as in large language models — the same kind of AI that powers systems like ChatGPT and Claude.

Not Anti-AI — But Definitely Pro-Human

To be clear, Sanfilippo isn't anti-AI. In fact, he regularly uses tools like Google's Gemini in his day-to-day work. But his recent experiences highlight a key limitation: AI just isn't creative or intuitive enough to match a seasoned developer's problem-solving instincts.

He recounted a personal example where he was debugging a complex issue in Redis. After trying a few approaches himself, he turned to Gemini for help — hoping it might suggest a faster solution. What followed was a frustrating back-and-forth, where the AI struggled to make meaningful contributions.

In the end, the AI could only confirm that Sanfilippo's own idea was acceptable. It couldn't refine it, let alone improve it.

"Humans Still Have the Creative Edge"

The real takeaway came in Sanfilippo's closing thoughts:

In his view, AI can be a helpful tool — particularly for verifying code or checking your work — but it's not yet ready to take the wheel, especially when it comes to complex, context-heavy development tasks.

A Counter to the Silicon Valley Hype

This position stands in stark contrast to what we're hearing from some tech CEOs. Meta's Zuckerberg has openly discussed plans to replace mid-level coders with AI, saying it would cut costs. Meanwhile, Dario Amodei of Anthropic made headlines earlier this year for claiming that "all code will be written by AI within a year."

Sanfilippo's blog reminds us that while AI is advancing rapidly, there's still a lot it can't do — especially when it comes to human creativity and intuition in coding.

Final Thoughts: Coders Aren't Done Yet

Sanfilippo's perspective isn't about resisting progress. It's about being realistic. AI tools are impressive, but they're still far from replacing the deep expertise and outside-the-box thinking that experienced developers bring to the table.

So no — human coders aren't obsolete. In fact, according to Sanfilippo, we're still leading the charge.