I was driving through Austin, Texas, recently and I saw a Waymo vehicle. These are autonomous vehicles that—in principle, at least—drive themselves. The Waymo Driver boasts a variety of whirling gadgets that detect the surrounding environment and guide the vehicle. But when I pulled up alongside, I saw there was a human in the driver’s seat.

This ties right into my thinking about the role of the developer in the transitional world of AI-enabled programming. It underlines the question of how “in the loop” human coders need to be.

So far, it seems programmers are still needed to guide and inform our use of AI-assisted tools. We might even have reached a high-water mark of the current generation of LLM-driven AI saturation. For JavaScript programmers today, the message is: Keep learning the craft.

Top picks for JavaScript readers on InfoWorld

Intro to Nitro: The server engine built for modern JavaScript
As a JavaScript developer, you want to know about Nitro because it’s built from the ground up for modern, full-stack web development. Find out why it’s the server engine for Nuxt.js, among others, and fast becoming the go-to server option for JavaScript and Node.

9 vital concepts of modern JavaScript
Let these fundamentals organize your mastery of JavaScript. From collections to closures, and from components to continuous integration, focusing on JavaScript’s key concepts will never let you down.

Advanced debug logging techniques: A technical guide
Logging may not be the sexiest part of programming, but it’s a skill every programmer should master. This article features advanced logging tips good for any language, including JavaScript.

Is the generative AI bubble about to burst?
AI is everywhere in programming, and JavaScript is no different. But where is this revolution headed?

More good reads and JavaScript updates elsewhere

The 2025 State of JavaScript survey is live
The annual State of JavaScript survey is among the most influential resources for learning what developers love and don’t-much-love about JavaScript and JS tools. Now’s your chance to weigh in.

How to thwart NPM supply-chain attacks
GitHub’s top recommendation for addressing NPM supply-chain attacks is “trusted publishing”: a mechanism for verifying the validity of release workflows without using stored tokens. Read up on this critical change for library developers.

Chrome DevTools adds MCP server for the Debug console
A gap in AI-assisted development has been the assistant’s ability to run and debug code in the browser. With the new MCP server in Chrome DevTools, agents can now connect to a live running application instance and interact with its output. This is a first step toward a feedback mechanism for AI tools.

JavaScript in the browser is 30 years old
Take a trip down memory lane and revisit the advent of Netscape Navigator, v1.0. Did all this really happen 30 years ago, or was it just the blink of an eye?

JavaScript tools updates: Astro 5.14, Node 24.9.0, and Nuxt 4.0 all had releases in the last month. Check them out!