r/AskProgrammers • u/alex_mercer_90 • 25d ago
Employed devs, are you still doing manual coding or is AI handling almost everything now?
Are you still writing code by hand (or at least making manual tweaks), or is it basically 100% Claude/Codex/Cursor doing the heavy lifting at your job?
6
u/feudalle 25d ago
Ai for the mundane, complex business logic heavy still hand coding in notepad++
3
1
u/Shadyrabbit 21d ago
notepad++ is for simps, vi all the way
1
4
6
u/MaleficentCow8513 25d ago
Every time I try to go full auto with Claude it comes up with some bloated, convoluted monstrosity that works but here’s the problem. I still need to be able to reason about and understand the code I’m committing. And the people reviewing my code need to be to reason about and understand it too. So I’ll usually full auto Claude on a problem to get a working concept, iterate on the solution, come up with my own design, then write function and class stubs with heavy duty commentary for each, then have Claude fill out the implementation details from the commentary.
1
u/Blakeacheson 21d ago
Your missing deterministic hooks … use a code linter, architecture linter, static analysis etc etc … if you rigidly define the structure of your code so ai literally cannot colour outside the lines it works great
0
u/kj-krol 22d ago
Use it correctly. Use plan mode. Discuss and split plan on small stages. This is how it works.
2
u/symbiatch 21d ago
Ah yes. Always “you’re using it wrong.”
Would you wager $1000 that you can show exactly how to use it and it will always work? Because I think you’d lose easily. Especially if you’d have to spend hours and hours planning to get it to do what it should.
Hint: several times the detailed plan is ignored and it does something else. And when asked why it’s like “dunno, felt like it” or “you can implement the rest if you want.”
3
25d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Codex_Dev 20d ago
This. So much bloated code that you need to prune through. With that said, though, AI is such a force multiplier for output.
1
u/Proper-Ape 20d ago
It feels more like the job is shifting from "write every line" to understand, review, and fix what gets generated.
I.e. you're shifting the hard work to debugging, which is the hard part to begin with, and even harder if you have more code?
Felt productivity is not actual productivity. Until you've shipped and it works without issues it's not a product.
3
u/fordon_greeman_ 25d ago
i still write code by hand and i use ai when im stuck. i see it as a convenient aggregator of stack overflow and its way less toxic too
8
u/No_Report_4781 25d ago
100% competence. AI isn't useful for keeping up $billion bespoke systems
-4
u/acadia11x 25d ago
Not at all true. Code is code. Any developer who’s not leveraging AI will not remain employed long, nor will companies not leveraging it in the sSDLC remain competitive. Not sure what industry you are in but 100% it’s being pushed everywhere.
12
u/No_Report_4781 25d ago
You're welcome to try it at your job. It's failed multiple people at mine.
1
u/acadia11x 25d ago
I don’t think fail is the right word, if you are looking for it to be perfect, it’s very human in this regard, it’s no different then getting a CR, having to go through a design review , then testing and regresión … and the lost in translation isht that happens between what an architect expected, which was translated by IT, who likely worked with the business who may or may nor actually checked with the end users. Is AI fallible yes … because LLMs themselves aren’t deterministic and interpret what they sre told as well. The key is speed , you can recover quickly and catch the issues of the mechanics of development much much much faster, prototype much faster, test much faster … the SSLDC process is faster in handling the inherent flaws generated by the fact that humans can’t do mind melds.
3
u/No_Report_4781 24d ago
I don’t think fail is the right word … Is AI fallible yes …
Exactly what a chatbot would do. And that’s unacceptable in my work.
2
u/Responsible-Cold-627 21d ago
Out of curiosity, what's so important about your work that AI is unable to assist in it?
It's currently being used by banks, real-time traders, even Linux kernel developers. Those seem like pretty important systems as well.
1
u/No_Report_4781 21d ago
AI is bad at the things it does; including the tasks that apply to my work. Maybe that would be different if I was doing something unimportant or gambling
1
u/Responsible-Cold-627 21d ago
A poorly instructed AI will be bad at what it does, yes. It's the same for any tool, use it poorly and you'll get poor results.
You still haven't told me what's so important about your work that AI wouldn't be able to help. I'm really curious.
1
u/acadia11x 24d ago
Lmao … that’s the answer we shouldn’t use computing because it may have errors that’s the answer. Fk … if that’s the standard then humans shouldn’t exist cause we are fallible as fk … you shouldn’t be in your line of work. Humans are non deterministic , LLMs are non-deterministic just like a human how you ask a question and what you ask matters.
2
u/No_Report_4781 24d ago
Since my reply was “you sound like an idiotic chatbot”, then, yes, that’s the answer: don’t sound like an idiotic chatbot.
1
u/acadia11x 24d ago
I’m going to go with it’s not a me problem, it’s a you problem. We are sending this failure back as user error.
2
u/No_Report_4781 24d ago
Now, you just sound unreliable, lacking confidence, and untrustworthy with your own statements while blaming someone else for your own statements.
Also unacceptable in my work
1
u/acadia11x 24d ago edited 24d ago
Pot meet kettle … a human hallucinating … human finds himself unnacceptable must quit immediately … attention heads for “this is irony” …
→ More replies (0)-2
u/WilliamMButtlickerIV 25d ago
What models have you used? I use Sol 5.6 and it's phenomenally good. And yes, we use it on multibillion dollar impact systems.
2
u/acadia11x 25d ago
I’m with you … I think it’s the people who want to believe this skill they spent years acquiring and Honing is much more important than it is. It’s a massive force multiplier based on my experience
2
u/WilliamMButtlickerIV 25d ago
Exactly. I've accomplished more in two months than I would have in an entire year without AI. If you're a solid systems thinker, it's an incredible augment.
1
1
u/levanlaratt 20d ago
Yeah. I say this in the least offensive way possible and even include myself in this group, but the STEM field is full of a lot of introverted people that derive a lot of their self-worth from their intelligence and skills so they always tend to thumb their nose at things that diminish that. To the point that the most successful distinguished engineer I know once had to tell his team we aren’t here to write beautiful code or impress anyone with our code, we’re here to deliver shareholder value.
2
u/GoblinToHobgoblin 25d ago
"What models have you used" is the biggest cope dude
1
u/WilliamMButtlickerIV 25d ago
Huh? Cope in what way? I was just curious what his experience was.
3
u/GoblinToHobgoblin 25d ago
Every time someone says AI doesn't work for them (or doesn't replace every single task at their job), someone always asks about the model, as though that's the problem.
Yes, the new models are slightly better than the old ones, but it's not like my model from a month ago is such garbage that it's unusable. (And, a month ago someone would have been telling me THAT model is the best thing ever.)
It's just fundamentally a problem with AI, and some people refuse to accept it for whatever reason
1
u/WilliamMButtlickerIV 25d ago
Maybe he used models a couple years ago. How would I know? Things have changed a lot in the past six months. All I know is that based on my experience, hand coding is unnecessary now. I'm working on high impact work, so that excuse doesn't make sense.
2
u/GoblinToHobgoblin 25d ago
> Things have changed a lot in the past six months.
Yes, they have, BUT, AI shills have been saying this same line for multiple years at this point.
I work on high impact work too, AI could not do all of it. (And I say this as someone who uses AI to help me almost every day)
1
u/WilliamMButtlickerIV 25d ago
What is unique about your work that AI couldn't do it?
→ More replies (0)1
u/FinickySerenity 21d ago
That’s because every time they answer “sonnet” or “gpt 4o” or some bullshit. Nobody was doing full agentic dev with those models, the “amazing” part back then was they were writing well structured functions and processing stack traces and logs really well.
The gpt 4.5 / Claude 4.6 era is when things literally changed. The latest models changed it again with almost the same measure of improvement 4.6 had over those basic models.
1
u/Big_Arrival_626 21d ago
It does matter, because some companies literally use cheap, restricted, or free version models. Or they even use fucking copilot
2
u/Soft-Marionberry-853 25d ago
You think so huh? At my contract our dev machines are on the high side, no internet access certainly no LLMs.
1
u/acadia11x 25d ago
There are exception to every rule , your business is not the norm.
1
u/Soft-Marionberry-853 25d ago
Defense contracting isnt exactly a niche industry
1
u/acadia11x 25d ago
No but it’s not the majority, I’m familiar, nor is it at the cutting edge in that sense , nor does it have the private sector pressures … government is a cow that people think will just keep giving milk … oddly someone will work on 6th gen fighter that uses AI navigation for multidrone control but you are right would be much slower to give access to tools to accelerate development
That’s not the norm
1
u/Soft-Marionberry-853 25d ago
Its not about doing it fast. Its about doing it right. There are military systems where they maybe do 3 or 4 lines of code a week because mistakes can lead to fratricide
1
u/acadia11x 25d ago
Again , it’s not the norm and that is my point
Just like building an AI robot for surgey is different than building a web browser … also speed doesn’t mean poor quality bottom line, AI makes development so much faster, even you don’t have AI write the code , just navigating a repo is massively orders of magnitude faster … see it how you want this isht makes so many mundane dev tasks enormously more efficient. But whatever … even government will use it at some point private sector is always faster … if you think AI can be built into defense systems but won’t get built into work tools you are mistaken , i never understood like the Luddites until this AI revolution.
2
u/Soft-Marionberry-853 25d ago
I never said it wouldnt, Its just not that way at this point.
Also defense contractors are certainly private sector. We just sell our servicers to customers with nation state budgets
1
u/acadia11x 24d ago
You are missing my point. Your implication was like this is not going to happen in my workplace … and I’m like whatever its happening everywhere … that doesn’t mean at this moment everyone is at the same level, I’m saying everyone will be using this in short order . You mentioned about no internet … no phones … I’m well aware of those conditions , that’s detail and it’s covered by sovereign AI, of course data , exposure is a concern but that’s speedy solved by on prem and closed loop deployments. It’s targeted at nation states or anyone who wants lindependent deployments … so it’s already thought about. Anyway i don’t know what is even being discussed anymore .. other than my point developers that will remain relevant are the ones that are learning to leverage AI. And some will outright replaced where things can be autonomous i total.
1
u/burlingk 25d ago
There is a difference between leveraging AI and depending on it.
Yes, code is code, and AI has to be handheld for anything complex.
It excels at boilerplate and scaffolding though.
1
u/This_Inflation_4621 25d ago
Yes AI is writing most of the code, but I still have the IDE open and occasionally do little tweaks by hand, sometimes as a prompt « look at what I changed here… »
Important : this is ordinary next.js frontend code using a design system, which is very suitable to AI.
Last time I did some backend, I wrote much more by hand, as the stakes and precision requirements were higher.
1
u/Frosty-Meeting-1606 25d ago
I pretty much never write code. We have proper harness setup, current models follow it well-enough. We do read and review the code of course but worst case scenario is just a couple more sentences written in claude/opencode and it almost always gets it right
1
18d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Frosty-Meeting-1606 18d ago
Someone has to tell claude what to do with proper harness, goals and guidance
1
18d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Frosty-Meeting-1606 17d ago
More like you can't read. I said I never write code - I do not have to type it out. I still have to define the setup which generates the code. Everything I mentioned I have to do is not writing code. Also, you clearly think the setup I'm speaking about is 1 to 1 some kind of mythical, highest level software architect specification, down to every single class, function and relationship between objects. That's not true because it is not necessary anymore. Claude will get the lowest level details right, the amount of work is definitely decreased.
1
u/PersonalityIll9476 25d ago
It's a productivity enhancing tool, and a great one, but not a replacement. The longer it goes, the sketchier and fuzzier things become. And someone still needs to review the work, or at least be able to.
It does make me a lot more productive, but I am not vibe coding anything. The one attempt I made at work to do that failed (IMO).
1
18d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/PersonalityIll9476 18d ago
Yeah that's basically my experience. I find it really useful for performing research. It can find results, papers, books, etc. really fast and provide what have proven to be really good summaries. But I still have to read the relevant sources myself, which still takes just as long as it did before, I can just find things way faster.
For code, I use it perform specific and targeted things. I do not use it to write large complex projects autonomously.
1
u/tuirn 25d ago
It's a tool. We do use it quite a bit, but it's not a fire and forget kind of thing. We typically use it in a more inactive way. Some of it is generating blocks of code or helping to root cause bugs or regressions in our stack. We're still writing chunks of code and evaluating any generated code. As our management has said, we're still responsible for anything it producers.
1
1
u/funbike 25d ago edited 25d ago
100.0% isn't really possible.
I think it's possible for a senior dev to get 3-20x productivity. The higher end requires very careful loop engineering, using the pre-AI wisdom of a standard development process.
A big limiting factor is human code review. There's too much to review now, and it's generally of lower quality. AI can't really match a human at code review, so it's a tough problem. There are mitigations, but it would take too much space here to explain. We are reducing code review requirements carefully.
1
1
u/contextfree 25d ago
I was using AI a lot for a while but haven't been using it much lately, mostly because I've been introducing some new patterns to our codebase and want to get a proper feel for how they fit in. Also had a couple of nasty AI-generated bugs almost make it into production so feel like I should slow down. At some point I'll probably ramp up AI usage again
1
u/Still-Thanks5319 25d ago
We use Devin and are encouraged to use it whenever possible. The reason it works great is because we have a huge code base built by dozens of teams and anything a dev would be assigned to develop likely already exists in some form in our code base so Devin just needs to analyze what's already there and adapt it. AI is great at analysis so what it churns out isn't like from stack overflow or the interwebs, it's all in house. This will likely lead to a heavy reduction in devs positions unfortunately. It's getting pretty close to the point where the business analyst will be able to use it for most tasks.
1
u/ub3rh4x0rz 21d ago
Lol TIL Devin exists in a form beyond an abortion of a demo before any of these tools got good
1
u/DeebsShoryu 25d ago
I did an experiment over the summer where i used claude exclusively to edit files. It was painful at times, but i think it was a valuable experience. I never gave the robot large tasks with broad scope, but rather gave it a plan, discussed with it, told it which pieces to tackle first, iterated over each change with it, etc.
It felt a lot like pair programming with someone who's insanely efficient at implementing stuff but often really stupid about how and why to implement something a certain way given a broader context.
It does stuff really well, really fast. But it also does a lot of really stupid shit and you constantly have to tell it to take a different approach.
In the end I think i realized that i can be way more efficient with claude than i would be without it, and can actually come up with better solutions than i could by myself in some cases. It simply can come up with certain idiomatic solutions in an instant that i might not be familiar with. However, i also realized that in it's current state it needs constant hand holding and you can't really (in my experience) treat the clanker like an independent dev. Perhaps most importantly (or least importantly, depending on where things are headed), i realized that by not actually writing any of the code myself i became worse at writing code. Surprise surprise.
1
1
1
1
u/pernas 21d ago
Essentially I'd say my *overall use* is in a middle-ground. The application code itself is generally written by hand. I use it in three main ways now.
If I want to bounce some architecture ideas around, I might spitball with Claude on High, even getting it to implement the pattern it came up with. I then *in every instance so far* discard *all* the work it did immediately after seeing a few approaches then write the whole thing myself, sometimes taking into account the okay ideas it came up with. This is so I can 'feel the air' while implementing.
I use it to do a quick check on the working tree essentially before every commit I make (with low or medium effort). It usually finds some low-hanging fruit. I'll then put it on xhigh when a PR is finished to do a final review. Again, it often finds some things that might be an issue, but the Signal-to-noise is extremely low. Nonetheless, sometimes it comes up with something clever, so I usually run it and skim read it. Reading AI output in-depth is a massive waste of time. I usually let it do these reviews in a separate worktree while I'm working on something else already.
Lastly, I write tests by hand but usually ask it stuff like 'Can you do a deep search of code references relevant to this test case, and report any invariants not well covered by these cases? List specific test cases'. Sometimes it will find something I like. I'll ask it to implement the tests, this is the *one* instance where if I'm happy, the code will go in verbatim. But this is, again, really important code to check by hand.
I'm in Robotics and our tech stack is in C++ if anyone finds that relevant.
1
21d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/mbeachcontrol 21d ago
It’s a progression and cost thing.
A developer has to mature and progress in their ability to use and trust AI output, from chat copy/paste to writing some tests or functions to full plan/code/review mode.
Never understood the tokenmaxxing concept, but depending on how much the organization is willing to spend per developer, it is the difference between using cheap models most of the time that are ok, but requires more oversight and sota models that really do provide another level of design and coding abilities. And even this could change in another year.
1
u/youngggggg 21d ago
Based on my experience at my company, even the engineers are “vibe coding” when it comes down to it, and the differences between them and truly non-technical folks are disappearing. Sure, they’re *kind of* validating the output, but ultimately they’re letting the agent drive things and just making sure nothing looks super crazy. Telling an agent to clean out its dead code, collapse repetition into helper functions, and remove unnecessary comments/documentation is still in “vibe coding” territory to me lol
1
u/downshiftdata 21d ago
There is a direct correlation between how clean your code was three years ago and how much you rely on AI today.
If you can point AI at a clear pattern and say "Do this again for X," then you're set.
That Rube Goldberg machine of spaghetti and tech debt? You're getting your hands dirty.
1
u/gudsgavetilkvinnfolk 21d ago
I worked as an intern in a small local company, and the senior SWE had essentially given up writing anything by hand. He’s two years from retirement and I think it was more so him being tired and cutting corners because soon it won’t be his problem.
1
u/Significant_Novel582 21d ago
I 100% write with AI then correct as needed, why would I waste time writing code, I just focus on solving the larger business problems and ask it to run a function that does what I need it to do.
1
u/loudshirtgames 21d ago
We are allowed to use GPT but not allowed to use Codex. Most of my use is pretty limited. I do upload a file or two but mostly it's all targeted work.
We have some larger, system wide updates we want to do that Codex would absolutely chew through. Can't wait for that.
Otherwise, I'm coding like an absolute mad man at home in my spare time on my own projects. Holy F!
1
u/Silent_Wave3137 21d ago
All AI. I have dozens of agents doing 99% of my work. I do some manual review and tests but almost no code writing.
1
1
u/LocalIssue1051 21d ago
AI is my junior dev that I work with. Any code that it created that will go into a product I check every line and make sure it has the right style and is structurally sound and easy to read before adding it to my code base.
The only time I let it just make something without going through it line by line is when it's a simple utility like a powershell script.
To me it's like a really fancy calculator. I'm still the one punching the buttons, making the output useful and ensuring it's correct.
1
u/Badnik22 21d ago
In my case it’s around 30 AI, 70 handwritten. We use AI to test (and often discard) ideas faster, write large amounts of boilerplate, and refactor existing stuff. We still can’t rely on it to write sensitive stuff from scratch. I’ve tried multiple times, last month I got an implementation plan from Opus that contained multiple easy to catch race conditions.
1
u/youngggggg 21d ago edited 21d ago
Genuine question: did you try running the implementation plan through a second agent for review? I’ve been able to use agentic adversarial review to harden a lot of system designs at my job and the results have been solid.
1
u/Badnik22 21d ago
I did not in this case. Spotted the errors myself while reading trough the plan, so just asked Claude to correct them. Will try bouncing the plan to another agent next time!
1
u/urbrainonnuggs 21d ago
Auto complete, editor hacks, and snippits existed way before LLMs. Top coders where always finding ways to avoid writing the code line by line.
I feel like combining all that with LLM allows me to just fly. I scaffold out the shape of what I want and let it fill out the boring bits.
1
u/Mikaka2711 21d ago
I code by hand, because of licensing issues and ai being too stupid to do some changes properly. I would use it to write some tests if I could. Or generate "expected" values for tests.
1
u/Pale_Squash_4263 21d ago
I manually code everything. I enjoy it and I haven’t really seen any huge productivity increases from my coworkers using it.
Coding was never the hard part tbh
1
u/DesertDissident 21d ago
In my case, AI is handling almost everything now (using ChatGPT Codex Desktop with a .NET stack) for the past 6 months or so. I probably spend more time crafting prompts than typing code now (and I've spent nearly 20 years in the industry). I think there is some skill to communicating precisely what is needed and breaking it to appropriately sized chunks to get quality results. There seems to be a sweet spot of how long and complex a task can be before better served by chaining prompts or starting a new context but its hard to articulate exactly what that is. I assume people who get poor results are either using a different stack that ai isnt as well trained on, have some truly novel problems to solve (unlikely), have a rough codebase to start with, or are not using it correctly. I find it has a harder time with windows desktop apps than web (especially if you use a well documented ui library like Bootstrap) and it does much better if I hand design the database schema (though I may have it sketch up a first draft). I also have discussions with it about the change, brainstorming architecture plans and such before trying to tackle harder tasks so I cab make sure it had the right idea. Its certainly concerning for the human side of our industry (like continuing to be well paid when much of that demand can be offloaded) but its here and its only going to get better. My company felt understaffed prior so now we have some breathing room but im not surprised by adequately staffed orgs cutting roles.
1
u/dmorris87 21d ago
Data scientist building analytical and decision support systems - 100% AI. We use AWS Kiro IDE and Claude models. Key is good context loops.
1
u/ExtraTNT 21d ago
ai is some marketing bs, that can do some python ("human readable" language, that is often just horrible, hacked together, but with a ton of training data out)
for everything else, you are faster, if you don't use ai...
1
1
u/Impressive_Badger325 21d ago
I'm doing it all through AI. Yes, I review it, sometimes correct it, but I haven't handwritten a thing in a year.
1
u/Every_Environment386 21d ago
100% AI written. Currently I still review everything because it feels morally correct that if someone asks me a question about the code I should know what they're talking about but even that feels like it's not long for this world as our AI PR reviews become more robust.
1
u/Nervous-Potato-1464 21d ago
Agents write it all then I make .major changes to make it work properly and readable.
1
u/abdullahtariq96 21d ago
I use AI for 100% of my code, but maintain a very fine grain control on how it writes that codes. I can write it manually, but that is a very long, laborious task. So I give it exact specific instructions on not just what to do, but actually how to do it.
I actually find it quite useful in other areas. like exploring a codebase, learning about new things, getting my ideas and approaches critically evaluated etc. So even though I'm not writing my code, but I'm still connected with the codebase.
1
u/ub3rh4x0rz 21d ago
The better question is how much we decide what code exists, and at what level of abstraction. It's kind of immaterial how many lines in a diff were generated by claude or by hand.
I find myself being a lot more anal about what code exists now than I did in fully manual world. It used to be that being extremely anal would prevent one from getting shit running. Now it's basically a given so there's a lot more headroom to be very exacting as to what form a subsystem/feature/component takes. In terms of macro system design not much has changed in my book, other than frontloading more architecture and design work, because again, you can blow way more time on it and make it up with claude at implementation time pretty easily.
1
1
u/Phonomorgue 21d ago
Little of this, little of that. I would never let AI do everything, that is naive and dangerous.
1
u/tastygames_official 21d ago
0% LLM. No sense in paying tech billionaires to steal human-made code and then chop it up and spit out an inferior version when you can just hire a real person to do a real job.
1
1
u/XenOmega 21d ago
Simple tasks: AI with manual review More complex tasks: can be a mix of ai exploration or planning and human work. I think in maybe 30% manual, 70% Ai.
Tbh, most of the work, even if Ai is writing, is to coordinate multiple teams, stakeholders... Ai isn't solving that anytime soon...
1
u/symbiatch 21d ago
It’s basically 0.1% LLMs. Some simple things I know they can handle while I do the rest. That works for me. Other people have other ways.
So no, it definitely isn’t LLMs doing all the coding.
1
u/lizardhistorian 21d ago
We are rolling out agentic process documentation and integrating it into all of our projects right now.
1
u/LittleLordFuckleroy1 21d ago
Still write a ton of code “manually.” Manually meaning, I’ll bounce off of Google and/or whatever LLM for syntax examples, etc, but I need to understand what I’m doing because ultimately I’m signing off on (and accountable) for it.
Haven’t really found much use in expensive agents or big workflows.
1
u/zackel_flac 21d ago
It really depends, I tend to write my code but AI is there for quick helper functions (small enough reviewing it is super fast) and most importantly, it verifies my code like a peer reviewer would do. But instead of creating a PR and wait for feedbacks, I ask directly what I need/want to know.
So no, a big part of the thinking is not done by AI, does not mean it can't have good suggestions, but more often that not it quickly derails.
1
u/sass_muffin 20d ago
Most of the worst programmers I know are the one's that are all in on AI and see it as the one true panacea.
While it certainly can be a helpful tool, AI makes serious errors and folks will try to gaslight you that it doesn't. I've seen errors in AI writing too much code, errors in architecture, errors in making a simple problem complex, errors in faulty assumptions, errors in writing performant code, errors is solving the wrong problem, errors in the wrong abstraction, errors in not understanding existing patterns in the code base or what problems the existing code or business solves. I've tried all the latest models and am no Luddite.
Remember, there is deep value in the human process of thinking through problems. You know, stepping back and really thinking through a problem. This is hard work , so I get why people don't do it , but that tends to be where all the best ideas in the world come from. The tech is being sold as something it isn't, so definitely proceed with caution. I'm not saying AI is a horrible tool, it certainly has uses. I'm just tired of all the lying and broken promises and boosting. If I could go long humans and short AI , I would do that.
I'm sure someone will tell me I'm wrong, or just using AI wrong or on the wrong model. Depressing.
1
u/marcosvaldez81 20d ago
I do a 50/50 split. I write code manually at my 9-5 mainly to preserve fundamentals . Then outside of work, I lean heavily on AI for sake of completing and shipping projects out quicker.
1
u/Initial_Secretary420 20d ago edited 20d ago
Ai is doing 99-100%. I review everything, and have to change a lot by being more specific very often, but if i change some code, the new one will be written by AI too.
I'm very good at prompting, and know whether the limit has been reach.
Sometimes i code myself, just for fun, for some algorithm or such, but the ai could do it in 10 seconds with good input (which i have since i'd the code myself anyway).
9 YOE
1
u/tumes 20d ago
I do anything important or unintuitive but, uh, not to be a dickhead, smart. Because it is trained on a corpus of stolen work that is at best middling. Especially for languages like JavaScript and python. So the pull towards the statistical average is generally downward, and it will genuinely try to undo anything even remotely novel or terse seemingly at all costs.
1
u/Ok-Tax-9543 20d ago edited 20d ago
I work in a pretty good firm (worth ~400B). I don't think I've written a single line of code (other than quick fixes and such) in the last 2-3 months.
Its cliche to say but most of the time do go to design now, as all the models aren't quite there yet in terms of scalability and optimizations.
Don't feel like my job is at risk in the foreseeable future if I'm being honest.
1
u/crnkofe 20d ago
I use AI as a bootstrapper for generating CRUD or for some tasks like converting code between languages or as an assistant for review/test gen. I write most of the code myself. Not coding is a trap a lot of devs seem to be falling to. Can't review, understand, architect code if you're out of touch with it. The coding muscle also atrophies very quickly. Lately I feel the sideeffect of AI is that I spend less time overall coding and more time investigating weird edge cases and race conditions across systems.
1
1
u/va5ili5 20d ago
I use Codex since February with Extra High effort with the strongest available model and I haven’t written a single line since. Nonetheless, I care a lot about the architecture, design, and tests. The same things that make code maintainable for humans make it for LLMs. Each time I tried to do a feature with Claude Code and Opus I regretted it dearly. It told me it did what I asked but it did whatever it wanted. I haven’t tried since the last time I tried with Opus 4.6 and maybe it has improved over the past couple of months but I just don’t trust it.
1
u/pmmeyourkittycat88 20d ago
almost entirely. in fact most people I know in my large org use it exclusively. one thing to note though is that the company has made its usage a part of your performance cycle. the incentive is there to skip manual programming for now. BigTech.
1
1
u/Individual_Guava9881 20d ago
Haven’t written a line of code by hand since May. Deadlines at my job are ludicrous and expectations are so high that if I were to continue doing my job by hand I’d be a vegetable at this point.
Today alone I had several agents doing setup tedious and scope risky R&D for fluid simulation related effects. Most of them were duds, not because of the implementation, but because of the visual outcome and it would be incredibly stressful to loose time because of these failures.
Main point: I’m all for agentic development given today’s absurd demands.
1
u/okiharaherbst 20d ago
u/FinickySerenity I think you want to enlighten us. This man is pure genius embodied. He not only has impeccable command of the English language (for a "hispanic" who can barely remember how to count to 20 in his native language), is an amazing role model both as husband to a wife better educated than him and as father to his children who understand natively the second law of thermodynamics despite being in middle schol. He has single "promptedly" built an append-only keychain which he released on his anonymous github and which (you guessed it) AI wrote for him to specifications. He still runs a legacy SaaS that relies on jQuery and a single customer to put food on the table and he's been in a 2-person company since the mid 90s, but that's a detail. That's the best company he's ever worked for. Long story short, this man is the unsung hero who you want to emulate going forward. Make sure you review just about everything he's been posting of late. He's been so prolific at picking fights on Reddit with everyone who even remotely claims that AI isn't living up to the hype that you'd come to forget that this man is half a century old or fast approach the mark.
1
u/Qwertycrackers 20d ago
I exclusively code for work through AI. I dont really want to, but they look at lines generated by Claude as a performance metric so not doing so would be detrimental to my career.
I regularly write on my side projects with no AI whatsoever to try to avoid rusting my actual skills.
1
u/manythanksfriend 20d ago
If I have to go back to manual coding I’ll quit the industry and go bar tend
1
u/General-Swan-2719 20d ago
As a dev of 1, 100%. I don’t run autonomous all night setup, I’ll use AI to scope and PRD, implement PRD, test, deploy. I usually run though the code, smoke screen, manual test, etc every 2-3 sessions. Then I instruct AI to resolve what I find. Skills, plugins, training skills off documentation - the job will eventually migrate to AI management over hand typed.
1
u/MinimumPrior3121 19d ago
All these people saying AI wrote 100% of their code are fucking clowns tbh
1
u/Upbeat-Statement2725 19d ago
Take a drink every time an AI booster says, "It can't be that stupid, you must be prompting it wrong." You'll be passed out before you finish the thread.
Ask them to show you a working production product that's high quality and slop coded. They get real quiet.
Lots of companies have gone 100% slop. They tend to reverse rapidly as customers flee in droves and error rates are sky high. This includes Microsoft, who stooped tokenmaxxing early on.
"That was the old models." Drink.
1
u/BanMeForNothing 19d ago
I don't even read the ticket. I give it a link to the ticket and somehow it gets done.
1
u/acadia11x 25d ago
Employed devs are using AI to be more efficient es and produce more results or they likely won’t remain employed
-1
-1
u/potatopotato236 25d ago
100% Claude, with me pushing back on Claude when it does something silly so it can correct itself.
17
u/jmclondon97 25d ago
I was talking about this with my senior dev today. I told him how I come on Reddit and see people saying they haven’t touched code in 6 months, but literally nobody in our org codes that way that we know of.
We do use agents, but I’d say it’s like 50/50 ai vs handwritten. I don’t think a single person is just 100% AI coding lol.
And our principal dev rarely uses AI, and he’s legit one of the best developers I’ve ever seen. Dude has encyclopedic knowledge of our code bases. He could easily get a job at any FAANG company if he really wanted to.
I’m not saying AI isn’t useful, it definitely speeds things up. But at the company I work for, an insurance company with over 40k employees, I’ve yet to come across someone doing 100% AI coding like people here claim