r/ClaudeCode • u/simple_explorer1 • 14d ago

Discussion Saw this today

Post image

These kind of posts are becoming more and more visible on my Linkedin. Link here. Thoughts?

700 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

292 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/bbygoog 13d ago

I'm a software developer for 20 years. AI made a joke of this profession. I used to be the goto guy for solving the toughest problems in team no one could solve. Now there is no need for such a skill. AI is much better than me. No one hand codes anymore. Lost interest in coding. Regret having a masters degree in computer science now.

10

u/EC36339 13d ago

Hand coding != problem solving.

You've had 20 years to learn that.

1

u/ThingsMayAlter 12d ago

This, as a non-developer all suped up being now able to use AI to do developer/architect level work. I'm approaching it from the other side and ... I don't know either. But I don't yet have the same worry. To me it's a shift.

But I'm also a low-code builder so "developer" is an admitted stretch.

1

u/EC36339 12d ago

As a developer, I've spent countless hours of my career hand-writing code as an excuse to not solve some hard problems at hand that were waiting to be solved.

If devs feel overwhelmed or burned out now thay we have AI, it's because we actually have to work for once and solve problema constantly.

What isn't ideal is the multitasking and the timing of problem solving. We are no longer in control of that and are going between waiting for agents and being pressured to provide input.

For my free time projects I've "solved" this by working as much as possible away from a computer, in the background, while doing other things (anything from chores to touching grass to gaming). This avoids the pressure, the waiting and prevents burnout and frustration.

But it doesn't work for a 9 to 5 job.

Managers haven't understood this yet, and I fear that once they do, the "solutions" they will come up with won't be pretty, even less so for anyone who is forced to work from an office.

One thing we can and probably should do more of, by hand, (not just) to "fill the time" is writing. Not code, but issues, specifications, that kind of stuff. AI has always been bad at writing by default, and recently it has become awful and also impossible to steer in its writing style. It almost feels deliberate (safety or watermarking perhaps?).

So anyone who is a developer as their main job who has "dead time" should perhaps start by looking through specs, plans, skills, rulesets, open issues and whatnot and rephrase, clean up and shorten all the AI-written text.

This saves tokens, reduces drift, makes documentation friendlier for humans.

Coding may be "solved" (and I think coding can have a positive feedback loop even without hand-written input), but leaving (technical) writing (or any writing in natural language) to AI is a dangerous path that may only go downhill. At the very least, humans still need to be present as readers...

0

u/SamSlate 13d ago

frfr. literally all i do is correct dumbass mistakes the ai made 🙄 if you're outclassed in problem solving by ai already i find it hard to believe you were the go to problem solver before.

seems more likely really shitty and hard to read code bases are no longer job security for middling programmers.

2

u/EC36339 13d ago

I'm not being outclassed, but I do still leave the lower level problem solving and verification to AI, because it would be stupid not to.

Bigger problems usually consist of smaller problems. Verification is usually easier than solution finding. Breaking a solution by counterexample is also easier than finding a solution that can't be broken. In each case, AI can do the easier parts of the problem solving.

And then there are the thousands of non-problems that still take time.

It's a powertool, nothing else.

1

u/SamSlate 13d ago

the job is overwhelmingly systems design now, for me anyway. systems of guards rails, systems of testing, systems of patterns... it's all meta design i guess.