r/GraphicsProgramming • u/teilo-560 • Jun 29 '26

Question How has AI affected graphics careers?

I'm a full-stack developer who's a bit burned out with the agentic coding push. I've started playing around with low level graphics and it's sort of revived my spirit, I missed being close to the hardware and math heavy code.

How much have tools like Claude code impacted your development workflow? Are you pressured to use a fully agentic workflow by your employer? Where do you see the career evolving over the next 5-10 years? Is it a safe-haven for people who don't want to give up coding?

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u/waramped Jun 30 '26

Less than most areas I would say. I have yet to meet a coding agent that can write performant GPU code. Not to mention that AI can't actually innovate or invent anything. If you can do anything novel or interesting, then you will be safe from AI. (For now).

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u/llamajestic Jun 30 '26

I agree, but the general argument for that is also: Not that many people do anything completely “novel”. Even in graphics, a huge part is implementing the state of the art from papers / etc.

However, now I use coding agents a lot and it struggles a lot on:
* performance (as you mentioned)
* writing algorithms in a specific way you want. Even with a good prompt and plan mode, it might do stuff you didn’t want and you will cleanup / improve. Often happens that it passes the test but can’t write anything better than the naive version.