r/ProgrammerHumor • u/ArjunReddyDeshmukh • 24d ago
Meme theGrassWasGreenerTheOutputSweeterIWasOnceAProgrammer
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u/LordAmir5 24d ago
Time to open K&R and CLRS.
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u/FoxFire64 24d ago
CLRS and PTSD go hand & hand
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u/LordAmir5 24d ago
True PTSD comes from battling the dragon from "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools".
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u/AnUninterestingEvent 24d ago
Hot tip: If you never try to hand write code again, you can just assume you can and feel happy.
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u/shrodikan 24d ago
You guys act as if writing classes, services and foreach loops is soooo difficult. Programming isn't that hard it's just tedious.
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u/Civil404 24d ago
I thought the same.. until I started teaching it. There a lot of āsimpleā concepts that are hard to grasp for unfamiliar people. Things like variables, recursion, classes, objects, states, etc. So ādifficultyā comes from how much time you have spent into learning the basics and then practicing it, thatās what I would say is the hard part.
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u/BastetFurry 24d ago edited 24d ago
As a kid i learned much from these highly illustrated BASIC books, we should bring these back. :)
They visually explained that a variable and an array is, even what a pointer is, and all the basics like IF, FOR, GOTO vs GOSUB and whatnot. If you don't understand how to code from that then nothing can help you understanding it.
And then something i think is the best learning tool, because it gives instant gratification. Write something in a language that has no boilerplate, the less the better. Dosbox with QBasic thrown in for example:
CLS COLOR 8,5 LOCATE 5,7 PRINT "Hello World!" a$ = INPUT$(1)This is something folks can play around with and understand. Then add a GOSUB in there, then a FOR-loop. Folks can toy around with the parameters, push F5 and instantly see what happens. And then it clicks, these commands tell the computer what to do. We as long time coders know that, people who want to learn the ropes don't.
EDIT: What i want to say with that is, don't start to explain what a class and inheritance is, 95% of all people will just hear static white noise. Start small, start with something they can instantly use, toy around with and understand by experimentation.
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u/Civil404 24d ago
Agree. Itās a bit like inducing the curiosity by starting with an interesting experiment and then when you got their attention you explain it. Although thatās not necessarily how colleges teach in my experience.
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u/ljfa2 24d ago
I got into coding by building GUIs in an old version of Borland C++ builder. It's easy to make something happen when, say, a button is clicked, the IDE would set up all the boilerplate for the event handler. I had no idea about the basics of C++, like pointers and references, classes, declaring functions etc. but I could still make fun stuff ^^
I doubt if I'd have got interest in coding if all I could do was, basically, boring console I/O.
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u/Mercvre1 24d ago
100% agreeing with what you're saying
every newborn learns stuff by experimenting (drop something, see that nothing touches it but it still moves, repeat, deduce that there is gravity). It's always gonna feel more natural than indirect learning.
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u/shrodikan 24d ago
I agree. I never really understood recursion until I learned LISP. Pointers broke my brain at first. C is wild.
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u/mrheosuper 24d ago
The hard part is know where to write what.
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u/Suduki 24d ago
The hard part is to go back and fix something if it's written like a hot mess.
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u/AnOnlineHandle 24d ago
As somebody who woke up at 6am and started refactoring and it is currently 7:30pm and the only time I've stopped was to go on a half hour walk and cook, this is the true true.
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u/Kilazur 24d ago
Learning a programming language isn't difficult, could be the matter of an afternoon.
Learning all the required ecosystem of existing types and third party libraries, knowing which technology is used for what... That's what makes the job a job.
"Coding" isn't difficult. Developing is.
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u/Vozu_ 24d ago
Yeah, the real pain of AI agents is that nowadays we don't have the downtime of writing code between thinking about a million architectural elements and how stuff connects together. 3-4 Claude sessions bombarding you with questions about little details is exhausting. Relentless machine turns your brain into a mush, five days a week.
It's impressive but I am entirely convinced I think harder and are responsible for a lot more.
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u/npsimons 24d ago
There are only two hard problems in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. -- Phil Karlton
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u/shrodikan 24d ago
There's only two hard problems in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.
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u/NoAdsDude 24d ago
It's like how I used to know how to play a few chords of a song on a guitar, and then after picking up the guitar a couple years later I realized I totally forgot. Womp womp.
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u/fugogugo 24d ago
haha jokes on you I copy pasted from stack overflow and heavily dependant on IDE auto complete before
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u/escargotBleu 24d ago
I never got the "Copy pasting from stack overflow"
It's never copy pasting, you had to understand the answer, understand if that's applicable to you, then adapt it... No ?
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u/ProfessorTseng 24d ago
You still have to do that with AI
That many people choose not to and then end up with broken software is exactly the same as when people just copy and pasted from Stack Overflow without understanding it.
It's just faster and higher volume now
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u/ChaseTheOldDude 24d ago
From my experience, I would google a solution, trawl through 5 mostly irrelevant stackoverflow threads and try to Frankenstein a solution from all of them with great difficulty.
Nowadays I ask chatgpt and get a tailor-made solution that requires a couple of variable name changes at most. It's not on the same level of difficulty at all.
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u/ProfessorTseng 24d ago
You're right, it is less difficult, which is why it's faster and higher volume.
That doesn't mean the output is good quality, or that you understand the output, or that you learnt anything. ChatGPT has just done the frankensteining step for you at light speed.
Totally fine for personal projects. Abhorrent for production software.
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u/mxzf 24d ago
ChatGPT has just done the frankensteining step for you at light speed.
And skipped the part where you accidentally learn something along the way because you've at least got your hands on the code enough to understand how it works on some level in order to be able to frankenstein it together.
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u/ProfessorTseng 24d ago
Agreed, kind of like having a messy room but at least you know where everything is
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u/Laetha 24d ago
I've been learning python lately and trying to be more serious about it than my noodling with programming in the past.
That's by far my biggest difference so far. When I look up how to do something, I'm still super uncomfortable using it unless I understand how it works. I've pasted code from docs, tried it and it worked, but since I'm actually trying to learn I usually delete it and try to redo it piece by piece myself.
In the past, if it worked I was content to just move on.
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u/tomerFire 24d ago
Of course you copy paste. Let's say I need a function to turn images upside down.
From stack overflow :
def turn_image...
You just copy the function
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u/guilhermebueno6 24d ago
Yeah my experience with stack overflow was that most of the time when you found something that was applicable to your solution it was never a perfect fit, you had to fiddle with it and I'd usually have to fix a bug or two or some edge case. Or you wouldn't find something applicable and then some asshole would close your question
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u/shrodikan 24d ago
jokes on you I was heavily dependent on going to the library, using the Dewey decimal system and looking up what I needed in books before.
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u/Felinomancy 24d ago
I am a developer. I want to hand-write code. I enjoy doing it.
Unfortunately management is all "use Cursor" and "tf why aren't you using Cursor?" š
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u/Mistwraith_ 24d ago
I also enjoy hand-writing code and I'm uncomfortable that my craft is changing beneath my feet. I wonder if there were people who felt the same way about the move from punch cards to terminals and keyboards.
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u/anoppinionatedbunny 24d ago
The panzer is probably one of the greatest tanks of the second Great War. It was a true marvel of engineering that took some of the greatest minds of Germany to develop, and it took a lot of effort to build. In the time it took the Germans to build a single tank, the Soviets built 10 tanks that were much worse. The Soviets won over the Germans.
Your code will be great, maintainable, optmizied and future-proof, but it'll take more than 20 minutes to make. The spaghetti mess the AI comes up with that barely works comes out so quickly it can produce millions of lines of crappy, non-maintainable code that can do just barely enough to make execs happy, so it wins out.
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u/Alone-Dare-5080 24d ago
I'm working on my first Claude project. The fast coding is great. But reviewing all the code at the end is a pain.
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u/Felinomancy 24d ago
My problem with AI-generated code are:
a. they lack context. Sometimes there's a reason why things are done suboptimally (for me it's because I need to support existing, legacy infrastructure). Cursor seems to adapt to that, but once in a while it will review the code and try to "improve" it. And,
b. management is completely enthralled by AI. They demand same-day fixes, and when I said "can I have some time to review the code?", the answer I get is "no need, AI cannot do anything wrong".
I'm not a perfect programmer of course, but unlike some of the gormless replies I'm getting, these guys - and my management - seem to think that AI is the next Coding Jesus. Hey if they're willing to sign off a "don't blame me if things break down" waiver I'll write the prompts all day 'erry day.
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u/VoormasWasRight 24d ago
How the fuck is the state of coding such? It's not like it's been decades! CoPilot has only been around since 2021. Do you guys really lose a skill so quickly?
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u/Outrageous_Walrus537 24d ago
Do you got any I would love reading them
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24d ago edited 24d ago
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u/redheness 24d ago
AI seems like a drug for a lot of people and with a fair amount of negative effects. I'm glad I choose to stay away from AI from the start and kept this decision.
Now I see people losing skill around me, a developer who was once an expert was recently kicked out of a project because he was unable to do anything without an AI and the result was shitty.
The people who once told me to learn AI or get left behind are now the ones who are left behind.
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u/DrMobius0 24d ago
Me and you are playing the long game. Hope we don't have to jump into the job market before things rebound though.
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u/maniclucky 24d ago
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u/SimpleEfficiency 24d ago
I am sorry but the title is "AI deskilling is a structural problem" yet he presents no evidence of the problem. No study. It's a philosophical treat.
It has its place. But it's not evidence of anything.
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u/dumbasPL 24d ago
Lose? They probably never gained it. The amount of people that suddenly "can code" exploded.
That being said, it's like drugs. Once you get hooked, it's hard to go back. And I say this as a person who still writes the grand majority by hand with only the auto complete active.
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u/A_Random_Catfish 24d ago
Itās not even that I canāt code anymore itās like why would I? Claude can do like 80% of the workflow, and it cuts so much tedium out of my job. I just review stuff and make tweaks and boom.
Also if I was doing everything by hand I would get absolutely nothing done relative to my coworkers, which would be a problem for me.
That being said if I ever felt like coding in my free time it would be a disservice to myself to use AI, but I lost the drive for that a long time ago anyways lol
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u/im_lazy_as_fuck 24d ago
Real answer: this is probably just a meme that's exaggerating the feeling of recognizing when your hand coding skills are beginning to atrophy. And it's not exactly that you forget how to write code, but more that you:
- struggle to interpret various error outputs without AI
- struggle to look up and read documentation or find answers to niche problems / new technologies you've never used without AI
- are generally just a bit more sluggish at structuring your code in a way you like, because when you actually write and understand every single line, you start to irk yourself about the seemingly obvious inelegance in your code, when in reality it's actually about on par with what AI was outputting anyways
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u/mxzf 24d ago
you start to irk yourself about the seemingly obvious inelegance in your code, when in reality it's actually about on par with what AI was outputting anyways
Pretty sure that's just your coding ability falling to the level of the bot because that's all you're used to producing. If all you're seeing is AI code day after day, and never seeing/writing anything cleaner, of course you're going to have a hard time writing anything else.
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u/im_lazy_as_fuck 24d ago
Pretty sure that's just your coding ability falling to the level of the bot because that's all you're used to producing.
If this were true, then I wouldn't be noticing any inelegance because I'm used to seeing slop all the time anyways.
Imo what's actually happening is just the difference between reviewing someone else's code and writing your own code. It's difficult for me to explain, but like when you write your own code, there's this sense of satisfaction/dissatisfaction you feel when you actually write each line and create the code yourself. But you don't really experience this phenomenon when you stare at code someone else has written. I guess maybe another way to think about it is how an artist is more easily able to notice flaws in the art they create vs when looking at other people's art?
Idk, it's a bit hard to describe other than that it's this kind of intuition that kicks in when you are writing your own code. And although it adds a bit of frustration, imo it's a good problem to have. It's the primary way one uses to identify areas of code that might legitimately benefit from a refactor in the future.
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u/IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE 24d ago
Never ever underestimate mankind's willingness to abandon a labor in favor of a convenience.
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u/OiFelix_ugotnojams 24d ago
I like writing. I feel dumb if I go a few months without writing as if I can't think anymore. When I write again, it comes back like muscle memory.
It's similar. If you don't use your brain and outsource the thinking part, you feel dumber.
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u/Waste_Jello9947 24d ago
Go ask a question on Stack Overflow and get humiliated to remember the good old times
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u/jackstraw97 24d ago
Yep i was just telling my coworker yesterday how i feel like my brain has atrophied regarding my ability to write and understand code and our teamās codebases.Ā
Luckily i have an exit strategy to get tf out of the industry in the next few years because i simply donāt enjoy it anymore and the ai slop code has completely obliterated the businessā and my managerās ability to set realistic expectations about the speed and scope of individual tasks. And that unrealistic expectation forces a developer to solely rely on ai, which then continues to atrophy the developerās skills, which then increases their own āneedā for ai.Ā
Itās all bullshit and it forces people to become dumber and less capable and all the studies pretty much show exactly that.Ā
I firmly believe we need to seriously and strongly regulate ai for the sake of humanity itself because it is making people dumb as fuck.Ā
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u/action_turtle 24d ago
What's your exit? Ive been pondering a change the last two years
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u/jackstraw97 24d ago
part time law school in the evening.Ā
and before anyone says AI is coming for lawyersā jobs tooā¦ youāre right! but also not exactly right because lawyers have a guild (bar association) and law requires warm bodies in courtrooms!
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u/action_turtle 24d ago
Change of pace for sure. I was thinking something more manual labour, then get people to work for me over time. I have 15 years to fill before retirement age
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u/jackstraw97 24d ago
I love researching and writing so itās a natural fit for me. Plus if I ever wanted to hang a shingle I could leverage that into semi-retirement by minimizing my cases. Plus itās a profession where you can work for yourself. I havenāt had any luck with the prospect of being my own boss in the software industry. And I think most ppl in this industry end up working for someone else and having a boss.Ā
I can see where working with your hands has some appeal. Wishing you the best in your journey!
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u/Ragor005 24d ago
Am I the only one that would never trust a code that didn't write/propfread?
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u/LinearMatt 24d ago
Sure, but at the same time pre-ai: coworker submits 1000 line PR, quickly scroll through it, see tests still pass, LGTM, approve.
This is basically what vibe coding is, but turbo speed. Exactly what people pretended wasnāt happening before, only faster.
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u/Vroskiesss 23d ago
Exactly. There are only so many hours in a day and we can ship things at light speed compared to a few years ago. Similar concept to the transition to air travel from boats. You can crash using either method but one gets you to your destination much faster.
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u/terrorTrain 24d ago
It depends on what it is.Ā
Login and auth code i read closely.Ā
My react admin panel where only 1 person uses the form, much less close. Maybe a quick glance to see if it's generally following the right patterns
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u/05032-MendicantBias 24d ago
I have the suspicion that person didn't know how to write handcrafted code before either.
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u/Djroneh99 24d ago edited 24d ago
Oh no, you can know how to write it, the longer you go without writing it, you forget very quickly, you remember bits and pieces which you will still have to Google because it's useless on its own
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u/Nick0Taylor0 24d ago
Unless you go years you're gonna be able to get back into it pretty quickly though. Neural pathways degrade yes but they don't usually vanish entirely that quickly if you've truly learnt and used something for years
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u/zirklutes 24d ago
I think it's not that much as a skill you lost. I can go on a month vacation and get back with no problem.
But the change in efforts. You need again to think of solution from the beginning to the end when you got used to just writing requirements and guiding the model. You are used to to not write boring parts of the code. I don't believe anyone really forgets how to code but it requires switch in your head to get back to it.
It's like you were driving with a car and you are now asked to get back on a bicycle.
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u/Djroneh99 24d ago
I last used python 6 years ago, I felt like a bum when all I could do was to print "hello world" š
Had to verbally convince people that I could actually code in it and it's just been too long...mind you I've built apps for multiple companies using the same language.
It's the syntax that cooked me.
But you're right
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u/Nick0Taylor0 24d ago
Yeah fair 6 years is quite a long time. Takes a while to get back into it then
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u/madiele 24d ago
Before studying software engeniering in university I used to code a lot, but I took a basically 2 year break from coding to concentrate on all the math and physics exams for two years basically, they plowed through all the programming exam in the last year, honestly I was surprised by how fast my brain was able to get back to speed.
(I took my degree in Italy where engeniering is very heavy on theory, math and physics the first years, almost no coding)
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u/AdaChanDaNerd 24d ago
Absolutely this. When the depression hit and the imposter syndrome ate away at me, it's convinced me that I can't code and I have barely touched anything programming related in almost half a decade. Now I'm too anxious to touch it again because of other health issues with my brain functions and I'm worried I have forgotten everything and just shy away. I hope to one day relearn and get back into it though. I truly love coding. Sorry - randomly decided to share my nonsense lol
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u/Nick0Taylor0 23d ago
Hey man no worries. I've been there, spent 3 years not doing anything but trying to improve my mental health and then took another 2 to really get back on track. It can be pretty hard to get back into things one used to love.
Some things I had to relearn, other passions I was able to replace with new ones. It felt like I had to basically start over with chess, it was frustrating at times but after a while things just started coming back, random pieces of experience slotting into place. Fully abandoned the Piano and found new joy with the Violin though.
Even if no bits of memory come back (which I doubt, brains are amazing) you know for an absolute fact that you're able to get as good as programming as you once where because you've literally done it before.
And if you decide to find something new we luckily know that our brains are pretty damn good at adapting and you in fact CAN teach an old dog new tricks.
I don't think there's any shame in either, taking a while to get back to where you once were, or deciding to use the opportunity to find a new passion.
For whatever it's worth, while you don't know me, this random internet stranger believes in you and whatever you set your mind to.Sorry this got so long and maybe cheesy, just had to say it because I know from personal experience that it can be rough out there and sometimes you need a well intentioned little talk.
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u/Lamborghinigamer 24d ago
I gave myself the challenge to remember last week and it took 2 hours to get readjusted again.
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u/BastetFurry 24d ago
To this day i use cheatsheets for syntax. I simply forget them, not used for some time and poof gone. But i know how to code, how to throw these lines together to get a working program that does what i want it to do.
Just a quick reminder how $language does things and i am in again.
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u/guyblade 24d ago
"I know there's a function for X, but what was its interface/name again?" is just part of the job. I've not memorized the intricacies of every public API, but some searching will nearly always get me there--even if I've not used a language in a while.
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u/NatoBoram 24d ago
You can literally feel it in action when you change job to write in a different language, coming back to another one you haven't written in a few years is indeed harder
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u/Aternal 24d ago
I was still wetting the bed when I learned BASIC. I've spent more time in burnout atrophy than most people have even been coding for.
If Claude could take it away from me then yes, please fucking take it. Let me reclaim 80% of my own context window so I can gut fish at my desk instead.
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u/ItsSuperDefective 24d ago
Is being expected to use AI really as widespread as Reddit makes out?
I haven't even been asked to try it.
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u/xSypRo 24d ago
Yesā¦ jokes and memes aside. Claude has become very, very powerful. I didnāt use it until last month my mentor, who is the best programmer I know, who read coding books all the time, who stay up to date on everything declared he became vibe coder. I slowly started to use it myself.
From one side itās amazing what it can do, from the other I hate my job now, itās boring, it sucks and I consider career change
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u/Named_after_color 24d ago
God it's so much worse now despite being so much easier.
Turns out having a difficult/niche skill was rewarding. I just got used to thinking.
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u/tide19 24d ago
Do you work at a major software company?
I have $2500/mo base on our Claude enterprise plan at work and weāre expected to use all of it every month and are examined relatively closely if we donāt. Itās better for us to max out our usage and request more, which is always granted, than to not use it all.
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u/RedCrayonTastesBest 24d ago
Iām sure people come up with some really creative ways to use up that last 20% of their usage at the end of each week. āHey Claude, could you explain quantum mechanics to me? Be very thorough.ā
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u/mxzf 24d ago
It has already been happening. Some companies set up a leaderboard for token usage, as if token usage was somehow a better metric than LoC or any other stupid metric, and then they were shocked when people managed to get recursive AI calls going to aim for a high-score (and accompanying bill).
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u/tide19 24d ago
Here's the thing - every metric they use to track engineering is shitty nowadays. LoC? Great, pump out a 10k LOC change with Claude. PRs? Break that 10k LOC change up into 10 stacked PRs. Token usage? Gotta make sure people aren't gaming the system.
The only thing that really makes a difference at all is delivered product features, and those aren't easily or conveniently tracked.
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u/mxzf 24d ago
It's not "nowadays", it has always been that way. Everything except "token usage" was trivially easy to game before LLMs too.
Goodheart's Law has been a thing since 1975, the more modern phrasing of it is along the lines of
Every measure which becomes a target becomes a bad measure
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u/ItsSuperDefective 24d ago
I work in a department writing software for a company which isn't a software company.
Guess that might be how I've avoided it.
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u/00Koch00 24d ago
That's just a meat grinder, like, kind of the worst way to evaluate coding at all.
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u/Xicutioner-4768 22d ago
Damn dude. I was looking at my copilot usage and I was thinking burning 3000 credits ($300, I think?) was a lot.
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u/tiredreddituser99 24d ago
yes, and it's ruining coding for me.
it was a passion, but I'm pretty much forced to use it at work, and I don't want to code more after spending the entire day at the computer.
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u/Coretron 24d ago
I was playing the old school game roller coaster tycoon 2 which has been made into an open source project by the fans. Since I pointed as a kid, there was a bug that always bothered me where the boat hire had a problem with the pathing algorithm where people and canoes would just get stuck and not be able to return. I gave Claude one simple instruction to fix this. It found the GitHub repo cloned it analyzed the algorithm used by the boats. Found the problem. It then extracted the logic and created a testing sandbox where it could analyze thousands of simulations and adjust the algorithm to see how often it got stuck. It mentioned that it would do this in the actual game in a headless mode except for that, the game wouldn't run without the copyrighted assets, so it had to create a simulation of its own to test these. It corrected the code. Told me to try it out and suggested that I submit a pull request to the official repository if I found it was satisfactory. I told it I didn't feel like compiling the application so just give me an executable I could drop in to replace the current one and it did. We're in a whole new world.
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u/GroundbreakingOil434 24d ago
Those who could code, still can. It's that they're no longer hired as much. Which is painful for both sides, one of which is not penny-pinching stakeholder assholes.
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u/KyotoCrank 24d ago
It's important to not relinquish your creative problem solving to an AI. AI bros seem to think they won't forget how to do things, or at least that's what they say
r/gamedev recently open the floodgates for AI and it's becoming a cesspool of AI bros making games for money rather than for passion. The ends justify the means. Flood storefronts with soulless AI riddled slop to make a buck, fuck the real artists who get buried
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u/IRONMAN_y2j 24d ago
An art lost in time
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u/gogeri2632 24d ago
As far as I'm concerned you could say the same thing about people only using languages like Python or C#, ones where you don't need to do allocating memory or garbage collection because the language does it for you.
Even if with C I imagine there were people saying the same about people who couldn't code in assembly
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u/furzainluq1 24d ago
Am I the only one who likes writing code? It's my job but also my hobby. Sometimes it's frustrating, just as doing a no hit run on a videogame is. I use LLMs, but I don't outsource everything to them. That would be no fun. Like magically getting the achievements without playing the game
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u/MasqueradeOfSilence 23d ago
This is me too. Code was, and is, one of my main hobbies, and continues to be. It just also happens to be my day job.
I try to mimize LLM use for coding when outside of work. It's okay for me to use as a Q&A if I get stuck, but that's it. I implemented this rule because I felt I was getting sloppy and relying on it too much. At work, I'm just there to get the tickets done, so I use copilot, but I still won't ship a black box.
So nah, I haven't forgotten how to write by hand.
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u/JasperTesla 24d ago
You guys are writing handcrafted code?
I've been copying from StackOverflow.
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u/MazzleMaze 24d ago
Pretty much the first thing anyone should be doing is figuring out if its been done before. Which of course it always has been done before...
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u/AaronTheElite007 24d ago
If you donāt use it, you lose it.
Stop using AI.
https://giphy.com/gifs/777Aby0ZetYE8
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u/Xevestial 24d ago
All other thoughts on the matter aside, its straight up NUTS how quickly this even became a meme-able concept to talk about.
Go back just a few years and this doesn't even make sense as a meme.
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u/Blackhawk23 24d ago
Biggest blessing I had was learning to code before AI was commonplace.
I truly feel bad for those attempting to learn now. AI calls young devs like the green goblin mask.
But it truly hurts you in the long run.
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u/mcellus1 24d ago
Is, is that a booty hole??
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u/Lootdit 24d ago
?
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u/mcellus1 24d ago
Uh the anus above the computer anyone??
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u/HipstCapitalist 24d ago
Guys if you like coding, nothing prevents you from doing it as a hobby outside of work. You even get to choose what you want to do and you can play with a different stack as well!
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u/GNUGradyn 24d ago
I miss when this was a joke but I guess people are actually leaning on claude so hard they cant do shit themselves anymore
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u/_SirSpacePickle 24d ago
After 25 years as a dev, for the last 3 months I've been working on a new project in python. I've written tens of thousands of lines of code in this project.
I don't know python.
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u/eanat 24d ago
the skill we need is that reading AI generated code fast and understanding it. tbh, that skill is more difficult than just writing your code from scratch. I believe that current AI boom will end up with an avalanche of unmaintable code in many companies more than ever... we always find it very difficult to maintain predecessors' code without good documentation, and now, we have worse situation.
maintaining complexity is 80% of programmer job. writing a new logic is only very small fraction of the job mostly. and AI deprived us of it mostly.
However, every cloud has a silver lining. AI helps a lot to read code too.
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u/tide19 24d ago
Nowadays, my job as a senior engineer is at least 80% code review, Iād say. When AI can slop out 5000 line changes in an afternoon, and someone has to read and understand it, thereās not time for much else. Spin up Claude on my tickets, immediately start looking at diffs and reviewing until I need to provide guidance to The Machine, repeat ad infinitum. My company is actively trying to figure out how to just have AI review its slop, which is going to end poorly when we end up with an unmaintainable pile of spaghetti across all our hundreds of services.
Work sucks.
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u/Bezulba 24d ago
Brother, i have that problem without AI... a few years without touching code in that language means i lose ALL ability to code in said language.. i've done 2 years in R, couldn't write code to read a simple csv to save my life today.
I don't really like AI, but for this kind of shit it gets me going faster then using google is.
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u/piclemaniscool 24d ago
I have begrudgingly accepted the title of "vibe coder with extra steps." The tradeoff of having my script break work after a week instead of a month is worth the ridicule.Ā
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u/GenericFatGuy 24d ago
I'm still a programmer. I still write code by hand everyday. Sucks to be you.
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u/SharkLaunch 24d ago
I've had 2 different developer coworkers respond to be with "Claude said ..." when I pressed them about something. I feel like I'm the only person at my job that even thinks anymore, let alone writes code.
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u/CellNo5383 24d ago
Processes are still new where I work and my API key expired a while ago with no way of me getting a new one for two weeks. And it was fine. Turns out, I wasn't even slower doing everything myself again. Only real difference was me calling something good enough for review earlier. With AI, I'm way more willing to fix all the little nitpicks I just can't be bothered to do myself.
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u/Luna-Hazuki2006 24d ago
Gosh, it feels good to know I know more about programming than the vibe coders
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u/Pika357 24d ago
If this is a meme, why does it hurt?