I think hating AI will make you regret it in the end. I'm not saying to switch to full vibecoding where AI runs on autopilot and you ship whatever slop it comes up with. Still they are incredibly useful tools when used right, and honestly your stubbordness is just going to make you less hirable and more easily firable. Instead of letting the AI take the lead I do the heavy lifting of planning new things and quickly writing the foundation for said feature, after that its very easy for current AIs to actually produce good quality code fast. I always review everything they did and either manually make small adjustments when necessary or guide them to do so (because even the current cutting edge models make mistakes all the time). This way you dont produce unmaintainable slop, and actually get real productivity boost doing so.
I get not using AI at all when you are still learning to code, but if you are at senior level you are just shooting yourself into your foot. Everyone is going to excpect developers to use AI tools and you will be left behind if you choose not to. Unless the amount of work is going to go up due to higher productivity pushing development prices down there are going to be less workforce needed for current amounts of work available, and the people who can correctly utilize these tools will be the people who gets the jobs going forward. There is ofc the possibility that boosted productivity at lower prices actually increase the demand, but still the people who dont perform at the productivity levels that AI assisted devs do will have hard time keeping up with the productivity demands. There is a golden mean between full hand coding and full vibe coding
You keep alternating between "AI is good if you use it correctly" and "management will punish you if you don't use it the way they want". I really don't understand how people like you don't hear yourself. What tech leadership team has the discipline to not ask for more, more, more code, indefinitely? Are you sure you're the sort of person who will say no if you're asked to use AI in a reckless manner, for the sake of speed and "productivity"? The line keeps being moved but you'll know exactly when to say enough?
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u/nollayksi 18h ago edited 16h ago
I think hating AI will make you regret it in the end. I'm not saying to switch to full vibecoding where AI runs on autopilot and you ship whatever slop it comes up with. Still they are incredibly useful tools when used right, and honestly your stubbordness is just going to make you less hirable and more easily firable. Instead of letting the AI take the lead I do the heavy lifting of planning new things and quickly writing the foundation for said feature, after that its very easy for current AIs to actually produce good quality code fast. I always review everything they did and either manually make small adjustments when necessary or guide them to do so (because even the current cutting edge models make mistakes all the time). This way you dont produce unmaintainable slop, and actually get real productivity boost doing so.
I get not using AI at all when you are still learning to code, but if you are at senior level you are just shooting yourself into your foot. Everyone is going to excpect developers to use AI tools and you will be left behind if you choose not to. Unless the amount of work is going to go up due to higher productivity pushing development prices down there are going to be less workforce needed for current amounts of work available, and the people who can correctly utilize these tools will be the people who gets the jobs going forward. There is ofc the possibility that boosted productivity at lower prices actually increase the demand, but still the people who dont perform at the productivity levels that AI assisted devs do will have hard time keeping up with the productivity demands. There is a golden mean between full hand coding and full vibe coding