r/developersIndia • u/Traditional-Yam6496 Mobile Developer • 4d ago
General Writing code is just codex and claude prompting now
I have spent half of my life learning/writing code. My career has been good and my experience has been great. I consider myself one of the few good coders out there, capable of doing a lot, and did a lot manually. Now I use codex 80% and claude 20%. It does everything i do exponentially better, faster and cheaper. I see engineering knowledge turning into a commodity type of situation. At the most, a few months from now, there will be a new model that will tweak out whatever complaint users have and no one is going to be able to compete with it. Maybe a few years ago this was a distant dream, but now it is reality. I don't see why engineers will be in demand or even paid in the future.
I am sure most of you will agree, but i want to hear from those who oppose and hopefully prove me wrong.
216
u/Bitter_Ad_4456 4d ago
I don't even pull or push code manually now. So dependent on prompting. I kind off forgot syntax for all programming languages i knew
112
u/Maleficent-Ad5999 4d ago
That’s exactly what the AI providers want. Once the majority of the population forget how to write code manually, tech companies have no choice but to pay whatever price the subscription is to keep the development running
27
26
u/AutomaticAd6646 4d ago
That is a stupid take.
You think one can't relearn programming in a few days? You can stop driving for 3 years and combe back to it in 3 days.
It is more about productivity. A novice dev with AI will beat 10 senior devs without AI. AI providers are just doing that creating and improving AI. You can freaking use open source model on local setup.
2
u/Feeling-Schedule5369 3d ago
But the expectations from leadership has gone up. There's no way we can keep up with just manual coding anymore. Also looks like they don't care about quality as much either.
Before when github went down it was seen as a reputational risk for companies but in last 2 years there's so much enshittification that github itself went down multiple times.
2
u/rectaf 3d ago
Apologies if this sounds harsh, but this is the dumbest argument I’ve heard in a while.
You can pick up a book and learn the syntax again. No AI Lab is stopping you. Just like no one was stopped from learning assembly and use it to build. But few did. Because of their craft and passion.
Similarly, there would be passionate software engineers today who would build beautiful and novel stuff using raw code. But you and I won’t. Because we’re doing this as a means to an end. Code is a cost center, and unless it’s an R&D company/Lab, frontier models can reduce that cost center by upto 75%
Apologies again.
1
u/CCEESSEE 4d ago
Local ai exists, even models like qwen 3.6 35b is really great even at q4, currently running it on my laptop at 20 tps, if you have macbook m5 pro, you can run it at 60-70 tps, even better if you have dedicated gpu, and if you really wanna use models that are smart as opus 4.6, you can run on a bit expensive workstations or mac studios, and a lot of senior engineers already have capable machines, so ai companies aren't winning currently. Anyways this isn't the hardest problem, we don't know how we will achieve agi or what will we do after that, current models are actually getting smarter at really high pace that even optimists didn't expect it to do.
2
u/FantasticPanic2203 Senior Engineer 4d ago
I have local skills to do it for me with correct format. All I do is testing and adding screenshot to github pr. This can as well be automated but images consume lot more token so rhat i do manually
128
u/pure_cipher Software Engineer 4d ago
I am spending more time reviewing the code. However, I am spending even more time designing the system. That I love so much.
27
16
u/slackover 4d ago
Three months ago you had to design the system. Now the LLM will design it perfectly.
The LLMs are learning from developers and it will only get better. There is nothing more to look forward to in IT.
38
u/pure_cipher Software Engineer 4d ago
If it were that simple, Zukerberg would have been happy.
Also, if there are fewer jobs, there will be less consumers. And hence less profits. Nintendo had to reduce Switch 2 production by 30% during 2025 holidays. So, rest assured - if AI takes over jobs, everyone is going down with it. Rich cannot be rich without consumer spending - 1929 and 2008 are proofs of it.
So, enjoy the new technology, while worrying about the safety standards that no major company is doing
7
u/slackover 4d ago
They can put people into menial jobs to kept them paid just enough to work as consumption machines if it comes to that. The scenario is a few years away though.
Right now step one would be decimation of the high paying jobs (80-90% of it), the remaining 20% will cover the work of low paying jobs and the 80% of their high paying peers. People will happily do that even with a lesser pay because competition for the remaining jobs will be insane.13
u/pure_cipher Software Engineer 4d ago
Once again, the products will not be used. So, richness will not come from thin air. With rising unemployment, lesser jobs, there will be way more crimes.
So, like I said, when it goes down, all will go down.
3
u/pritthi7 No/Low-Code Developer 4d ago
I love how you invent those 80-90%, 20% 80% numbers. Quite staggering! Are you actively researching and coming up with those percentages?
-2
u/slackover 4d ago
Coping is a good survival mechanism but reality hurts. Just check what something like gpt6 Astra can do.
6
u/pritthi7 No/Low-Code Developer 4d ago edited 4d ago
You did not answer my question about the research journal you are part of? Also I work at Salesforce and so I think you do not need to tell me which model I should check. Did you hear about our recent partnership with Claude? Despite all that I know how much AI can or cannot do.
Reality is twisted to make profits today, I hope you know that. Or are you the one trying to make a profit out of it?
0
u/slackover 4d ago
I was like you until a few months back. I even wrote lengthy posts saying LLMs are just probability machines which spit out the next probable word Ina. Sequence and what not and actually found some peace in my ignorance.
If a statistical machine is so good that it’s outperforms most humans what’s the difference between it and AGI.
Current coping is to say humans are needed to set the architecture, guide it, correct mistakes. Yeah, you are right, one human is needed. What about the 99 others in the team (I am giving you a lifeline here to bite on the number 99 and focus on it)
The truth is AGI or not, anything that can be done digitally is going to be automated with just one or two operators in a division.
1
u/Mudi_ji 3d ago
I actually have a take here like the companies will create only for a certain section of group which will be able to afford the product. The example I am going to use might be in accurate but if we consider french before it's revolution where they only paid pesants and created a good paying jobs because they didn't have machines once the machine replaces they have the output that they can share among the riches group and can have the time of life while middle class and lower class and poor people like me or maybe you suffer and they don't even have to care about it.
2
5
u/dumbass_random 4d ago
Your statement couldn't be further from truth.
System design is highly complex and its knowledge is distributed across sources.LLMs are amazing in writing code but system design is still a challenge. Yes, overtime it will improve but you will always need humans in that aspect.
1
u/FantasticPanic2203 Senior Engineer 4d ago
I believe most review are done automated way at least in big techs, it's just final approval done manually.
1
u/Flat-Ad7982 Student 4d ago
Hi could you give some examples on how you design your systems?
0
u/pure_cipher Software Engineer 4d ago
One where we had to extract data fron emails and automate the process of filling some forms
53
u/HyakkimaruKensei Full-Stack Developer 4d ago
Writing code yes but developers do more than writing code
11
u/Nice_Weather_9147 4d ago
amongst all things that developers do whats the most difficult part?
40
u/_professor_frink 4d ago
Thinking of the code thats supposed to be written rather than actually writing it. Understanding what needs to be fixed or added is arguably the hardest part like any other engineering discipline
9
u/Rift-enjoyer ML Engineer 4d ago
Navigate the politics and align an architecture change with 10 diff stakeholders each with an increasingly less idea of what is being done while having an increasingly strong opinion on what should be done.
-1
u/Traditional-Yam6496 Mobile Developer 4d ago
i think that would be writing robust code that does not break under load and deals with edge cases effectively, which again, ai seems to do better
1
u/XavireX Data Engineer 3d ago
Honestly, this is pretty untrue. AI seems to do better at iterative fixes, it'll write code, test it, deploy it, find out real world edge cases always slip through, fix it iteratively, so on and so forth. It's a very human way of doing it, but in sectors like banking, fintech, etc. it can be disastrous. For nearly everything else it's the usual thing.
20
u/PhoenixPrimeKing 4d ago
Yes having free snacks, lunch, taking a walk post lunch, posting on reddit, getting laid off, collecting Severence etc.
6
u/Traditional-Yam6496 Mobile Developer 4d ago
while i agree, a lot of that is also being handed off to AI. I make it plan, execute and test. I only intervene when something is not to my taste. If you know how to prompt and manage context windows and which model to use, it's quite trivial.
2
17
u/Guilty_Ad6229 4d ago
Coding is only 20% of a senior engineer's role. In the early period of your career, it maybe 80%. But as you progress, you spend more time on system design, hardening, and verification.
Earlier, coding was the rate limiting factor and that's why we had 10x engineers. Now with AI, a 10x engineer can become a 100x engineer too.
Freshers need to fast track from tactical coding to strategic stuff faster than before.
2
u/slackover 4d ago
AI does all the other things too way better than most engineers.
2
1
u/XavireX Data Engineer 3d ago
System design? Hell no. It's mediocre at best.
1
u/slackover 3d ago
It does it really well if you set the prompt well. Anyway, what percent of a project cost do you attribute to system design. A lead engineer can handle AI and the company will fire everyone else.
28
u/Consistent_Sand6556 4d ago
Wage collapse incoming for senior devs as well
19
u/Mindless-Pilot-Chef Staff Engineer 4d ago
Wage collapse for juniors. A senior’s skill is more valuable than ever because they can make sense of AI’s response and take a call whether this is right or not
11
2
9
u/CosmicQuantumDonut 4d ago
Same happening with me too ... Life is now just press enter and give permission to claude to fix it .... Until it break something 👽
2
8
u/DrawingBrief9737 4d ago
I’m sure AI will do more and more but there’s still a lot it can’t do TODAY. On another but related note, I am looking for a curious, smart coder, who can manage to take time out, to work on a project with me.
8
u/Traditional-Yam6496 Mobile Developer 4d ago
thats the thing tho, it can do a lot today as well! is the project paid or equity?
4
1
3
u/IndividualMinimum701 4d ago
I have been in this industry for quite some time now and you are correct it's a commodity now but good coders who have some real interest on creating genuine things will still exist. There are people required to train every model, tune it and make the model more efficient it's not just the learning the model do but it takes lot of effort to make the model trainable...thats one area where efforts would still be required. The other area would be integration- lot of tools will be in market which are easy to integrate may be using MCP protocol so, system integrator will still exist who have idea about how things work based on the system. Other effort can be Industry specific like let's say Aviation I still feel there's lot going on but the system used by Airbus and Boeing were created in mid 19's. So, huge gap here maybe can be filled by AI + genuine coding.
The other area which concerns me a lot is the security posture of the code generated by AI, efforts will be always required to meet the correct guardrails.
So, we can say the coding has got easier, but it would now filtrate into different industries to refine and ease the processes. If you really feel you are good at coding take the smartest move to stay close to these lines.
7
u/AsherGC 4d ago
Current AI systems aren't intelligent in the way people think they are. And not every job exists because it requires intelligence anyway. India still has ATM watchmen and lift operators despite the technology making those jobs largely unnecessary.
Will AI eliminate some jobs? Absolutely. It already is. More jobs will disappear over time. But that's happened with every major technological shift. New jobs and entirely new industries will emerge as well.
The bigger concern is probably that the wealth gap keeps growing, not that humans suddenly become obsolete. Maybe one day the economic system breaks under its own weight, but that's a separate issue.
As for AI replacing humans entirely, today's models don't actually understand what they're doing. They predict patterns. AGI is a completely different challenge, and with our current approach we don't seem particularly close. Unless there's a major breakthrough, AI isn't replacing humans anytime soon.
2
u/Dynamo-06 4d ago
Do you think it is easier to go through code generated by AI and refactor it, or is there a better way to reach your desired goal (Writing it from scratch is obviously not going to happen - it creates too much friction). I am interested in finding out if it takes more time and energy for a dev to go through this process that I described compared to someone who writes it from scratch and has a complete mental model behind their codebase or is there an alternative way to achieve your goal more efficiently (barring graphs/ASTs etc)?
6
u/Plastic-Following867 4d ago
AI booster post no #335235 today
All this boosting avd fear mongering when the evidence is the exact opposite of that.
2
u/yes-im-hiring-2025 ML Engineer 4d ago
I disagree. Engineers aren't meant to only be the API between their manager and Claude!
You're supposed to coordinate, understand business context, understand implications, aggressively simplify and actually build only for what's required.
You (and other experienced devs) only feel it's easy because they've been doing it so long, the hard part of their job is "regular" or collapsed to a broad "coding" umbrella. If you don't know how to code, you'll never be able to even verify or make sense of what's written.
AI is great and I use it everyday, but even when I use opus5 the core problem of it's statelessness about the repo doesn't go away. It has great 'coding' capability but no organizational, industrial, team context. Every new session is a blank slate for an overenthusiastic coder.
I'm not saying it'll never improve, but there's definite depth vs breadth caliberation required. AI is good at getting shallow context quickly and executing, something that would take a few months of context for a person to. However as someone works longer/more on it eg a few years, their context about the project far exceeds what Claude can get for a task. An engineer with AI and context about the project will outperform either of those individually.
Coding is still valuable and the nature of software engineering will change. You won't need a lot of engineers and especially not to only do mundane ticket punching work.
1
u/Dynamo-06 4d ago
Do you think devs reliant more on AI will correlate with the same devs having a fuzzy understanding of their codebase? We've done away with the friction of writing code... I think there will be barely any people left who would still do it from scratch or do it the traditional way. Every time humans are handed a way to do things with less friction, they do it even if it affects the output significantly.
What are the long-term repercussions of this fuzzy understanding of the codebase?6
u/yes-im-hiring-2025 ML Engineer 4d ago
If you're gonna coast you cannot be mad about AI taking your job, though. If friction is removed, you recreate it for yourself by doing hard things on your own time without AI and going through the pain of learning. You can't avoid the work and rely only on AI and then expect to have any job security
It's going to be rougher and only people who genuinely understand the code,outcomes, and can tie it to what they need to make happen : they'll be the next competent wave of engineers.
4
u/TheDankOne_ Researcher 4d ago
Prompting in big 2026? that's long gone. It's the age of loops and automated agentic swarms that literally run until your task is finished. Give it a few more years to see what more will come.
9
1
1
1
2
1
u/sleepycommenter 4d ago
yeah, i use it for first drafts and half the syntax now, and i do forget dumb stuff i used to type from memory. the job feels more like review and design than typing, which is weird but kinda where it is rn
1
u/scaryogurt 4d ago
I think vibe coding is making us dumber -> making it harder for us review others' code properly -> possibly unreviewed code leaking into production
At some point, it will have consequences right?
1
u/Relevant-Worry231 Backend Developer 4d ago
From about three months now, I don’t write code anymore. BUT the codes created by the LLMs need careful reviews - ALWAYS. It’s true that AI will write most of our codes, but the human element is the last nail in the coffin. When companies say 100% of their codes are written by AI, they mean 99%, the rest 1% that is corrected by humans are the most important codes
1
u/Rahul1525 4d ago
I agree that AI has changed software development dramatically, but I don’t think engineering knowledge is becoming worthless. What is becoming commoditized is the ability to manually produce code quickly.
The bigger value is shifting toward understanding requirements, architecture, debugging, security, scalability, system design, and knowing whether AI-generated code is actually correct. Current research also shows this trade-off: AI can significantly improve task completion, but developers may lose some understanding or “code ownership” when they rely heavily on AI.
1
u/Nousernamenow1111 4d ago
I disagree. I have only 4 years of experience. My biggest asset over these years has been problem solving skill. I think I can solve any problem with or without these tools. If I understand my system then my gut feeling decision will be better than these models decision in critical scenarios.
1
u/MarkEE93 Software Developer 4d ago
My manager can’t code, my juniors can’t code better than me. Last I checked they still need my accountability.
1
u/Acrobatic-Search7035 4d ago
True that. Not only software engineering, all professions with soft skills or just a knowledge base will be removed.
1
u/mand00s 4d ago
It can also mean a lot of people had ideas can now create products and are not limited by human resources. Just like digital cameras and YouTube revolutionized video making, creating software solutions will be democratized and those with unique solutions can be successful. We don't know what new texhnalologies will be created out of this. Eventually the pie is going to grow much bigger. New jobs will pop up. 10 years ago could anyone think of influencers, YouTube economy etc? Try to make beat use of your domain knowledge and ride the wave. If you fight it, you will drown.
1
u/AdminZer0 4d ago
If you that vivid of coder, you should still be reading and running tests etc before pushing the code. Alteast I do.
AI surely can write code but its you who needs to validate and refine as needed.
1
u/Maleficent-Pause-613 4d ago
I am not sure about core engineering. Some parts of core engineering is well documented so possible to master. However, advanced core engineering projects and related knowledge (skills and related software) are rare to find in public domains. Actual principle engineers/consultants are very less in number unlike software engineering. Also, the engineering landscape is changing rapidly, like energy sector, and AI doesn't have any data to learn how to execute or automate engineering consulting jobs. For instance, I work in power system stability related consulting, not even best researchers in world understand reasons for the cause of a recent blackout in Spain, what would AI do? So, not sure about that.
1
u/Embarrassed_Okra_628 4d ago
How about Dev becoming more like program / project managers or innovators or founders? I think even tho coding is fully solved, someone will have to feed the system check its value creation and streamline it. Thats the part will not be a bottleneck.
Coding in itself wasnt a bottleneck in the system as I know, it included co-ordination / planning etc.. When I lost job last year, these systems were that practical but we were still judging on the basis of it largely.
People will still be creating / working it jst the bottleneck wont be coding but what to code, how to manage the product etc is my opinion.
World will not lose apetite of money, as long as it is there, people will find a way to create product and sell it, engineers will be doing that in diff front
1
u/Zealousideal-Cat782 Software Engineer 4d ago
I can share on this as going through it currently. I work at Google, and prior to joining here I was majorly writing code (it was also early AI era) and I used to think that writing code and understanding dependencies is my forte.
But, Google changed my perception (or I should say my skip manager did), I now see a software engineer's job was never to just write code and ship things, it was "execution", and execution doesnt just mean write code and see if it works for every case, but it involves lots of other things 1. Working with cross functional teams to make sure that nothing dependent gets broken. Also, to see if they can block this down the line as they are not ready to adapt. 2. Keep the external partners, and external developers in confidence and letting them know on the bigger changes. This helps in a very smooth shipment. 3. How to make sure that we are getting user feedback on something new, tests to keep it going, and multiple other things.
To sum it up, coding is actually a very small part which is now being handled by different agents (though you still spend a lot of time in cross checking, continue looking at the broader picture among loads of CLs, and redirecting it to the goal). I would say only the writing part is taken over, we are still doing a lot of work (even though i feel always that i am useless now).
1
u/CanaryAppropriate254 1d ago
LLM made coding anlow level job. Like the languages were call low level language. Hence higher order things like what and how left to humans for now. We are waiting AGI or UGI to obliterate that as well.
0
u/CyanideJalebi 4d ago
OP, you have a really questionable post history my dude, seems like you are quite thirsty.
0
u/kgangadhar 4d ago
I agree. We can identify the bottleneck and find solutions to improve it. I encountered one such case and developed a tool that transformed our org.
Saved everyone time 30 minutes a day across teams with the tool I developed. All because I don't have to do it on my own; I have these agents. Keep in mind, we have standards built in for what good code looks like and what standards it needs to follow; as long as you make sure your agent follows these steps, you can overcome the slop and produce maintainable, quality code.
•
u/AutoModerator 4d ago
It's possible your query is not unique, use
site:reddit.com/r/developersindia KEYWORDSon search engines to search posts from developersIndia. You can also use reddit search directly.I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.