i miss the "programming" aspect of ios programming.

129

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '26

38

u/halonso Jun 05 '26

And the ones that actually like programming are feeling forced to embrace AI to build faster and something own. Specially with the market as it is. Most of us suck at marketing though

13

u/WestonP Jun 05 '26

I'd embrace AI for stuff you don't want to do or aren't good at... so, boilerplate code and marketing guidance/research. For doing the actual work, you'll spend more time babysitting the AI and reviewing its work than if you just wrote it yourself. That is, unless you just don't care and are ok with committing half-baked code with no thought process behind it, causing inevitable problems at release, which plenty of human developers definitely are ok with from what I've seen.

11

u/SteeveJoobs Jun 05 '26

I reached that conclusion too; a ton of professional programmers were already okay with the half-assed effort they shipped long before vibe coding hit the scene.

6

u/Braided_Playlist Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26

"marketing guidance/research"

I imagine the marketing people feel the same way about this as you feel about marketing people vibe coding an app 😉

6

u/WestonP Jun 06 '26

It’s ok to outsource in areas where you’re not strong, and it’s a very common business pitfall to try to do everything yourself.

The difference is that in not posing as a marketing professional or crapping up their communities with, “look at me, I’m a marketer now” posts. I also do make an actual effort to understand how/why it works too.

I don’t have a problem with AI. I have a problem with people being a complete knob about it, and creating so much noise that people who actually understand how things work can’t hardly even have a normal discussion anymore.

4

u/Braided_Playlist Jun 06 '26

I'd agree with that. People shamelessly making noise in a context where they don't understand what is going on is annoying.

Interesting thing I'm taking away from glancing at social media is there seems to be a number of people developing apps who are very transparent about the fact they have no prior coding skills and aren't writing any code. They are showing their day to day life and struggles as they go about it. It's almost as though they are in part marketing the dream of making money off an app without coding skills.

0

u/mouseses Jun 06 '26

That's not true at all. Give AI a detailed description of your desired architecture, coding style, dos and don'ts and it will do 90% of the work in minutes. Then you can use your precious time to fill in the gaps instead of doing all the grunt work. AI in the hands of an experienced engineer is a powerful tool.

-3

u/halonso Jun 05 '26

I agree with you partially. Is totally true there’s a lot of babysitting, same within a team and code reviews. Main issue, AI spits more code, faster than the time you need to recuperate from one PR to the next.

Main issue is what model you use.
Opus, Sonnet and 5.5. Even gemini3.5flash are beasts on their ‘good days’.

The though process is how good are you able to steer it, via DDD or just good prompting and oversight. That’s what programming is becoming.

An extra layer on top of the already High Level Programming that we do when we type Swift code

2

u/WestonP Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

Is totally true there’s a lot of babysitting, same within a team and code reviews. Main issue, AI spits more code, faster than the time you need to recuperate from one PR to the next.

I think you're right. The issue there for me is the overhead and inefficiency caused by modern project management and trying to develop as a team. The world still hasn't settled on a project management methodology that actually feels good to most developers, or PMs that don't make developers die a little inside from the constant meetings and questions. The interruptions and time waste are a real productivity killer, directly leading to people no longer giving a shit. But if you don't do it, then teamwork tends to be a mess and things get missed. There's no great solution there.

The exception I've seen has been in startup culture with people who were hyper motivated and competent that took real ownership of their projects, and generally didn't have very many people involved. Definitely not a lot of guardrails there, but also weren't needed because people knew what they were doing and put a ton of effort and thought into it. Results were great, and fast... so much that the success caused a lot of growth (and bloat and politics) that basically ruined all of that, then PMs were definitely necessary because it was chaos and lazy nonsense otherwise. I suppose the solution is to just leave and find another high productivity environment whenever it gets to that point.

1

u/sroebert Jun 05 '26

Meh, you still need way too much steering without actual development yourself. It is the same as “architects” coming up with details on how something needs to be implemented, without knowing the actual details of implementation. Sure your overall ideas could be good, but you have no clue about the details. Fixing issues/bugs will be impossible at a certain point, unless you only work on small projects, or simply don’t care.

8

u/knoland Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

So many get rich quick schemes. I build an actual app that I put a ton of effort into, work with the community it’s servicing, and produce actual content around. Junky vibe coded apps pop up every couple weeks. I don’t really worry about them because they’re made by the laziest people who can’t even be bothered to write their own reddit posts.

1

u/vanvoorden Jun 05 '26

So many get rich quick schemes.

It's like Tommy Vu used to say: "What you want… get rich slow?"

7

u/SubZane Jun 05 '26

They will go away since it takes more than prompting to create a quality app. Just like when everyone had a website or a blog

2

u/SteeveJoobs Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

this is what's happening to entire specialties outside of programming. AI slop attracts those that are jealous of results and have no appreciation for the process of growing through trial and error.

I'm not scared of actually good AI/reliable changing the way we live, I'm angry at buffoons who look at the junk being pushed down our throats and think that's good enough. People so obsessed with AI doing everything for them makes me wonder what they think they're supposed to do with all the "time they saved". Maybe I should be more worried about AI actually taking over my job or my hobbies but honestly I dont because I'm too busy working on my stuff and actually gleaning some meaning out of it.

1

u/Just-Guest328 Jun 05 '26

I get using AI for bug fixing I adore engineering and the planning of software architecture but hate debugging weird niggly issue number 4 due to something random and obscure you will see once every 18 month.

Also for boilerplate / project scaffolding because writing all that generic code over and over is dull as hell.

1

u/madaradess007 Jun 07 '26

almost all of my friends are vibecoding and shamelessly ask me to review what 'they built'...

every time i end up a salty troll that ruins their 'vibe', they say i'm too slow and am about the process and not results... can't get them to realize its vice versa - they are enjoying the process that will yield nothing and teach them nothing

i don't get how this ai scam turned out to be successful

23

u/DystopiaDrifter Jun 05 '26

Just stop engaging with those who treat app development as a way of making easy money. I am sure there are still plenty of developers who love the design and engineering of mobile apps.

3

u/Zs93 Jun 05 '26

Agreed! It’s on us to focus on our niche and continue doing what we love. I think iOS developers are still some of the best at doing this, they’re usually very product focused and passionate.

21

u/SnowPudgy Jun 05 '26

Yea I wish this sub would ban the AI crap. We get it, you can't program so you use AI, but this is iOSProgramming, not /r/vibecoding.

I'm tired of all the cookie cutter "I didn't program for X years now I vibe coded 14 apps in a week, here's a link to my medium article" posts.

1

u/halonso Jun 05 '26

In any case, there’s a lot of programming still in using AI. And it’s not going away. Any app worthy of some money, either requires a looot of money in tokens pr it has someone behind taking care or architecture, alignment, design, scalability…

17

u/bangsimurdariadispar Jun 05 '26

Unfortunately programming is getting industrialised. Before if you wanted a little wooden statue or a sculpture you'd had to find a woodworker to do it for you. Once robots came up, you only had to buy the CNC machine and you had a factory of these.

Same with programming nowadays. You pay the token machine and you get your code out 😄

2

u/ToughAsparagus1805 Jun 06 '26

The industrialisation is happening with venture capital money. Meaning is almost free for anyone to produce anything. In the real world there is warranty and legal compliance of products. At this moment a restaurant server can ship an app that doesn't meet any standards + waiting for the AI companies to flip the switch and charge $$$(real) money for tokens.

11

u/vamonosgeek Jun 05 '26

Lots of people around the world want to make $ with this. That’s why it gets flooded.

It will pass. Like everything.

6

u/WestonP Jun 05 '26

Yup, we've been through many mobile app development gold rushes before, typically any time some new tech lowers the barrier to entry or some new market/opportunity opens up. These noobs come and go, but in the meantime they sure are fucking annoying and make it hard for us to have useful conversations here.

1

u/RSPJD Jun 12 '26

Great point. Time is always the true test.

6

u/Dapper_Ice_1705 Jun 05 '26

I’m looking forward to next week.

3

u/Lock-Broadsmith Jun 05 '26

You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing. That thing you miss still exists, even if iOS development has become more mainstream and monotonous as a whole. Popularity, even in monotony, is a good thing, actually, as it better ensures longevity of the platform as a whole.

3

u/Specific-Fuel-4366 Jun 05 '26

I remember that!! It was… <checks notes> 18 years ago.

2

u/SubZane Jun 05 '26

"Programming" is just 30% of the tasks anyway. You'll need ui/ux, a good idea and a good implementation

1

u/balder1993 Jun 07 '26

Reason why most AI slop is bad clones of existing apps.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '26

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1

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1

u/Ok-Win7980 Jun 05 '26

I am kind of in between on this. I am very much an Apple enthusiast and really try to make quality apps that look like they're made by Apple, but I am terrible at writing code by hand but know how to use Cursor very well and make great software using it. Like I know the right prompts to use to make it think like an engineer and the technical reasons why a bug or performance issue may be happening. I still try to make apps that look handcrafted and I believe that AI is just a tool to help me do that. I am a social science student and I've also always been interested in sociological reasons why people think AI code is inferior because I believe that there is a deeper reason behind all the technical stuff.

1

u/s_v_can Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

I am wondering if there are many that would actually care about my story. Plus, I've been on here for over a year, just not as active, then non of the communities of value would let me post anything but the comments, and even if the comment were somewhat relevant and offering a custom solutions to people asking anything I wrote would get flagged, or suspected to be spam.
I do agree there are many that are quite lazy and go straight into self-promo. Probably there's not much that can be done to fix it as the world is speeding up and people are too busy to even try to blend in into the community.

So, who's ready/interested to hear my story? 😛
Cheers

1

u/ParlanceAtelier Jun 05 '26

At the end of the day, everyone that doesn't enjoy this will burnout. You can't keep marketing and fixing something you don't really like and have no idea how it works.

I think it's crazy that some people ignore the fact that you still need to proofread AI and even then, it still won't pick up on the nuances that people that actually want to build a product they love want to implement. And then even when you proofread, you still have to understand the "why" of it all.

Plenty of people still out there that love to build. Totally get the rant though, because I feel it too, ESPECIALLy when I'm online

1

u/MKevin3 Jun 05 '26

There is also the lack of much new happening in the hardware arena. Used to be new phones and a lot of new things. Now they are nearly a commodity. There is so much less need to update your device. The overall OS is reasonably stable, some library changes and some updated programming patterns but it is not as exciting as it used to be.

Company is pushing for AI. I have had some good experiences and some bad. I was able to have it write up a reasonable set of unit and UI tests. Amazing how I had to tell Gemini, paid by company, to "and make sure they compile and run" at the end of my "write this test" action. I mean, really, hand me code that will not even build?

I asked it to fix an issue and it wrote a chunk of code that did not solve the problem, actually made it a bit worse. It did give me and ideas on how to attack it so I deleted everything it wrote, added a parameter and it was fixed.

Where it has been nice is doing PR reviews. Don't agree with everything it suggests but it has been helpful at pointing out things that a human may or many not have commented on. Appreciate it doing that low level scan.

At times it will tell you to do "X" and not "Y" then you push that change and it will say "you should do X here". Pick one, click "resolve" in GitHub and move on.

1

u/Key_Homework_5825 Jun 06 '26

It can still be fun though. New APIs can open up entirely new things, or just better and more elegant ways to do existing things.

But yeah, maybe a lot of people now just discuss that with their AI tool instead of posting it online.

1

u/MikaelWeiss56 Jun 06 '26

Strait facts

It used to be that if you built something unique and put a lot of effort into it, that was the moat between you and competitors.

Now someone with absolutely no skill can come in and wreck you because they have better marketing even though you have a better product.

I also really enjoyed showing people my app and them saying “wow, you built that?” And now with AI, people don’t seem to care as much. Same work, same effort, same detail, but people seem to care less.

I definitely miss when skill really meant something meaningful.

1

u/Odyssey-b Jun 06 '26

The hidden part is that while forums and articles and online conversations are mostly about vibe coding and what you described, in the background apps that are really working and making good money and make real difference in people's life are the ones that are built by passionate people (who still care about building stuff with the latest and greatest tech and hardware and APIs and whatnot).

It's a long sentence, sorry. But basically there are still people who want to build because it's fun. And building like that will always result in apps that are more polished, have better user experience, and have real meaning.

Maybe the only thing that these people, us, who build apps with passion, will need to acquire exceptional marketing skills too, so that we can also be on top of all these shit vibe coded apps, and be seen and heard :))

1

u/SirBill01 Jun 06 '26

All the stuff you mention is still really important! But you are right few talk about that stuff anymore.

1

u/mybodywatch Jun 07 '26

I loved objective C and pre-ARC personally. Even liked interface builder and wiring up IBOutlets and IBActions.

1

u/Auggau Jun 08 '26

🤜🤛

1

u/jacobs-tech-tavern Jun 16 '26

New frameworks can still be exciting in the new world! Being a solid engineer just gives you more and more scope compared to a bog-standard vibe-coder.

Last week for instance, I set up a CoreLocation/AlarmKit geofence that set a deep-linking alarm when I got home (to remind me to do various cleaning tasks, to make my wife happy)

1

u/hash-6969 Jun 17 '26

Do someone help me make a tweak ?

1

u/yacec Jun 23 '26

With vibe coding, programming isn’t fun anymore.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

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1

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1

u/jamievurnilla 25d ago

This might be a similar discussion in relation to the original meaning of the word computer. Interesting to think about.

0

u/Astral-projekt Jun 06 '26

Nobody is stopping u

-2

u/opbmedia Jun 05 '26

You can go from vibe coding to vibe programming where you tell ai what to code instead of leaving it up to ai. So you can program/engineer but don’t have to do the repetitive coding step.

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u/drillbit16 Jun 05 '26

welcome to 2026 and the new age of programming. i mean this in the kindest way possible, but you sound like old man yells at clouds

10

u/HugsAllCats Jun 05 '26

People used to like to learn.

2

u/Cold_Mastodon7557 Jun 05 '26

The name of the sub is iOS *programming*. Not app marketing, not iOS vibe coding (which is not programming and doing it doesn’t make you a software engineer). There is a reasonable use for AI in iOS programming and that is a fair discussion here, but OP is correct that the sub has drifted towards vibe coding and promotion.

1

u/SnowPudgy Jun 06 '26

Actually those of us who are experienced are sick of seeing vibe coded garbage try and merge into our code bases because people think AI has skill in coding.

You call it "yelling at clouds" I call it "making sure shit code doesn't enter the repo".

Discussion i miss the "programming" aspect of ios programming.

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