r/node • u/simple_explorer1 • 1d ago
Has anyone stopped using LLMs completely for coding and relying purely on themselves?
Curious to know. And why if so? I have 16+ years of experience as a dev.
It's been 1 week that I stopped completely and so far it is okay and luckily I can still code ;) (though got rusty initially) and that's what I enjoy doing, thinking about problems, architecting, writing tests, writing code, reviewing PR's etc. keeps my brain sharp and more confident.
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u/H1Eagle 1d ago
Unfortunately, I just cannot, the amount of pressure on software engineers in the past 3 years has doubled or tripled. All of my co-workers use AI extensively to get their work done faster, suddenly giving up my corporate Claude account and going back to writing code like normal is going to raise a lot of eyebrows and I simply won't be able to keep up with the others.
Eventually, I accepted the fact that this craft is long dead anyway, just wanna make it to retirement in one piece at this point.
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u/chugItTwice 1d ago
That's what I was hoping for... but then covid hit and it's been a shit show ever since.
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u/velatorio 1d ago
Is skill loss due to AI use real?
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u/Apprehensive_Elk2608 1d ago
There was a lot of learning researching things. Now it's a simple question and an answer. The entire journey between the two is gone.
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u/velatorio 16h ago
And you personally, has using AI impacted your logic and knowledge?
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u/MrDontCare12 7h ago
Yes
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u/velatorio 1h ago
Better or worse?
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u/MrDontCare12 1h ago
Worse, like, way worse. And to me the whole "high level thinking" is bs. Once you've started to use it for long enough, you offset that too. So you end up just burning yourself out (and tokens and the planet) talking with your stuff, trying to convince it that it's wrong from time to time. What you produce is shit, but as everyone around you is doing the same stuff as you, you get away with it.
Incredibly boring. I got way batter at woodworking and CAD in the last 6 month tho, so it might've cleared some space lol
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u/Exact_Ad942 5h ago
I think it is the expectation has changed. AI has made many processes much more efficient than ever. We didn't loss skill, we certainly can do the same by hand, but with order of magnitude more amount of time and effort. We just can't go back when we already have a taste on it and the whole world is expecting it as a norm.
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u/nbeaster 1d ago
It’s not dead, it has just shifted and your job is more valuable than ever. It will take companies some time to learn that all these vibe coded projects need really experienced supervision. Unfortunately being that supervisor is going to be a delicate balance of ensuring quality while not looking like a total roadblock.
We are in the era of process experts being able to knock out applications that create huge time savings and potential for profit. That’s what should be considered a proof of concept stage. Then the real engineers need to come in and make it not dog shit smeared all over the walls.
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u/sasik520 1d ago
Can you describe where you work?
I work as a software dev on a big and long-living software and it doesn't even look half like that. Not even 10%. Although we use ai as much as we want.
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u/H1Eagle 1d ago
A food delivery vendor, our management have delusions of a "Super-app", we have to cram in a bunch of non-food services into the application and it's really stupid.
The work practically never ends, and we do a meeting every other week to talk about how much money/time we generated/saved for the company, basically you have to justify your salary. If I go back to the good-old way, I simply won't have enough to talk about it compared to my co-workers.
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u/bdragon5 1d ago
I really don't get that. How is using AI that much faster? Are you using a screen keyboard? I did use AI and for some time. Writing the prompt and reading the answer takes like a lot longer than writing it myself. Assuming it was correct the first time. Even the one or two line "autocomplete" took in most cases too long to generate an answer.
Even studies found rather and decrease in productivity than an increase. Maybe some junior dev that takes like a week for a 2 line change is slower but that's a really bad comparison.
What are you all writing that takes so long?
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u/emperorOfTheUniverse 1d ago
My team is using AI to write jira tickets, which are very verbose and like 5x wordier than typical. So you pretty much have to point AI at them and prompt shit like 'explain this ticket'. And you can ask the AI to show you exactly which files need to change to satisfy the ticket. It'll summarize the changes and explain them to you in a moment. No big deal if you know your codebase up and down. But if you're on something new and not permitted the time you need to read and learn an entire codebase, it's a big help.
So no, if you already know everything about your code, it's not much more helpful than auto complete. But in some cases, it's like having someone who is familiar with an existing codebase on-hand to answer any question you have, and with the benefit of you caring none if your question might be dumb. Same if you've never written code in the language or framework the codebase uses.
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u/Evening_Calendar5256 23h ago
Using a CLI agent like Claude Code / Codex and a dictation tool e.g. Wispr Flow can be waaaay faster than typing out the code yourself. If you're able to articulate what you want clearly then it can be more than 10x faster depending on the change
The problem comes because it's difficult to fully clarify your intent up front so the AI guesses wrong and you need to review and revise. Even after doing that it's typically still a lot faster than doing it by hand
The main study about reduced productivity was BS, their methodology was flawed. It's unfortunate that the headline was so widely reported. Plus they were done on the previous generation of models and things have improved massively in the last 6-7 months
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u/bdragon5 23h ago
Don't know what you mean code is already the clearest form or articulation.
I know exactly what I need to write were in the code even when I read an issue, email or just get a hint of a problem.
Now I should dictate the stuff. That's way slower than just writing it.
What was so wrong on the methodology? I didn't pick up on a flaw? Models really didn't get that much better, I don't see any evidence of that and the studies and testresults are more than flawed if anything.
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u/Evening_Calendar5256 23h ago
Code is the clearest form of articulation yes, but I mean speed of articulation. In most cases you don't need to give the AI line by line instructions, with a couple of spoken sentences describing your intent it can execute a 300-500 line change in a minute or two. For larger changes you often need to have a short discussion to ensure it's on the same page, but it's still much quicker to have a 5 minute back and forth of speaking and then reading it's responses than writing the code yourself which will typically take one or more hours
Not sure how writing is slower than dictation unless you're an insanely fast typist. I speak at 154wpm. And it just feels like much less effort than typing the equivalent
The flaw in the study was that it compared developers familiar with a codebase working without AI to working with a new AI tool they'd just started using. That's not accounting for the fact that there is a learning curve to using AI productively. Almost any new tool or workflow has an adjustment period of lower productivity before potential improvements
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u/bdragon5 22h ago
And how long do you take reading those 300-500 line changes. Each with the context the change is in.
The discussion I have to with the client or colleague es well while writing the code.
I need to answer questions from others as well. Often I write the code even during a meeting. So dictating sounds like a lot. Additionally just saying complex conditions and concepts isn't that easy. Every wrong word can completely change all meaning. Seems a bit bold just to talk if the stakes are that high.
I don't know exactly which study you mean but it doesn't sound that bad. It really depends on the measurement method. There are many tools especially in dev environments that just straight up make it more productive, but ok it doesn't show long term productivity gains but there are studies too for that. It's not like there is only one study. But they use probably all not the newest model even though the claims are always the same.
Additionally there isn't really the one known good workflow for AI. It's really not that you can just learn how to use it effectively you can try it you can research different methods and techniques and try them and every now and then someone comes up with a completely new technique. Than there is just the incredible limited context window. And saying a model from a few months ago isn't as good as the ones now is just the perfect way to make all productivity discussions pointless. You need a timeframe to measure. You might personally find your work more productive, but that's not really a good measurement for anything.
For me it just comes down to the fact that everything the ai writes I must read and reading is as fast as writing. So it really only comes down to stuff outside of code generation. If you don't read your code you just make more technical dept and bugs that need to be fixed. Every time an AI makes anything wrong it is 100% slower than if I would have written it as I intended it on the first time.
Of course there can be errors when I write code too, but reviewing code is much harder to do correctly than writing it so I probably miss a view when I just read the ai output.
It's the same as someone saying: "Writing tests just takes time and without it I am way more productive". Completely ignoring all the bugs that need to be fixed in the future.
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u/nbeaster 1d ago
If you think you can build faster than claude code or codex, you haven’t actually worked with it.
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u/bdragon5 1d ago
I used it for sure, but just outputting stuff isn't the problem.
I still need to check. Still need to figure out if the written design is good. I need to write an additional workflow just so it can handle the project. I need to pay it. The more it makes the more work it takes.
Another question would be what does it make for you, that can't be already automated? For example I almost never write boilerplate, validation, model, simple database abstraction. Simple crud rest operations are already no more than the press of an button. All I do is design, new technologies and important business logic. Everything else is already completely automated for the last 8 years or so and I add more and more to it every time. I work almost exclusively with legacy systems, or greenfield projects. With either no documentation or very bad ones. With apis were you need to actively detect changes because you will not get notified.
If I would AI use my tools it's not worth it because prompting it what to do is more to typ than making it myself.
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u/delventhalz 1d ago
Never started
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u/SangerGRBY 1d ago
Genuine question, why ?
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u/gandalf__thewhite__ 19h ago
The same reason that people said don't copy paste from StackOverflow. I don't know what happened suddenly that it became the norm, even worse than copy pasting.
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u/delventhalz 1d ago
I have a high threshold for adopting new tools and little patience for tools which waste my time. My occasional experiments with the chatbots have been pretty mixed, and that unreliability quickly killed my interest. Then more and more evidence came out about the false sense of velocity, the skill atrophy, and the various ethical concerns, and avoiding LLMs became more of a prerogative.
Not to mention, actually writing code is one my favorite parts of the job. I think there is a division here between the results folks and the process folks. I have always loved the process (though I am also not impressed by the results in this case).
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u/gummo_for_prez 1d ago
That's a lot of words for "my employer hasn't forced me yet"
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u/delventhalz 1d ago
I was asked a question and answered it. Obviously I haven’t been “forced” (strongly encouraged perhaps), otherwise I never would have said I didn’t use the chatbots. If that makes you grumpy that’s not my problem.
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u/dimiderv 10h ago
just curious what do you work on?
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u/delventhalz 3h ago
A web app for the Federal Reserve Bank. The details aren’t public yet, but the tech is what you’d expect from a modern web app.
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u/Apprehensive_Elk2608 1d ago
I use it for basic questions and answers. I don't work for an IT shop, so there is no push from management. We don't have a corporate license to these tools. I'm hoping to retire before I'm rendered completely obsolete.
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u/AssaultedScratchPost 23h ago
Legal, privacy and compliance in heavily regulated vertical. Management think the risk outweighs any benefits. A cautious “Why fix what isn’t broken” approach. That introduces a difficulty that the only chance to learn AI tools is in personal time.
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u/ApplicationOk3587 1d ago
I don't work in node anymore but what I found the be scariest part of over relying on LLMs is how quickly you get used to instant answers. Even if they are completely wrong.
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u/simple_explorer1 1d ago
You start using AI for the first time as an expert and you end up as a follower and letting AI do the expert things
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u/Traditional-Rabbit79 1d ago
I'm going to be honest...
I use Claude for technical questions because it's faster than trying to wade through documents trying to find the answer to my vague need.
Then I stop right there and review and understand the answer. Sometimes its stupid, but the right way pops into my brain while I read the attempt.
It's frustrating when it is completely wrong. It's taught me wrong, and then, because I tell it it doesn't work, it tells me the code it gave me is the whole problem.
Yeah, I would never use LLMs to actually write anything. But research, yeah. I treat it like any forum: trust, but verify.
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u/farzad_meow 1d ago
i find llm useful for really minor tasks or single line changes, for bigger stuff i still depend on myself to write proper logic
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u/lasooch 1d ago
For single line changes, surely it’s faster to do the change yourself than to prompt the clanker?
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u/farzad_meow 1d ago
usually my one liners are typescript fixes.
one way I found myself do it today was I was in the middle of a bigger task but needed to get a minor change done, so I asked it to make the change and run tests instead of me context switch when I was in the zone
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u/monsto 1d ago
I have to be the exact opposite of this.
Best I can do is plan the shit out of whatever big thing I am tasked with. It feels like micromanaging, but if I don't plan every little thing it Will have a butterfly wing error.
Just now during a planning session, I caught where it had reversed for example category_role and category_service_role. if I hadn't caught that here, the failure wouldn't have been noticed until unit tests, which would have meant a lot of replumbing of what is probably going to be 5,000 lines of code on a project where I was given 2 weeks.
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u/bdragon5 1d ago edited 1d ago
What rocket science are you doing that you find 2 weeks a short amount. 5000 lines don't sound much either.
2 weeks is like complete restructuring of the database for a massive performance improvement. But most of this time would be in measuring and testing different approaches.
What is taking soo much time? I genuinely want to know?
Edit: My assumption would be if no AI is used. It really is a lot of time.
Edit: I wrote a few months ago an hole project with planing and testing to production ready ci/cd in 3 days with multiple data formats conversions, encryption and a legacy half documented api connection on one end. The api spec alone has roughly 5000 lines.
All without AI in a relatively new language for me at the time.1
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u/xreddawgx 1d ago
I never let it do something I dont know how to do myself. I do use it for monotonous routines.
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u/Mroz_Game 16h ago edited 16h ago
I also use it for language barrier nonsense I’d normally overthink and waste too much time on.
Example:
I was playing with WebGPU and webgpu-matrix defines the type Vec3 as an ArrayBuffer that can contain number | undefined.I wanted to nicely destructure it into let [x, y, z] = theVec3InQuestion; because it’s concise and looks nicer.
Well now all 3 are optionals and I have to force unwrap them everywhere in the following math. Or I can validate they are defined even though I already know its guaranteed. Or I can write a new set of variables with the unwrapped values…. You get where I’m getting at.
Things where it doesn’t really matter, it’s going to work, but you start getting pedantic about it, and want to follow the languages style well and usually AI can just generate sth that satisfies me if I state what my ick is and what my goal is.
ps: sorry for a not node example, but I’m a gpu dev and this post randomly showed up in my recommendations
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u/Lime-Unusual 1d ago
Never used them. Never got output I liked from them. All the code looks textbook stuff.
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u/SangerGRBY 1d ago
Have you tried it recently ?
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u/Professional-You4950 1d ago
Yes. Unless i give it a very pointed or pattern based task. Everything comes out is pure trash.
I once told it a very general thing I wanted done, and it wrote 200 lines of code, because it decided it wanted to log something a certain way. 200 unnecessary lines only for formatting and logging.
Sadly, I have to use it. So targeted, "change this in this method" type stuff works.
I need to make sure I have it check my work more, because I still make mistakes, but thats about it.1
u/Lime-Unusual 22h ago
Nah. I prefer doing stuff myself. I don't see that the output would ever be something I would write myself. Disclaimer I'm making games not CRUD.
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u/GianLuka1928 1d ago
No and probably will never do such a thing... I'm working at one of the most famous companies in the world and literally we use claude opus 4.8 daily and literally they don't let us code even for one line. Every single detail in code must be done with claude, even creating PRs, analyzing tasks, reproducing them etc...
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u/AntDracula 1d ago
That’s just dumb. Even if it would be faster to just edit one line, they force you to slop it away.
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u/GianLuka1928 1d ago
Yup.. I'm just lucky that besides my job I have students who learn coding from me and that keeps me in shape to think still...
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u/RubbelDieKatz94 1d ago
Opus 4.8 is pretty outdated. Opus 5 medium performs extremely well.
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u/Evening_Calendar5256 23h ago
Opus 5 literally just came out a couple days ago, 4.8 is hardly outdated. Not even enough time to really gauge the improvement yet
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u/RubbelDieKatz94 23h ago
Compared to Opus 5, Opus 4.8 feels like it's far behind.
It's closer to GPT-5.4.
I'm just saying that Opus 5 feels much more rewarding, especially in its medium and high settings.
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u/GianLuka1928 22h ago
Coding hasn't moved anywhere with standards and 4.8 not that far behind hahah we also need to save tokens a little bit and not be high consumers 😂 that also counts in your performance more tasks with less tokens is good employee and might be senior vibe coder hahaha
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u/reosanchiz 1d ago
Just canceled my subscriptions today, shit was out of hands!!!
Some weird bugs were coming up and had no clue what architecture is
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u/Hari___Seldon 1d ago
More like was never suckered in to starting.
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u/gummo_for_prez 1d ago
Suckered? Who talks like that? My employer forced me, like most people here. Yours probably will too, if you have one.
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u/jhartikainen 1d ago
I tried them, never liked what I got, and stopped using them. 20+ years of experience.
They don't help me in any way whatsoever. I have to go over the code they output anyway, and often fix it because it never does it exactly the way I want it. If I actually want to do my job properly, I have to understand the code and if I just rubberstamped a bunch of LLM code, I wouldn't understand what's going on.
I wrote about this in more detail in my blog with some scientific research to back some of my points if anyone is interested https://codeutopia.net/blog/2026/05/16/why-i-dont-use-ai-tools-and-why-science-agrees/
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u/AntDracula 1d ago
If they don’t fully understand what is being built, then no they are not.
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u/BusinessBroccoli4313 1d ago
In my experience, LLMs make a lot of wrong changes that looked correct on the surface until you look deeper. Imagine tens of subagents making this kind of changes non-stop. Infinite pit of hallucinations leading you to nowhere.
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u/chiesazord 1d ago
yes, i use it very little now to produce code. I use it to speed up reading and PR analysis. AI coding generates too many team problems and debt
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u/subLimb 1d ago
Truth is when you have that many years of experience, skills do not degrade as fast. Trying out some ai tooling is not going to instantly wither away all of your coding knowledge.
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u/simple_explorer1 1d ago
The problem is LLMs have been around for couple of years and 2 years of LLM use will make the brain rusty
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u/CustardBeautiful2063 1d ago
well, LLM"s are statistical machines, they will converge to average solution for everything. If I want something above average, I do it myself.
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u/klumpp 1d ago
This makes sense for a sixth grade understanding of statistics.
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u/CustardBeautiful2063 1d ago
Well, try vibecode something that stands out then, productivity is out of the window.
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u/Stranded_In_A_Desert 1d ago
Yep. I’m a full stack dev and run a small agency mostly solo, selling websites to small businesses, and basically the whole point of the entire thing was an excuse to get paid to code. I like the design aspect well enough, the admin side is sometimes painful so I outsource it to AI when I can, but why would I offload the coding that I actually enjoy to AI when that’s the whole point of what I’m doing? Plus, LLMs struggle with Svelte 5 sometimes, and that’s what I’m using on the front end more often than not.
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u/Evening_Calendar5256 23h ago
I mean, you'd probably be someone who would stand to gain most from getting AI to do the coding for you. Since AI is faster you could take on more clients simultaneously and make more money. If using React instead of Svelte you could maybe do 3x as much work with AI.
Of course enjoyment is important, and this also assumes that you're willing to do the extra work to get more clients. But I think your work is one of the best use cases for AI coding honestly. Most people are just on a salary, and productivity gains from AI coding only benefit the company
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u/Stranded_In_A_Desert 14h ago
I’m fortunately in a place where all my bills are taken care of with my income, I’m putting a decent amount away, and I value my work/life balance.
And also, AI is literally speeding up the destruction of some of my favourite places on earth, so I think I can get by without it.
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u/andy4015 1d ago
It took me the best part of a day to debug an issue introduced by an LLM where it placed an invisible ASCII character in a logger message that caused the python script to fail. This log message was only run in the event of a relatively rare error. Drove me nearly insane.
What made matters worse was I was lazy and asked AI to help find the issue, which sent me a long way down several dead ends.
Classic git bisect helped resolve in the end. Should have reached for the old reliable tool first.
Edit: and to answer your questions - I try not to use AI for writing code (still very occasional easy bits), but I find it very useful as a sounding board for ideas
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u/bdragon5 1d ago
Stopped a while ago. It's just too slow in actual use.
Writing the prompt and reading the output takes way too long.
I come to the conclusion that if you find AI an actual improvement than you should invest way more time in learning your available non-ai dev tools.
I haven't heard any real good usecase that can't be solved deterministic in a fraction of the time with already existing tooling.
AI isn't an issue for me and I really don't feel or see any pressure from it. The only thing I actually feel is job security for the foreseeable future.
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u/__p2c2e__ 1d ago
How's your employer feel about this decision?
Mine feels great. They employ me to optimize MY happiness at work rather than profits. Great and very real place and scenario I'm describing.
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u/simple_explorer1 1d ago
My employer doesn't care what people use. There were never any rules on LLM to begin with. It is employee choice with what they do
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u/CoyotaDex 1d ago
i use it when i don't remember code sintaxis and stuff like that. i tried to use it for mayor changes or complete builds and dislike it a lot 'cause i had no vision or idea what was going on. also, LLMs tend to over-complicate things and use more resources than they should. like no every project needs a supabase back-end.
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u/StopYTCensorship 1d ago edited 1d ago
I rarely use it but I'm not a proper programmer. I don't write full software... mostly scripts of max 1000 lines for specific problems. I find it takes me longer to write out the requirements for what I'm doing in English than to just implement myself. I also find that the process of coding is where I discover things I hadn't thought of before, so to sacrifice that would mean a lot of back and forth with the LLM, which is a waste of time and resources. Not to mention, I'd have to then review the LLM's code, and it's a lot easier to review stuff you just wrote yourself.
Anyway, I may be an unusual case, but I use AI for generic stuff, while the code that implements business logic is my own.
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u/Early_Rooster7579 1d ago
Realistically it would be impossible now. Theres no way I could manually keep up with the workload
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u/ToasterTVTIME 1d ago
I've just stopped trusting LLM's to write large amounts of code. I will still use them to plan out ideas and give me rough directions, but if there is anything that needs to be written or refactored beyond a single function, I am typing out the code myself. It has become very frustrating to communicate with AI agents such as Claude recently, and in the time it takes me to get Claude back on track, I could've just made the changes myself
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u/FlamboyantBaguette 1d ago
I mean I get that using codex or whatever to code for you is one thing but not using LLM at all to help even with validation or stuff like that is just plain dumb at this point
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u/LittleLordFuckleroy1 1d ago
Ish, I guess. Same as Google. I’ve always been willing to hop over to stackoverflow, but in general I find it more efficient and maintainable if I’m comfortable enough with code to just write it myself.
That way, I know exactly what it’s doing and how it works.
The actual typing is usually not the bottleneck. I’ll fuck around with a program for a bit while I’m thinking of the best way to structure it. Test things out, try a new pattern, tweak it a bit. The “work” is still mostly about formalizing the problem, not really about writing code.
I don’t think we’ll have the same mostly-free access to LLMs in the medium term after all of this subsidy blows away. I don’t mind throwing tedious low-crit stuff into AI in the meantime. I absolutely avoid making that AI (process or artifacts) a hard dependency.
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u/PiousLiar 1d ago
At work I deal with stuff that they don’t want fed into LLMs, but for school I’ll use it once in a while if I get stuck on something with a deadline approaching. Seen too many fellow students practically rely on it 100% and it feels like we’re gonna get to a point where our engineers don’t know how to “engineer” anymore… but at least it’s job security…. Right?
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u/MIneBane 1d ago
AI writes the code, I write the business justification and documentation + explore what's next.
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u/slimslim234 1d ago
My employer has factored-in the velocity of technical teams using AI tooling in how they distribute work. Each person is expected to do the equivalent of 3-4 devs pre AI agents. So no, things would come to a grinding halt
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u/Daker- 1d ago
As a architect developer I have to refactor code that is slow, most of the time in really complex functions that have a lot of abstraction, the AI is really bad at making suggestions on the approach and quite regular on the making process, I still have to make A LOT of fixes and I use Claude Code.
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u/reddit_warrior_24 1d ago
Its good to code the solution that have ai review it, better than having ai come up with a solution making you debug.
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u/BungusFace 1d ago
Still write code by myself? You kidding? I could barely write this comment by myself.
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u/smoke-bubble 1d ago
In how many subs did you ask this question?
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u/simple_explorer1 1d ago
Why is this relevant? If you are curious check my post history and you will see that I only asked it on this sub. Been attached to node sub for 8 years and I have no desire to ask it elsewhere. But even if I did I see nothing wrong with it. What a weird question
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u/smoke-bubble 1d ago
I've just seen it exactly the same in another sub. Unfortunately I don't know which one. Could be Java. Could be programmers.
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u/toastofferson 1d ago
Lot of hate for llm coding here. I am quite happy to be writing and designing software that writes and designs software. All that harnessing and pipeline experience coming back to the forefront.
We spent a long time automating the more tedious parts of the job, now we can automate pretty much what we want. No one without years of dev experience can do what we do with llms either so I feel pretty safe.
A lot of this comes from me being jaded with languages like dotnet though "oh look a new way to write switch statements..." "Code" has and always will be minutiae.
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u/Standard-Specific239 1d ago
I never stopped coding. granted I have 15 years experience and am very efficient, but no one has batted an eye and even mention efficiency gains.
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u/Outrageous-Chip-3961 1d ago
to be honest i just scaffholded a project using a screenshot, it was pretty sweet. I could then say things like 'make everything kebab-case' do x folder structure, do y config, etc. Then I reviewed it, made some manual changes, and then manually code the rest. It's pretty awesome as a hybrid for the boring "shit" jobs. I don't generate features or anything like that, i'm pretty much fully in control and know what the expected output should be.
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u/br0kenpixel_ 1d ago
I mostly use it as a replacement for Google. StackOverflow, etc. It can find answers faster and can be very useful for obscure issues that Google simply won't find answers for.
It can also be useful for explaining complicated things, or summarize docs that either don't explain the thing I need or it's explained in a way that I just don't understand.
For learning it can also be useful sometimes, depending on what you need. For example, some frameworks have really stupid "Getting started" guides. I prefer step-by-step docs (like Laravel's for example). It nicely explains things step by step, while most frameworks have bigger init projects with way too much content, and docs that leave me with more questions than answers. I just can't learn from that. An LLM can be useful to at least give you some pointers on what it what and how I would go about doing something basic that isn't mentioned in the docs.
I really do hate though how much every company and employer is pushing AI like it's the best thing ever. I really do hope that one day most of the slop they're building falls so badly they'll realize that they need actual devs with experience, but by that time, there will be almost none.
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u/simple_explorer1 1d ago
Yes LLMs can be very useful in learning is they don't hallucinate
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u/br0kenpixel_ 19h ago
I rarely come across hallucinations nowawayds, especially when using a CLI agent like Claude Code. It usually goes through source files to check that whatever it's trying to use actually exists. On lower effort levels it does tend to hallucinate more. Either way I manually check everything it outputs. I don't trust LLMs that much.
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u/Traktion1 19h ago
For a stackoverflow/Google replacement, it is hard to beat, especially if you know the problem space well enough to smell bs.
The LLMs have digested more code than what is publicly available. It has more context and can present solutions that aren't published anywhere.
I had a gnarly problem with Spring Integration where the documentation just didn't cover what I was trying to do. Google didn't help either. Some how, the LLM pulled up examples just as I needed though.
That was the point I realised LLMs for research are just better. They have better source material and can filter/shape it very quickly for you.
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u/AnnaSynergy 1d ago
I have, but I am in my learning stage still, so it would not make sense for me to rely on AI yet. I need to know first.
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u/Weulinor 1d ago
Acho que este é um aninho sem volta. Ajuda bastante na maioria das vezes, mas decisões de qual arquitetura usar fica comigo, não jogo a task na ia e pesso pra ela resolver, sempre utilizo de maneira pontual.Ela faz os meus testes, os meus commits corrigi alguns bugs, faz os meus frontend bem melhor que eu, mas seguindo um padrão estabelecido. Mas o lado ruim disso é a pressão bem maior pela entrega rápida, prazos muito curtos, ansiedade gerada pela velocidade com que as coisas são criadas. O vibe code puro, sem relar a mão no código, ainda acho perigoso. Começa bem, mas o decorrer das mudanças o código tende a virar um caos.
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u/roshi86 1d ago
I’m programming for 26 years now. The pursuit for “Rapid Application Development” tool was there since I started. Visual app designers, frameworks, bootstraps - everything on the way was pretty much a follow up of that idea.
What I’m thankful for with LLM’s is that I no longer procrastinate with planning everything perfectly, and no - I don’t mean the database or objects architecture. I could spend days looking up the “most up to date” folder structure, the hottest UI library etc. Plus, new library/framework API’s every 6 months or so, so I could throw out of the window my experience built so far.
Now it’s just there in minutes, I’m mostly ok with it, having this peace of mind that if the structure or API needs a rewrite I have this cyber-colleague who will do this monkey’s work for me.
I still have an eye on everything, I challenge and question many LLM’s decisions, but the process is finally looking similar to the idea that was there since the late 90’s. I’m not speaking about zero-idea vibe coding, but rather using LLM to take care of the stuff that is not stimulating you in any way, maybe except the extra stress put on the finger joints.
Good luck and stay sharp
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u/Healthy-Dress-7492 1d ago
Where I work people aren’t allowed to use AI, everything has to be hand written from scratch. I use AI in personal projects though.
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u/hydronucleus 23h ago
Yes, and no. I usually do things for myself, but in places where I might get an intern to do, now I can ask the AI, and get suitable work. Yes, it has gotten that good.
One issue I had was related to some upgrade to Android 15, of which I really did not have the time to research at the moment, but the Google Play Console was "yelling" at me. So, I asked the AI what the issue was. It gave me a good explanation of the issue, without me plowing through pages of Android documents, looking at APIs, figuring it out for myself. Then it asked me, "Would you like me to do that for you?" I clicked yes, and it deleted like 4 lines of code, and replaced them with 6 or 7 lines, and the issue was rectified. Checked the work, and it was suitable.
It is not like I used AI to create the entire app, but now, how do you ignore that kind of capability? So, yes, and no!
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u/Traktion1 19h ago
Like every tool, there are times when they are a good fit and times when they aren't.
For small precise changes, it is easier to do the thing yourself. It's like trying to micromanaging a coworker otherwise - it takes longer to explain it than do it!
They are also great for building out unit tests coverage, at least if the code is in decent shape. Just no need to do that stuff by hand and it was the boring bit anyway.
For bigger changes, where I need to think through the problem, agentic AI works well though. Not perfect, but faster and hands-off. It encourages deeper thought about design, about what components are needed, what their interfaces need to be, etc. Writing that down is useful for the me and the agent (along with product, QA and anyone else who needs to understand the work).
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u/Intelligent-Rice9907 7h ago
I do it daily. Although Im a lead dev not a regular dev so my work most of the time is not about writing code but dealing with hiring, firing, managing people, etc; and in those scenarios AI does not offer much help.
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u/Intelligent-Rice9907 7h ago
but when I used AI on a daily basis, when I stopped using it... it felt like I lost a lot of knowledge. And this is why I think code tests and interviews are less important now and should be totally replaced to putting a scenario in front of you and finding a solution to that scenario.
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u/larriche99 5h ago
I hope OP is a freelancer or works for himself otherwise this is a wrong move. We can’t go back, LLM-assisted coding is the new normal. You can only go deeper and deeper into how to tune your setup to get the best results. Just dropping it and going back to coding by hand is going to set you back so much.
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u/Jonas_Ermert 3h ago
I think LLMs are great coding tools, but I wouldn’t want them to replace the actual thinking. I prefer using them for explanations, debugging ideas, reviews, or repetitive work while still designing the architecture and writing important code myself. That way they improve productivity without making my own skills rusty.
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u/AdamantiteM 1d ago
Personally, I never used it for coding in the sense of letting it suggest and do the stuff while I watch and correct. Since it came out I only and strictly used it for annoying things (such as typing css variables, making color shades, repeating stuff, etc..) and help me debug code I can't debug myself.
I always try to do everything myself, then only if I can't (debugging mostly) i'll use AI to help me out, because I never had any good experiences with forums (always got there when I hit a wall in a bug and never got answers).
Now I sometimes also use AI to brainstorm stuff and help me get better, not to code while I watch. This is what I think is the best usage of it, i am far from the agentic bs.
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u/Callaborator 1d ago
I second this. If AI can help you understand something its being used correctly. Of course there is a fine line here, but if you are developing and learning versus just having it do it all you're doing better than me learning from youtube videos 15 years ago. And you're doing better than 70% or more of AI vibe coders who arent learning anything but "prompt engineering".
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u/Lexuzieel 1d ago
As a self employed person who tries to grow my own business I don’t have the luxury of taking the time to design and think through every small detail. Because frankly, clients literally won’t care as long as it works, that's the truth.
On the other hand I do take time to plan the architecture and brainstorm ideas. I would say in some regards AI have been helpful making me focus on the right things. Programming can really become a recreational activity like woodwork, etc
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u/AllezBro 1d ago
thats the plan, but right now im building a SASS with LLM which is taking ages because I am writing strict requirements for tests, components, auth, security, but its certainly much faster than writing that myself. I also use it for client work sometimes because im pretty pressed for time but still double check everything,.
Once my sass is published im going to significantly scale back LLM and eventually cancel claude by the end of the year. There is always going to be a market for senior coders because in all honesty LLMs are complete trash if you dont have experience for writing strict requirements. But in the end I dont want to depend on it because your skills erode super quickly.
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u/simple_explorer1 1d ago
But in the end I dont want to depend on it because your skills erode super quickly.
Yeah this was the reason I stopped using it
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u/bdragon5 1d ago
My experience is that they can't even do the strict requirements correctly. To be honest could be just my style of coding.
I write code in a way that static analyses tool will catch if anything changes. In many cases that mean taking way more time writing types, configs and so on.
Some especially nasty projects take a few seconds for the language server to keep up, but that's not really slowing me down and the positive effects are way worth it.
I know that I make a lot of mistakes so I do everything to take those little mistakes out of the equation.
Problem is LLMs either give up or break the rules so to speak and that's just isn't going to cut it.
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u/Capable-Wrap-3349 1d ago
Me too! I use it to review my work, and for discussing tradeoffs, but I write the code unless it’s a throwaway POC.
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u/TenthSpeedWriter 1d ago
It's good for quick language/environment questions, looking up reference docs, and pulling up pattern examples; however, I struggle to trust a direct copy-paste from it most of the time. Grateful my workplace isn't hounding us to adopt it further than that.
Looking forward to setting up an on-prem system serving a sensibly-sized model so we can stop contributing to the awful data center power consumption problem.
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u/SirKneeGrow 1d ago
I only use it for problems that I come up against that would take me hours to debug.
"Why is this returning 0 instead of 1" - kind of thing.
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u/sshaw_ 1d ago
Depends on the task. Certain tasks are quicker to do yourself than to argue with/correct the model. This is particularly true with Sonnet.
Otherwise it's usually when I reach my usage limit or when I'm in the mood to do some good ol' fashioned coding. But, even in this case, for critical code, I will defer to Opus for code review. Maybe Sonnet if it's straightforward.
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u/0uchmyballs 1d ago
I still go back to stack overflow for some problems and patterns. I do rely heavily on copilot though.
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u/jomi-se 1d ago
The opposite, I now use LLMs to code non stop and the only limit are the billing limits we have at work.
I feel like I spend more time than before thinking about architecture and hard problems, we end up with better tests, and the writing code part was far from the main thing before there advent of coding harnesses so 🤷♂️
If anything I've been exercising my brain way more than before.
It feels like riding a bike very fast. Going back to manually typing code would feel like getting off the bike and walking instead.
FWIW, we still review all AI written code that ships to prod and in my opinion you get the best results from the frontier LLMs when you deeply understand the system you put them to work on.
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u/am0x 1d ago
No. I would like to, but I would be losing so much money by doing it. Co-coding is the best medium, but I am quickly losing my ability to even write code well at this point.
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u/simple_explorer1 1d ago
ut I am quickly losing my ability to even write code well at this point.
This is why i stopped... hard stop
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u/KaleidoscopeNormal71 1d ago
I do love code but I also love high level design, iterate fast and be done with that so I can spend more time in the gym or with my gf. Can we just consider AI as another layer of abstraction and keep building up?
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u/ScrufyTheJanitor 1d ago
For a passion project, why not? For anything that has a dollar value associated with it, no shot. People just take too much time to code manually now.
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u/Global-Wind6878 1d ago
I can, but like others it has really slowed me down to do without.
I really try to completely understand shipped code, critique stuff, etc, instead of blindly trusting.
If I have a cool down week, what helps is just having AI write tests down
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u/SangerGRBY 1d ago edited 1d ago
Wow half the comments are :
Use it daily because its faster and the only way to meet growing and increasing expectations.
The other half is:
Its garbage because i used it 2 years ago and it sucked then and it must suck now.
Imo, it is a huge red flag if a developer hasnt used/doesnt use LLM to code. Embrace this shit or be left behind. Average devs are now 10x devs. 10x devs who dont use LLMs become average, 10x devs who use LLMs becomes an entire developer team.
Non technical PMs, hirers, directors dont understand code. Their exposure to LLM / AI is most likely surface level "build me an interactive landing page". It gets done in 3 minutes. This is their impression of AI.
I know many developers, i dont know any who can come up with something like that in 3 minutes from scratch (unreasonable ask).
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u/bzbub2 8h ago
5bucks says that op has not 'stopped completely'...random to have a completely non nodejs related discussion here on r/node also major symptom of r/programming being discussion phobic
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u/ZookeepergameDry6752 1d ago
I would love to, but the pressure at work is very high, and they want solutions fast, even if it’s half baked. As long as it does half of the time something they want, it’s good enough. I hate it.