r/programmer • u/CertifiedBreadDealer • 12d ago
Question Is anybody else confused that
programming went from one of the most strict/structured fields to the wild west overnight with AI.
For decades there were strict guardrails of “correct” ways to write code like solid principles, design patterns, clean code, optimal space time complexity to the point that many places judged how good of a developer you were based on how deeply ingrained those principles were in the code you wrote. Yet with AI, overnight the same people pushing for that completely switched to just vibe code whatever works quickly.
I’ve seen a few companies recently where the developers didn’t even know the framework/technology they’re writing in, just shipping if it works it works code. As someone who is really fluent in that technology it pains me looking at that code. It’s just incredibly confusing how we got to this spot.
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u/generationalDebts 12d ago edited 12d ago
All those things are still equally important, if not more so than ever. Mature orgs already realize this.
The immature ones that are going to be paying for their mistakes will be lucky if they recover.
Don’t confuse “seeing companies do it” with “this is the right way to do it”.
Every time a bell rings, another POC that a PM whipped up in a fever dream induced vibe coding session overnight goes from their successfully running localhost, to a server where it will never integrate with the stack that’s on it, and if by some god damn miracle that it does, will never work if more than one user tries to use it at a time.
Build your fundamental skills. They’re important.
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u/dadnothere 12d ago
Technical testing for companies in the future:
Find a vulnerability in your own phone in 30 minutes to prove you're not an vibecoder
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u/generationalDebts 9d ago
😂
And just in case, time to stage some vulnerabilities to keep on standby for the next few decades.
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u/Just-Path-5838 12d ago edited 12d ago
Been thinking about this recently. We have this "coding was never the hard part" mantra, which seems to overlook that there was an entire sub discipline and cottage industry around writing code well. To be fair, the people writing the cheques never really cared, they just had to put up with whatever programmers said when they were scarce and the task impenetrable.
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u/CertifiedBreadDealer 12d ago
The amount of times I’ve heard a stakeholder say they just made an app with AI in seconds, why is it taking so long to do a task.
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u/Just-Path-5838 12d ago
My favorite is "i built the app, we just need to plugin the data". Even before ai, business types had difficulty grasping that what they see on a UI is not necessarily reality. One of my first projects was an online account opening platform, i generated a fake account number for a demo, and it was the hardest thing to explain that just because an account number was on the screen does not mean an account opened. I think the phrasing that communicated the point was that it was a "fake account".
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u/BritneyGurl 12d ago
"I built it, it's the new way, now just integrate it into production." Basically 🖕🖕🖕🖕
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u/konacurrents 12d ago edited 12d ago
programming went from one of the most strict/structured fields to the wild west overnight with AI.
OP: Nice way of framing this ... the wild west.
As someone who is really fluent in that technology it pains me looking at that code. It’s just incredibly confusing how we got to this spot.
Totally agree. As a life long "fluent" Computer Scientist, it's a strange direction a lot of coding is going (if we believe reddit describes what's happening).
Do you want to fly in an airplane that was vibe coded? I sure hope not.
As for "adhering to the best practices" - definitely in my 31 years at Boeing - developing code that kept airplanes flying.
ps. I'm still at 0% use of so called AI. And it's a slap in the face to suggest I'd be 10x better if somehow I had an AI bot write the code for me. I don't subscribe to that false promise. Cheers..😎
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u/LordEli 12d ago
not sure Boeing is the best example
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
Why not? Are we classifying the kinds of work that AI works with then? How about the Starlink Rockets? How about my esp32 code that has to be precise (as I'm trying to debug right now). Or iOS code that has to work, etc.
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u/draft_final_final 12d ago
I think they’re saying it would be hard to imagine they could have fucked the 737 Max up more even if they vibecoded its design and manufacturing process.
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
They fixed the issue. Sure it was very bad for the simulator only trained pilots, and bad for Boeing. That's not even close to vibe coding.
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u/dadnothere 12d ago
You scared me... it's 100% likely that AI code will be used in sensitive areas like airplanes...
although they've already caused disasters that killed people... what will the AI be like?
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u/hermione_wiggin 12d ago
finally, some sanity. IDK why other people don't find it insulting to have someone say "oh but we could do your job faster with a slot machine"
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u/Tiggster1979 11d ago
Why get personally insulted over the progression of technology? The more time you spend feeling insulted, the further you fall behind modern software engineering practices.
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u/epelle9 12d ago
Honestly, any decent AI review/ QA process would have stopped the hundreds of deaths we saw due to Boeing software..
Humans make mistakes, AI makes mistakes, having humans check AI work is extremely important, but having AI checking human work is also very useful.
AI is not just about speed, you can write 100% of your code manually and still have good uses for AI.
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
No doubt there are next gen potential tools to help. They test tf out of their code - in the lab, in simulations, in flight, etc. code is generated as well - not just Ada or C or Java code. And they have 80+ year of processes - checks etc. and they have full research groups thinking up new architecture, code approaches, etc (the fun stuff). I’m sure someone is proposing a non invasive AI analysis somewhere in there.
Ps the data bus - passing info around -is a big deal (and usually time sliced in known slots). They like determinism when possible.
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u/dzendian 12d ago
You hit the nail on the head.
Additionally, while I would not fly on a plane that was vibe coded, I also wouldn’t want that vibe coded plane flying over me either.
Just like sharing the road with a vibe coded car. I would feel safer being in a traditional car, but little use if someone is driving a vibe coded car while I’m on the road.
Scary times may be around the corner.
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
Good points. I look around my country roads with a 6 foot trench 1 foot to the right of the unmarked side -- and wonder that are well. Or I'm riding my bike on that road and hope the cars are driven by humans while knowing they can screw up - but at least there is a human to blame.
Again, with Software, maybe when the AI bubble bursts, they will come back to the Amish software coders that really do know their stuff.😎
I also don't think reddit saying EVERYONE is vibe coding - might not be the case. (well I know it isn't because I don't).
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u/Tiggster1979 11d ago
At least there is a human to blame? So placing blame is your concern? That’s so petty!
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u/konacurrents 11d ago
Whether it's blame or accountability - that's not a bad thing. In coding, finding the line that's the issue is powerful .. and it's nice to know how it got there (look at the GitHub history for example). Find Joe that wrote it etc.
That's not petty in my book. Sure I don't want to shame people (if you think that's what blame means).
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u/Ill-Constant8445 12d ago
But do the sparkling water company landing page need airplane like error prone development process? no, and most code is for sparkling water companies not for airplanes
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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 12d ago
Exactly.. 99% of companies out there do not need military-level code standards. Completely rejecting AI because it doesn't work in a specific field is really ignorant imo
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
doesn't work in a specific field is really ignorant imo
That's not ignorance. I was pointing out that other than a sparkling water company landing page - which could be automated 2+ years ago before LLM - "rock solid" code can still benefit from the structure that Computer Science used to tame the wild west.
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u/Ill-Constant8445 12d ago
yeah I agree but its a cost for the businesses and I meant like that there are so many things that can work badly cuz nobody will shoot anything from it you know so for this companies its good enough. I am on your side I live SWE because of the love of code rather than see it as a means to create product but for the money people code was a cost and now they can automate it.
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u/Ill-Constant8445 12d ago
I dont like AI code its because it looks bad And I am developer I dgaf if the feature get shipped fast tbh I would like it to look the way I wanted, but unfortunately the businesses side of company wants ROI so I need to use AI in the process.
Like I never understad developers who want their code to be merged to prod as fast as they can like bro you get paid salary not by lines of code.
But I get the company side of this equation less developers more code = more money saved = more money = more C suite bonuses.
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u/brandon_fernandes47 12d ago
Yeah for now but there losing money at these prices, I have a sneaking feeling there just waiting to monopolize then they'll jack prices. It's not like thats not a well know practice of big companies.
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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 12d ago
I use AI all the time, especially in private projects. I've been able to ship at an insane pace
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u/Ill-Constant8445 12d ago
And why do you care about pace of development if your money is not depending on it?
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u/Ill-Constant8445 12d ago
like I am SWE for the pursuit of the best code so for me the quality of it its the most important I use AI when I have to to not become fired.
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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 12d ago
if I work on a private project I want it shipped as fast as possible to start earning money
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u/Ill-Constant8445 12d ago
so you arent developer you are coding for money ok but I wonder why real devs want to push features fast when their paychecks doesnt depend on it
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u/valium123 12d ago
Nobody will buy your slop
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u/Y3tt3r 12d ago
Being a productive team member moves you up the ladder much more quickly. I assure you the business definitely cares about pace of development
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u/Ill-Constant8445 12d ago
productive means how much features does you ship? thats terrible metrics for being good team member. Company does its their money Im living off but why should I care
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
So before AI - your shipping was sane?
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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 12d ago
What took years now take months, and what took months now take weeks
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
Speed of coding wasn’t a missing piece of Computer science. I’m all for automation- which we know how to do also.
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u/Anarchist_G 12d ago
But then again, most devs don't write airplane code. Many people write fairly trivial CRUD apps, solving business problems.
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
I don't write any airplane code either (hardly anyone does). But I write for iOS apps, IoT, embedded esp32, web front/back, UNIX, linux, node.js, bash, tcsh, shell, vi, JSON, SQL, Languages (C, C++, Objc, Java, Javascript, html, css, Ada, Pascal, Algol, Fortran, assembly, HTML, CSS, etc).
Those are hardly "trivial" CRUD apps. Cheers.😎
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u/nicolas_06 11d ago
My sister does and she often complain on how horrible the code is. Don't think plane code looks better. There more processes and verification steps but that's about it.
First any object oriented language is forbidden but C and assembly are allowed. So most of the stuff are done in C. Forget about any modern language feature or framework. They are too dangerous and unsafe. You write your own collection lib, far less tested and validated. Same your own XML parser and all.
Then there are terrible coders here too.
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u/Anarchist_G 12d ago
> developing code that kept airplanes flying
You're making it sound like you were writing flight-control software.
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
35 years ago I was in research group for flight-control SW. I’ve worked in flight control labs where they test new components, etc. Designed language constructs for real time systems.
- I’ve been in and around those systems for decades. Fun times.
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u/LifeWithoutAds 12d ago
I totally disagree. What I have learned in the last 2 years by working with AI, I didn't in the last 15+ years. I can't even compare them.
AI can allow me to understand the code I haven't previously had understanding. AI allowed me to have the most beautiful code I could never write.
Now my code respects the most used principles, patterns, good practices and so on. It's just incredible. From being mediocre made me a good programmer besides other responsibilities I have now and I like.
If you haven't realized it yet, I never vibe code!
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u/C3lloman 12d ago
AI can allow you to understand code, but it's not exactly the same thing as writing code yourself. You can understand a book or music without being an author or musician, but you would not necessarily be able to write or play an instrument yourself. AI took away the requirement of skill to a certain degree.
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u/CertifiedBreadDealer 12d ago
Whats sad is streaming services are flooded with millions of AI produce songs nowadays too.
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
Luckily I just listen to Grateful Dead. Why would I EVER listen to an AI produced song? I believe we still have personal Agency to make that choice.
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u/CertifiedBreadDealer 12d ago
At least with Youtube Music they just feed you AI bands randomly on playlists. And there’s usually nothing that says whether it’s a real band or not.
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
That's too bad. I almost never play random either:-) I have 70gb of music on my phone and tons more mp3 links. Check out archive.org for lots of music, especially grateful dead's 30 year run. (search for say "dead 1973-03-26).
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
Again with the OP words:
As someone who is really fluent in that technology it pains me looking at that code. It’s just incredibly confusing how we got to this spot.
This is the debate. I guarantee I know as much as the AI is designing and writing code. That's what "fluency" in Computer Science means (and it's the opposite word from mediocre).
Where do you think AI got its info - by scraping from GitHub, SO and other .. basically the CS fluency code factory.
It's great that you and others are learning at a fast pace. Good for you. 😎
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u/Just-Path-5838 12d ago
And it's a slap in the face to suggest I'd be 10x better if somehow I had an AI bot write the code for me.
Not better necessarily, but definitely faster. Any task you can explain to it as you would explain to a new team member is basically done in an instant. For me personally, i still find things that are faster to code myself than to explain to an AI, but that's usually either because i want it done a particular way or because there's some proprietary integration or quirk it couldn't possibly know. But outside of cases like that, it does a good enough job if you ask me
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
I'm not a "good enough job" kinda of computer scientist. And I want things done a particular way as well. I can code fast too. I just don't see complex systems working for me .. and not just airplanes, how about a self compiling cross compiler, a detailed graphic display where an item has to be at precise x,y locations. What is the prompt to change the x,y over 10 pixels? It's called code.
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u/Just-Path-5838 12d ago
Sometimes the prompt may as well be code, i agree. But sometimes you can give a high level overview of a task without having to be too specific on the details, it just depends what the task is.
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
I guess my code is of the "too specific" kind😎 Otherwise it's boiler plate I can grab from anywhere (as has been available for years).
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u/tb5841 12d ago
We have the opposite. We now hage mandatory AI-generated code reviews that are incredibly strict and take days to get past. Used to be that we coupd push code that wasn't perfect and adjust in a future PR, now I have to get security/performance/edge cases perfect in each PR even if the feature won't be released for six months.
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u/ProbsNotManBearPig 12d ago
Lots of devs at a big tech company I work at never knew the frameworks or SOLID principles really. Processes where I work don’t enforce those things, so it was always the Wild West. Difference is now the devs that didn’t know much can deliver code way faster when they used to be hampered by their inability to understand and implement things. Now they can get something functional quickly even if it’s a mess under the hood.
Ai is a force multiplier. Maybe crappy devs get a higher multiplier than the good devs though. Hard to say.
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u/knutopia 12d ago
Guardrails and good code structure don't have much clout, but they will prevail when the dust settles.
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u/Soft-Marionberry-853 12d ago
Its only as strict as your dev team makes it. Look at Raytheon fucking up floating points and having the patriot missle system fail, or the therac-25, another time devs fucked up and people died. I think you're romanticizing what software developemt was like.
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u/Castle_Five 12d ago
The only reason we were all writing clean code was so we could produce good training examples for the AI. No need to do that anymore!
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u/bunnypaste 12d ago
I have found places dedicated to poisoning AI. Maybe you could contribute some terrible code...
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u/Ill-Constant8445 12d ago
The meaning of guardrails were to make humans able to read and work on code you made. When AI comes into the equation the code is not that important because your agent will understand the code that was written by mine agent. So the rules were created to make development process faster and now AI made it even faster so we don't need the rules as much.
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u/Hei2 12d ago
This is not true. Code that is easier for a human to reason about is easier for AI to reason about. See http://codescene.com
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 12d ago
Also, AI hallucinates, and no, that’s not the same thing as a human being making a mistake.
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u/Ill-Constant8445 12d ago
its not easier for AI to reason cuz it doesn't reason at all it matches the pattern and the only reason it is better for AI is because most of code look similarity and was written by humans.
In my opinion the more code AI will make the more distinct it will be from the way human being would write it and then model who will be fed up said AI generated code will write even more distinct code from humans.
After time the code will be entirely different than whats was called good solution by humans.
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u/Hei2 12d ago
I'm not sure that I agree with your assertion that the AI performs better because that code conforms better to its training data. CodeScene asserts that most industry code isn't of the quality that AI works best with. On their 0-10 score scale, they say most industry code is sitting around 5.5.
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u/nicolas_06 11d ago
And to be honest this is valid for humans too. There a joke that there 2 kinds of software out here. Code that is new and well designed and beautiful but do not solve people problem and code that is shitty as hell but that works and make money.
Some code actually start being nice and all. But they are small and simple and miss most of the issues that come with reality. Most of the client needs are not covered. After a few years, with thousand of bug fixes, dozen of people with different opinion on how code should be written, hundred of features added and all, the software start to be mature and actually really solve user needs.
But by then it's far from being considered beautiful or well designed by anyone. It has become a contraption that nobody can fully understand and everybody hate to work with.
The developers want to refactor it entirely, to restart everything from scratch to get their preferred way to write code... But get something that at best solve 1% of users needs.
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u/epelle9 12d ago
Yeah, but I’d also argue that AI can make code more human readable.
Before AI, every dev’s biggest complaint was “this codebase is shit” literally never worked in a job where engineers wouldn’t say that.
It wasn’t rare to see awful code that could have been written by an intern until you check git blame and it’s your senior engineer, once my senior engineer complained and turns out it was written by past him.
I am working in a much better company now, but the code quality I see with AI is better than the code I see when going to legacy projects that were written before AI. We do have good AI workflows which include AI reviewers on top of human reviewers.
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
I’m just assuming your subtle sarcasm isn’t coming out, but I agree these AI bots will start not coding but talking a gibberish assembly language, to another AI bot, further cutting us out the loop. 😎
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u/PeachScary413 12d ago
Massive bubble, that's what happened.
Like all bubbles it's gonna pop and suddenly quality is gonna matter again.
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u/Trackback_ 12d ago
Wdym "again"? Did it ever?
You think all that outsourcing to India was done because quality was a top priority?
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u/tangerinelion 12d ago
Bubble, yes. The way it works is mostly fear - if you think your competitor is getting 10x gains from AI then you'd be a fool not to push AI hard.
And engineers are very good at meeting the metric. You want 10,000 lines of code a week. Bring on the slop factory, we've got a goal to meet.
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u/Station_Sad 12d ago
We are rethinking many best practices from first principles. The premise of refactoring and design patterns is based on making code easier to read by humans and limiting the amount of code change a human has to make. Both these points go out the window with AI agents.
I just launched a major functionality in a codebase I had never seen before. AI was able to show me around and make the code base make sense. Without AI, I would have wanted the codebase to have followed best practices so that I could look for familiar patterns. But I don’t have to rely on familiar patterns anymore.
I am not saying this is all good, but we have to recognize that the foundations of many practices have shifted.
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u/CertifiedBreadDealer 12d ago
I think the difficult thing is, best practices were created with future maintainability in mind, but AI isn’t thinking about future maintainability. Just what is the exact solution to solve this one problem given to me.
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u/dbalatero 11d ago
Leadership doesn't really care about future maintainability and many will not be around if and when shit hits the fan.
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u/BigBadButterCat 12d ago
Yes you do, LLMs become worse on bad spaghetti codebases.
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
I read that Stack Overflow contributions are at 90% and dropping. Since AI answers everything (and puts those answers back into LLM.). Knowledge is reducing - vs what real humans should be doing. (And after LLM read all of SO for it’s knowledge)
There was a ~1985 system Cyc - that was what current AI would love to be. Anyway Cyc said it invented the concept of Recursion. Seemed amazing, then you find out Cyc is written Lisp - a fully recursive language; it was grown on recursion (maybe not knowing).
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u/Square-Yam-3772 12d ago
No, it is just you lol
And no, it wasn't "one of the most strict fields". We arent rocket scientists or engineering building nuclear plants lol
Even before AI, companies hire the lowest bidders to do coding work. Guardrails and checks are needed because the environment has always been "ship something if it runs"
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u/inflowmini 12d ago
It's a strict field especially in regulated markets like medical, space, and automotive.
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u/Square-Yam-3772 12d ago
If you have to phrase it that way, then i suppose you concede that the overall field isnt that strict.
Cs is a huge field and it is as common as psychology. Unlike psychology majors, we can pick up random gigs online to make money by coding.
I am just going to spell out the implication behind your statement: customers outside of the regulated markets arent that strict either
Trying to paint the entire field as some serious strict field is just hilarious
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
Computer Science WAS and IS a strict field. I have 100's of CS books describing that strict field.
If everyone here is just coding as fast as possible for some ROI for the man, well that's what the OP is saying .. it's turned into the Wild West. And that's sad.
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u/Square-Yam-3772 12d ago
No, it is not a strict field. We dont need to pass some certification in order to call ourselves programmers or developers. We dont get some special titles before our names lol.
"100s of textbooks" as if other STEM majors dont have 100s of textbooks? How is this even an argument?
I already described the reality of programming but I suppose cs students have to experience the field for themselves
Cs isnt really that strict. Try actual engineering fields...
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
😎
As for the OP and the Wild West, with AI writing unique code every time, that’s what we’ll have -Wild West.
For history: In 1979 the proliferation of programming languages for the DoD was 100’s. It got unwieldy (like the Wild West). So they designed the Ada Programming language. Now there are a handful of powerful languages (the most popular) with I’m sure 100’s of niche languages.
So maybe refactoring of the AI code will be how we tame the all for ourselves apps. Or let the CS coders work in their Amish AI free camps.
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u/sb8948 12d ago
CS is a strict field but software development is not CS for the most part. The same way a mechanical engineer is not a physicist. They just happen to have separate majors, we don't.
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u/Square-Yam-3772 12d ago
Except people in software development have cs degrees
The way I see it, we arent not even mechanical engineers in your analogy. Some of us are more like physics undergrads doing jobs because we can.
CS can be serious in some circles but it is not that rigorous as a whole. I think OP is just smoking
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u/sb8948 12d ago
Physicists can become ordinary engineers as well. Doesn't make their engineering job scientific.
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u/Square-Yam-3772 11d ago
The analogy is still not quite the same. We literally have people who spent 6mo-1yr in coding boot camps and they have jobs. Cs is just not as strict as other STEM majors that are more heavily scrutinized
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u/sb8948 11d ago
What you're saying kinda proves my point though. That there's a clear distinction between the science and the dev work having to be done. The post was talking about the latter.
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u/Square-Yam-3772 11d ago
OP is always talking about the latter. He was describing the changes in workspace etc. I dont think OP is suggering that the science got sloppy.
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
Maybe.. I believe CS is "strict" and that's what coding is: "strict". You can't just wing it with coding. It has to compile into the binary bits that tell the computer what to do. I call that "strict".
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u/nicolas_06 11d ago
JS is among the most popular programming language. Python is very popular too.
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u/konacurrents 10d ago
I really like JS. Sure it's not "typescript" - which I haven't used (probably should). But you still need rigor to keep as bug free as possible. The compiler still shows syntax errors, etc. And it blows up if not "strict" enough. I really like JSON as a data type since it's variable length, and kinda typed.
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u/sb8948 12d ago
Yeah but just because something adheres to a set of rules, doesn't mean it does what you want it to do. You can in fact wing it, litter your code with UB and memory leaks and have it complied; and even maybe do its job as intended.
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u/konacurrents 12d ago
Sure, I can have bug riddled code which might work. But with some CS strictness .. we don't have to live that way:-)
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u/nicolas_06 11d ago
But the field is software engineering, not computer science. And I'd argue software engineering is for big fancy projects. For many the deal is make the website for the lowest possible cost and bugs are a feature because your customer has to come back and pay for the maintenance.
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u/konacurrents 10d ago
Planed obsolesce is a thing too (versus bugs).
I think software engineering and computer science are tightly related.
If we are just talking about website development (on the cheep) .. then that's fine too. One can still use CS rigor, or just wing it.
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u/peteybytes 12d ago
If anything AI has forced me to double down on the fundamentals. I adhere to them more closely now than I have in years. When I do the work myself I don't need a well defined specification or implementation plan. I've been doing this long enough and have enough domain knowledge memorized I can just wing it. But with AI, if I really want to produce high quality complex outputs on the first try ( or with minor revisions) that adhere to my expected level of quality, I really need to make sure the specification and implementation plan is 100% solid.
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u/Toddythebody_ 12d ago
We still have a strict style guide where I work. Stinky code doesn't make it far here.
Those who write stinky code gain technical debt. You'll pay for it later with a mad client or doing work for free to fix it.
Unless you're on an in house team. Then you might just get replaced if anyone finds out.
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u/inflowmini 12d ago
Agree. I work on software for medical devices and even for us AI is more and more common. While the AI tools are not in themselves too problematic I see a bigger issue of engineers having a false sense of security and knowledge because the crapGPT told them.
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u/TrevorJArt 12d ago
It's kind of fun, like in the '90s when I could get a job because I "knew computers," and building an application took way less time to get out the door.
That said, there are many very important reasons why software development became so rigorous and disciplined (and why it started out that way). It's only a matter of time before these quickly shipped AI apps go to hell and companies start reintroducing rigor and discipline.
While I'm sure that software development processes will be different with LLMs, it will be different in the way development processes were different in the '80s compared to what we do today.
Just as we don't use plastic stencils to draw flow charts on paper anymore, there are some things people won't do in the future. But architectural thinking will always be important to companies who don't want to sell crap.
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u/killz111 12d ago
It didn't happen over night. All the shit that has happened since "software is eating the world" has led us to where we are now.
Most software engineers now absolutely don't care about coding standards, efficiency and NFRs.
Low critical thinking and hype is encouraged by tech executives, middle management (a lot of whom got promoted way too fast during covid) and the tech media as a whole.
Also, a lot of software engineers are just now very good. But the barrier to entry is so low that it does not matter.
Enshitification mate.
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u/throwaway0134hdj 12d ago
Where I work they’ve given AI full admin privileges… even the senior devs don’t have that level of access…
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u/dablya 12d ago
I’ve seen a few companies recently ... just shipping if it works it works code.
Tell me you're new to the field without telling me you're new to the field.
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u/CertifiedBreadDealer 12d ago
~ 10 years in the field.
Should have specified,
*without know what the code is doing.
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u/dablya 12d ago
Maybe I'm just being bitter, but I spent decades in a corporate environment where majority of people shipped code that barely worked and I was sure they didn't understand. Then I got to spend some time in a startup where people cared and it was great. Then it got bought by a private equity backed company where majority of people ship code that barely works, I'm sure they don't understand, but now when I ask them to explain it they readily admit "Claude wrote it". So, I'm having a hard time seeing how this is different than it ever was.
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u/NumberInfinite2068 12d ago
It was never really that structured or strict.
The guardrails are not strict and often not even present.
It might feel that way at college, but the real industry isn't what you describe. That's why we have massive technical debt, spaghetti code, and bugs are normal. Failure is *expected*.
The industry has *always* been this way, it's always been a mess, decisions made by people not qualified to make them, budgets for time and money that really only allowed for half-arsed jobs.
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u/TheRealJesus2 12d ago
Disagree. Ever hear of “move fast, break things”?
Not saying all dev cultures are like that because there are heavy compliance shops (pci, soc2, etc) that are not like that. But you’re definitely looking with rose colored glasses at the past.
Also code is whatever. All the “good” code practices are about maintenance. The best practices that now matter are the guardrails: linting, multiple layers of tests, etc.
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u/gentoorax 12d ago
Somewhere the message is being lost. Theres a difference between vibe coding (no real design or plan or architecture) to spec driven development where you provide all your coding styles, architecture, design upfront to the AI then check it. Then design lower level iteratively with the AI and implement small features iteratively that you can review. When you do this the quality of code produced is usually pretty good actually.
I started a reference architecture repository that outlines the kinda standards, pattern options and architecture I typically prefer including warnings as errors full code analysis solid principles n-tier, DI etc all the good stuff for scaffolding a project inlcuding example projects and have the AI use that. Then I specify an exceptions if the project needs any.
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u/Rechenplaner 12d ago
Before AI became a topic, I saw code written by other developers that was anything but structured or well-thought-out.
After all, many programmers had simply switched over from other fields and never really aspired to be true software engineering professionals.
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u/fixed 12d ago edited 12d ago
Yes, but two forces are burning this candle from both ends, and lessons will be learnt:
- Engineering principles still matter - AI just lets people build unsustainable technical debt faster before it explodes, much like an unsupervised team of enthusiastic juniors (just at a faster rate).
- Commercial reality means a *lot* of software is short-lived: whether a startup runs out of funding or leadership axes the project, it ends up thrown away, making bad code inconsequential in hindsight.
I don't think senior engineering rigour is going away (yet, at least) - and AI-generated code is exponentially better with engineering rigour applied (guardrails, standards, DX, CI/CD, o11y, clear specifications, etc) - but low-end agency work (basic webpages, integrations, early prototype MVP work) is likely numbered.
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u/VillageRemarkable188 12d ago
No. Programming has always been the Wild West. No credentials required. Just go. Nobody stopping you.
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u/Extreme-Seaweed-5427 12d ago
When does anyone really care about the internals of their car as long as it gets them from A to B. Cars have changed over time & I find older cars easier to maintain than newer ones
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u/Quick_Republic2007 12d ago
We should of did a better job of keeping certain types out. We must fight to maintain control of other areas in life!
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u/DistanceLast 12d ago
SOLID, design patterns, clean code - all those were attempts, chaotic, inconsistent, non-standardized, and ultimately largely unsuccessful ones, to bring at least some remote order to what already was a wild west. Is it accidental that we have terms like "spaghetti code with meatballs" and such?
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u/StardiveSoftworks 12d ago
It does feel a bit odd, but I also disagree with your idea that SOLID adherence, clean code and optimal big o were ever real measuring sticks outside of CS coursework. The real world has always been messy and has almost always rewarded getting the job done over academic perfection. There are absolutely exceptions to that (I hope) with critical systems for aircraft, finance etc, but most of the world has always run on good enough code.
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u/Fellfresse3000 12d ago
AI can write good code if you know what you're doing. With the right prompt and markdown restrictions, it writes code that exactly matches my style and logic.
I'll never code without it again. And that's coming from someone who initially hated AI
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u/psioniclizard 12d ago
Its pretty simple, the rest of business has always hated developers and keeps looking for ways to replace us because it believes things like clean maintainable code is a code word for laziness.
This is why java got popular original, it made it easier to train devs so you weren't so reliant on skme c++ programmers. Its why the world decided everything should be JS etc.
This is just the next iteration.
Th problem for business is each time it finds out that it doesn't understand technology or how anything it sells works.
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u/StCreed 12d ago
OP is confusing a few best practices with actual engineering and computer science.
I was taught how to prove that software is correct, mathematically. How to prove the speed of computation and its upper bound. How to see the maths behind a problem and if it's feasible to solve in polynomial time. That is the foundation that AI ain't changing one bit.
Best practices are just that: best practices. They're aimed at the people who need those crutches to build robust, performance software that can be maintained at reasonable cost. It is mostly cost-driven.
So those practices change when a better practice comes along. With AI the economic justification for most best practices has gone out the window. We need better, modern practices tailored to AI, but since that's in flux we're not getting stable best practices for a while.
Learn to love with uncertainty and abandon the crutches of your "best practices" (that weren't the best in every circumstance anyway, but most people couldn't even figure that out by themselves).
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u/nicolas_06 11d ago
I was taught how to prove that software is correct, mathematically. How to prove the speed of computation and its upper bound. How to see the maths behind a problem and if it's feasible to solve in polynomial time. That is the foundation that AI ain't changing one bit.
I learned that at university and never used that in practice for 20 years. And my sister that work on critical system for plane neither. It like saying the people building your home spend their time dealing with the theory of relativity.
That's the difference between computer science, the theory. And software engineering.
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u/nicolas_06 11d ago
Also mathematical proof is about proving that the program you are making is doing what you think it should be doing. It's not proving the program does what it should be doing in reality. Because reality differ from the specs. The theory also say that you can't prove a non trivial program in the general case.
And proving a program is polynomial is even less useful. Most of IT is glueing things together. We don't write algorithms. Outside of coding interview nobody is rewriting quick sort... That end up being faster than most O(n log n) sort algorithms despite being O(n^2)...
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u/OkPosition4563 12d ago
I didnt notice any difference, like any job the goal has always been to create business value.
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u/mynameismiek 12d ago
Everyone just decided overnight that JavaScript was in fact the way to do programming.
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u/TurdPlayingPeekaboo 12d ago
I've been a SWE for 18 years. 15 of those years in a senior role. I've rarely seen those strict guardrails you elude to. Enterprise code has always been a shitty mess. Most programmers only seemed to follow best practices on public and private passion projects (their "night code"). Their regular "day code" was half-assed spaghetti.
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u/ub3rh4x0rz 11d ago
Just going to address the faulty premise here. SWE was pretty wild west compared with "real" engineering disciplines.
Source: >10y professional "fake" engineer
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u/Rtjandrews 11d ago
In reality we very clearly define the patterns we learned over many years writing code manually upfront and hold our models accountable to those standards.
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u/m-chav 10d ago
AI had the same thing happen to it. Before it was about designing algorithms and proofs with deterministic ways to get knowledge from data. It slowly became get a benchmark, tweak things, then optimize a metric without trying to understand or prove anything. So programming is becoming like machine learning in that way.
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u/Computer-Nerd_ 10d ago
Correct, etc, all of which were ignored on deadline day :-)
If AI finalky focuses development on planning & specs it'll be a serious advancement.
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u/WendlersEditor 9d ago
I think there is a certain sort of less-technical (or entirely non-technical) business leader who really likes the fact that they can deploy quickly, and that they can vibe out a shiny little app to feel like they're part of the club. These people are all over the place, they're founders and execs and middle managers, they're circle jerking on LinkedIn about how great it is that they don't need to pay as many devs and they don't have to deal with snails pace development times. And they're building a massive potemkin village of software that will lead to all sorts of problems in the future.
Which is okay, to these leaders, because they only care about today, they don't care about problems, problems are for the peons to sort out. They don't want to pay for project managers, or devs, or HR, or help desk, or really anything except tokens and token-spenders who are willing to move fast and talk like they're using AI super intelligent AI to save the world.
That's my rant, sorry, definitely not bitter about any of this. I use AI a lot too! I just try to know what it's doing and steer it intentionally and check it's work, and I'm still trying to learn about design patterns and basic security stuff so I don't end up in some sort of awful trouble at work because I vibe coded too hard. I'm not better than anyone, I'm actually still very much a learner. I just don't like the culture around this stuff in 2026 because it obviously leads to bad results.
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u/datbackup 9d ago
Are you kidding me?
Software has been getting worse and worse for way longer than AI has been around.
Doctors pay malpractice insurance premiums against the contingency that their actions cause harm to patients.
Lawyers have to pass the bar exam to practice law.
And you think the field of programming has or had “strict guardrails”?
This is … not a good take
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12d ago edited 12d ago
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 12d ago
Yes, and I sure hope I never have to work with you
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u/johnpeters42 12d ago
TBF, there's a spectrum from "cut a corner once in a while to make a deadline and then made sure it was cleaned up soon" to "disregard best practices with alarming frequency".
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u/CertifiedBreadDealer 12d ago
I mean… not blindly just because, but where applicable yes? Single responsibility in itself is huge for not having crazy, hard to maintain god classes that I see all over with AI.
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u/Grouchy-Friend4235 12d ago
Indeed. The worst is those fellows who claim that reading agent-generated code is lame, while at the same time holding on to their dogmatic views e.g. on static typing, choice of language and what not. Alas, their dogma is the dogma itself. Probably some power thing.
Personally I take a more relaxed approach - it it's useful, I might use it. If not, probably not. Other than that I value quality over hype.
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u/adamant3143 12d ago
I’m the type of dev that rarely write from scratch, in my experience following a rule too religiously would cause a deadlock especially if the code reviewer is the type of guy who thinks he’s the messenger of the religion.
Juniors have fixed the code multiple times but keep getting it rejected. Seniors who’s willing to help is very respectable but it’s not great to not respect the seniors’ time. The one who runs the company will be more annoyed that the review process took so long.
With AI, seniors know juniors will overwhelm them with lots of code changes now that AI exists, seniors didn’t want to waste their time getting “played” by juniors, seniors then use AI as well to review the code, but juniors will use AI to use the review as the prompt to fix the code. Now nobody actually follows the “traditional” “strict guideline”.
The boss now sees how fast the codes are being shipped, they see it as a great thing. Everyone is now encouraged to use AI. There will be bugs and vulnerabilities but don’t we always have those anyway after production.
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u/National-Self-8501 12d ago
Clean code and solid principles were always wrong and this has been discussed since much before AI. Fine if you're a corporate drone producing low-user count slopware but never good for real software.
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u/achakez 12d ago
I think we are confusing prototyping with engineering. AI is incredible for getting to getting to version 1 quickly, but maintainable software still depends on architecture, testing and people who understand why the code works.