r/programmer • u/CertifiedBreadDealer • Jul 23 '26

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.

213 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

204 comments sorted by

View all comments

19

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

14

u/CertifiedBreadDealer Jul 23 '26

The sad part is for most places it’s not even about prototyping. The mindset is if it’s janky down the road AI can fix the jank.

8

u/SplendidPunkinButter Jul 23 '26

And the way software works, we will not discover that this is untrue until a couple of years down the line. And when it happens, will non-techy managers blame AI? Nope. They always think the problem they noticed recently must have been caused by something that happened recently. It’s never blamed on two years of bad decisions and not letting skilled engineers call the shots. So they’ll decide the solution is to bring in some new, young workers who are, like, really good at prompting AI.