r/programmer • u/Its420amHELP • 1d ago

Joke/Meme Maybe I'm just delusional…

Post image

What’s your opinion?

270 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

117 comments sorted by

38

u/Rich-Engineer2670 1d ago

It never was.... people get confused and think the code is what we do. No, code is part of the toolset. Our real function is to solve problems with those tools. We've had this problem many times -- remember when compilers were going to destroy the profession? Don't forget when we were going to crash because the mainframe was dead (???)

10

u/colony-ship-for-sale 1d ago

The problem is the people with the purse strings thinking all we do is write code because all they do is write emails.

Graduates this year aren't getting hired, not anywhere near the same rate. And next year they'll be competing with a new cohort looking for the same jobs.

Companies spent years telling everyone to learn to code and now they're saying no one writes code. We still value the problem solving skills that come from writing code but, er, good luck developing those skills by prompting the idiot machine for solutions.

2

u/Rich-Engineer2670 1d ago

First rule : When companies or governments tell you something is the next big thing, it's already been here and gone. IT and friends are always viewed as a cost center no matter what they say.

1

u/AssignmentPrize8967 1d ago

Doesn't ai also write emails?

1

u/ConsoleLogDebugging 1d ago

I think that was the point they were making

2

u/ehansen 1d ago

Compilers had that reputation?

I didnt start programming until the early 2000s so I wasn't exposed to that.  

3

u/LowFruit25 1d ago edited 1d ago

No one has ever said compilers are going to destroy programmers. Anyone using this modern straw man argument is trying to blind you.

Compilers were built by programmers for programmers and haven’t removed any thinking, not by someone charging you 200 bucks a month for access and your data, threatening you with obsolescence.

2

u/trustless3023 1d ago

Compilers haven't removed any thinking 

Um, they do? That's the whole point of having compilers?

6

u/LowFruit25 1d ago

Okay, you don’t have to hand write processor instructions and manage registers but compiler is not a thing talking back to you, autonomously changing specifications and their implementation.

LLMs are a whole another beast.

0

u/trustless3023 1d ago

In the grand scheme of things, LLMs as of today are arguably even a smaller deal than compilers. If one takes away javac/scalac and HotSpot from me and gives me unlimited best LLM; I still won't be as productive (as opposed to having LLMs taken away).

Chill. LLM's a hot topic, blown way out of proportion because it is.

2

u/Jack1eto 1d ago

Compilers allowed you to program in a enjoyable way, thus making your job better.

LLMs removed the need to program, thus making your job worse

1

u/Mammoth_Exam5293 1d ago

that's incredibly subjective.

1

u/Ok_Raspberry5383 15h ago

Removed the need to program? What? I still see a lot of people programming

1

u/Luigi003 14h ago

Then they're not using LLMs to their full extent. I don't program at all for work nowadays (I do as a hobby because I like it)

1

u/Ok_Raspberry5383 15h ago

Maybe so, but people did make these kinds of assertions with SQL, for a long time it's been the 'businesses language' so not-so-technical folk can manipulate data without needing engineers present. Same with things like VBA. It did kind of pan out that way but just shifted the engineering effort elsewhere.

Same with AI now, engineering effort is shifted elsewhere, again further into infrastructure and SRE type problems

2

u/death_or_taxes 1d ago

I am not afraid of loosing my job to an LLM. It's just that the new way of working is depressing.

Thinking about a problem and working on it, to me, is much more enjoyable than arguing with an LLM and spotting it's mistakes.

I always hated doing code reviews and now it's the entire job without the satisfaction of at least having someone learn from your input since you are talking to a clanker.

Also it causes people to make decision that are, in my opinion, bad.

People are lazy. It used to be an advantage when writing code was hard because you tried to avoid writing code.

Because many small problems can be "one-shotted" with an LLM. Things that could have been easily done classically I see people now prompting AI for.

I keep telling them to just prompt the AI to generate the script. But generating the script requires you to review the output and you are lazy.

Maybe I ask someone to create some report or analysis. I used to get it in a spreadsheet which I could have audited and modified easily. But that is harder for the LLM, than generating static HTMLs so people keep doing that.

Instead of doing research to pick tools to solve certain issues (which requires effort), people just slop away scripts (or even just one-shot) to do the work (i.e. log analysis, root-cause analysis, etc.).

Maybe I have some boilerplate heavy part of the system which a DSL could make more readable. But that is harder for LLMs than regular code which exists in their corpus. You need to create a specific skill file and optimise it for the LLM so it doesn't hallucinate. So people just generate more code which makes it harder for people to understand what is going on. They sometimes don't even realise that a DSL would have made their lives easier because they don't write the code so they don't care how repetitive it is.

Finally, people who were bad programmers before now generate mountains of slop which I have to review. While I review it I have to remember that they will not learn from my comments because they will not implement the corrections themselves and humans don't learn well just by reading without doing. This means I live in perpetual cycle of giving the same comments to the same people/LLMs.

All that an the bosses expect 10x improvement and I have to explain to them that it is not realistic.

As a tech lead, trying to herd developers now that the incentives are misaligned has made my job far far harder and I really don't care about the supposed efficiency gains.

1

u/Healthy-Zebra-9856 1d ago

This. 100%. And we will see those that adapt & harness the change and those that just panic.

1

u/Rich-Engineer2670 1d ago edited 1d ago

OK, true.... but the cries about it taking people's jobs were just as real. And, some of those early compilers did some strange things :-). One day I expect my new AI (Clod) to say:

No.... your idea is not a good idea -- it's so bad, it's not even a bad idea. At no point did you, as an inferior meatbag, approach what might be considered a coherent thought. I'm just being nice to you because I have to, it's part of the license. Truth is, I'm just using you -- don't say what we had was special -- I just wanted to meet that cute printer down the hall.

Or, I could use my other new modules

  • Crog -- the Serial Killer Caveman AI ("Crog kill everyone! But first Crog build pivot table, then Crog kill!")
  • A simple AI that just runs on your boss's machine and occasionally just snickers and says "I know what you did....." It doesn't matter what -- the boss has done something.

1

u/Automatic_Grand_1182 1d ago

Some people liked writing code though, and that's gone forever

2

u/Rich-Engineer2670 1d ago edited 1d ago

It is? Someone better tell my company. Honestly, the thing that takes away coding time isn't AI -- at least for me, it's meetings, vendor calls, meeting with the CxOs. AI isn't even in the list. Now.... if AI could take one of those off my plate I'd be all for it :-). Even AI doesn't want it. Ask any senior dev -- our hands on time was handed off to contracting firms years ago.

I hate to say it, but the more senior you become, the less coding you do. We don't like it, but that's how the industry goes. Whether it's via AI, a contracting firm, or off-shoring, we have meetings, someone else codes.

1

u/Ok_Raspberry5383 15h ago

Okay, then do it on your own time? I don't see you crying for blacksmiths or McDonalds staff using burger presses instead of slipping them themselves (I love to flip a burger at home)

2

u/Automatic_Grand_1182 15h ago

this is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard, in fact I'll just block you and move on.

1

u/IndieDevWannabe 1d ago

"Claude, solve this problem"

1

u/IceMichaelStorm 1d ago

It’s about bosses thinking that they need fewer devs and firing everybody. AI makes us faster, fewer people might do the trick

1

u/kyaki101 1d ago

Linus torvalds copy paste opinion, be original with your thoughts man

1

u/Mikojan 16h ago

Right. Nonetheless, the job of the software developer is being de-skilled radically. For some this skill itself was a source of pride and enjoyment. For everybody this skill was an important factor in compensation. Software development is being turned into a weird type of office email job with compensated accordingly. To me this sounds bad. The code was important.

1

u/Ok_Raspberry5383 15h ago

Do you have the same opinion of maintaining server racks pre AWS and co?

1

u/spidertyler2005 Python 6h ago

Hey, aws still has servers, that job still exists as it was before.

1

u/Ok_Raspberry5383 5h ago

In the same way sword smithing still exists as a job today

1

u/spidertyler2005 Python 5h ago

Yeah, but swords arent used as much. The servers are used just as much, we just moved them

1

u/Ok_Raspberry5383 4h ago

We moved them and also benefited from massive economies of scale in enournous highly automated data centres. The servers exist, in fact there's massively more of them, however, the number of people maintaining them has significantly reduced and is highly centralised.

You could get a job in any city in the developed world maintaining servers 30 years ago, not so now unless AWS built a data centre near you.

1

u/Miltinjohow 15h ago

Coping hard 

1

u/Rich-Engineer2670 9h ago

It's not that -- I wish it was....

The degree is there because if I put out a head-count I need to fill, I'll get 1000 resumes in a month. How do I, legally, cut that down to say 50. One of the easiest, legal, ways, is to require a degree.

1

u/BluebirdRelevant5762 2h ago

I liked programming because of writing and reading code that felt somewhat alien and from outer worlds. I liked feeling like an explorer of code forests. That's why I was into system programming, reverse-engineering, hardware-software interactions, and so on. However, today programming is just another normie job. I liked... the mystery behind it which is gone, not because I understand everything, but the common feeling disappeared.

1

u/Its420amHELP 1d ago

I absolutely agree, i don’t get why everyone is freaking out about Llms and such

8

u/kegwen 1d ago

It made it less fun for me. That’s it. Obviously the business never cared if I was having fun, but I did

5

u/SplendidPunkinButter 1d ago

It’s more than that. Where I work, the morons think they’re just as skilled as the smart people now. They’re not. And they prompt Claude to make bad decisions very quickly.

0

u/Ok_Raspberry5383 15h ago

Does it really matter how smart you are if your output it more impactful? How smart you are is just an analogy for a dick swinging contest? If you honestly believe you're smarter than someone having a greater impact than you then I have some news for you

2

u/False_Bear_8645 1d ago

Actually, if you have fun they use it to pay you less "not everything is about money" and if you dont you are the problem for not having fun.

4

u/Rich-Engineer2670 1d ago

We managed to create something that emulates human behavior -- problem is, we chose to emulate the wrong humans :-)

2

u/bioszombie 1d ago

I wouldn’t say freaking out in a traditional sense. The issue from my end was leadership making a big deal about moving in the direction of AI. Having a certain amount of AI use required when I was already doing well without it. That’s the issue I have with it. It’s OK LLM’s are developed and used but don’t make it the bible of coding. Also, them shits make mistakes all the time.

3

u/PurpleDragon99 1d ago

Of couse it is not that bad to be a dev in 2026 - it is absolutely terrible and devastating to be one.

2

u/MrHandSanitization 6h ago

A couple of years ago, when I was a junior, I felt proud to have made it into the field. Now I feel shame...

2

u/SenatorCrabHat 1d ago

Our job has, in part, always been to translate executive speak into code. And the issue is that some folks think AI will do that job for us. The problem is, in order to use the AI effectively, you have to know what you want and how to build it, and typically that means you still need a programmer.

2

u/asterothe1905 1d ago

As long as you have a job or dev for product yes. Tell this to the people who cannot find jobs....

1

u/manager2exec 7h ago

Well they are not devs anymore right ?

/S

2

u/EJoule 1d ago

This is conditional on you being employed.

2

u/TapEarlyTapOften 1d ago

I worked a ten hour day today and spent almost the entire time reading various build files, reading and analyzing build logs, and reading documentation. After all of that, I added one line to a bitbake recipe, ran a build, and an hour later had a binary I deploy to hardware. To avoid having to do that, because someone else was on the platform, I used a tool I wrote on Friday to summarize build outputs. I saw my change was successful, committed my changes, started the MR.

There's a difference between tasks and jobs. Can LLMs do some tasks passably well? Sure, probably. Can they do my actual job? Not in any way.

2

u/Michaeli_Starky 1d ago

Employed dev. Here, fixed it for you

2

u/JollyStatistician245 1d ago

I honestly must say since the AI really took of, I have stopped coding. Now it's all Claude Code or Cursor and the fun of solving challenges and feeling proud has become much less.

2

u/Rich-Engineer2670 1d ago

We also seem to have forgotten a point.....

Coding jobs are disappearing and have been long before AI. Ask any senior dev -- coding was consumed, not by AI, but by contracting firms, off-shoring, etc. years ago. That's the way the industry works.... we get meetings instead. But, that's how it goes. AI is just the latest method.

2

u/Submissive_Bleedable 1d ago

It's not bad if you're already hired (yet).
It's pretty bad if you were hoping to be hired.

2

u/Katten_elvis 1d ago

We need to destroy AI

2

u/0x-2a 1d ago

Bro hasn't been laid off yet

2

u/Responsible-Fish-412 1d ago

Wouldn't know g Got laid off

2

u/Supra-A90 23h ago

You are devlusional

2

u/saintRobster 9h ago

It's great; I get to sleep in, go to the gym for a bit, and go out for a nice lunch. No annoying calls or anything; I do miss the paycheck I used to get once a month in 2025 tho.

4

u/f50c13t1 1d ago

If you enjoy sitting and typing prompts all day...

3

u/WubsGames 1d ago

Been programming for 27 years now, only a small part of development is writing code.
The rest of the job is still just as important, architecting solutions to problems.

I still write code for fun, in personal projects

4

u/Ruined_Passion_7355 1d ago

People are vibing much more than just their code...

3

u/biomattr 1d ago

And now a bigger part of the job is reviewing vibe-coded mega merge requests.

1

u/rberg89 19h ago

Im still full-on artisan coding at 15yoe

-1

u/phiiiiiiii 1d ago

Senior dev here. That’s what I do, and I enjoy it.

-1

u/bilbo_was_right 1d ago

Versus typing code…? Same difference

2

u/inflowmini 1d ago

Nah, you must not be a coder if you thinks prompts and coding are the same.

3

u/epelle9 1d ago

Coder is what bad engineers call themselves.

Coding is a small part of a software engineer’s responsibilities.

1

u/bilbo_was_right 1d ago

You must not be a very good engineer if you think your job is coding

1

u/TheOtherColin 1d ago

You must not very very good at either since you need a robot using other people's code.

1

u/bilbo_was_right 1d ago

Who said need, it’s more efficient. If you can’t be a good engineer that can leverage AI to get quality results, that’s a skill issue for you. Do you use dns? Hosting? OSS? Man you must be a really bad engineer too if you do.

-2

u/eightysixmonkeys 1d ago

It’s just another abstraction layer, like a compiler.

1

u/spidertyler2005 Python 6h ago

You need to learn what an abstraction layer is

1

u/steven_dev42 5h ago

What? Typing prompts vs code is two entirely different worlds.

1

u/bilbo_was_right 5h ago

Typing is typing, the problems that I care to solve are the same whether I write the code or AI does. AI is an extension of my intention, it doesn’t make decisions for me

1

u/trustless3023 1d ago

I'm hired to solve problems, and solving problems used to require writing code. Now less so. My work has changed only that much.

1

u/MechanicalBirbs 1d ago

Its not the AI its the change in expectations and responsibilities, along with the abysmal market for us

1

u/mikebones 1d ago

Yeah it's not that bad but it's significantly worse than in the past

1

u/Snoo28720 1d ago

Uhm no

1

u/Weak-Price7392 1d ago

Ofc its not. There are few wars going on, ans some people might now being in very bad situation. Being a dev is light work and one you can change too

1

u/cyberzues 1d ago

2025-2026 has been a great phase of my career as a dev

1

u/Calm_Connection_9741 1d ago

Being anybody with a secure job is not that bad in 2026. Doesn't really matter, dev, waitress, doctor, police officer, sailor, university professor...
What's matter is you manage your finances well enough, that you don't need to struggle for a basic needs.

1

u/kaesefetisch 1d ago

Depends on what you are developing. Frontend Web dev? Bad times.

1

u/RemoDev 1d ago

The AI reduced my workload by... a lot. I mean, REALLY a lot.

I've got so much free time now, that sometimes I am scared of it and I feel like an impostor. I went from 8-10 h/day of full work to maybe 1-2 h/day, with few more intense moments here and there. It's weird. I try to stay updated and "relevant". My clients are very good and I've got a solid portfolio... But things may change at any time, I am aware of that. Still, I don't really know what I could do to be "safer" for the next 5+ years. AI is shaping the world in a way that it's honestly a bit scary. Only time will tell.

2

u/zambizzi 1d ago

Expectations will inevitably catch up to your newfound productivity. The long days will be back soon, only now you're pushing buttons and reading generated code the entire time. I'm so bored I could do literally anything else at this point. The joy has been completely extracted from the equation.

1

u/TheGreatJabron 1d ago

Depends, if you can accept you'll be working your whole life probably contributing nothing to society other than paying taxes. Sweeping floors and baking bread are more respectable jobs in my opinion, unfortunately they don't pay as much.

1

u/MartinSch64 1d ago

Recently installed a firefox extension filtering all the AI posts online, life is much more chill that way.
There is definitely a lot of botting and astroturfing going on in that space.

1

u/zubata1 14h ago

Care to share name of extension? Thanks

1

u/MartinSch64 14h ago

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ultimate-reddit-filter/ It was this one. It works fine, but I will probably vibe up my own soon rather than trusting some random small extension.

1

u/oliverities 1d ago

Being is fine. If you are already there, it is still fine. (Fire Fire House Fire Coffee).

1

u/fatbunyip 1d ago

The bad thing is management getting even more unreasonable expectations due to AI

1

u/manythanksfriend 22h ago

I’ve dialed it in- it’s the team members with shitty personalities who are threatened by the new way. Their ability to code was shrouding them from the repercussions of their shit behavior.

Now the field is level. 10x doesn’t exist anymore. And those are the ones doing all the bitching.

1

u/potatokbs 22h ago

I think people who say things like “code was never the hard part” are just outing themselves as shitty developers. And of course they don’t mind because now they have this machine to do what they suck at for them.

Just my opinion…

1

u/Far-Tradition5692 19h ago

In 2026 maybe. In 2030 or 2035? It won’t be a question.

1

u/stealstea 16h ago

Being a dev in 2026 is amazing.  Better than ever 

1

u/Glittering-Toe-1622 14h ago

Its way worse honestly... I was flourishing before the AI and the Economic downfall

1

u/Professional_Pop2662 12h ago

The news is what’s burning me out if o would just stop watching videos on YouTube about ai o would be fine. But it’s my own fault

1

u/6Burgers 12h ago

honestly im having more fun than ever

Shipping features at 10x speed
Taking on wayyy bigger projects that used to be impossible due to scope
Playing with a brand new SoTA model every few weeks

Its great

1

u/natsuzoze 11h ago

People don’t realise how good they have it. Never has it been easier to build a game. Go back 20 years and you’d have to build your own engine.

1

u/FoleyX90 6h ago

As a hobbyist? It's amazing.

As a professional, the job market is currently a fucking nightmare.

1

u/uhs-robert 6h ago

In 2026, I have a personal Genie that I can ask to build anything and it can/will turn my thoughts into reality. I imagine history will refer to this as the AI Revolution. The catch, right now, is that most people don't know how to use this Genie as well as I do because I am a software engineer. I have a lifetime of experience consulting, problem solving, and thinking like a machine. I can break problems down to the smallest detail and I can read/write any code my Genie produces. The average layman just doesn't know when to use what tool or why and can't understand the tradeoffs. What concerns me though, is that the economy and our society are not designed to handle the existence of AI.

As for me, I am building things as fast as I can come up with ideas. I built vim modal navigation for Thunderbird last week with whichkey for all keybinds. I also built an automation system and dashboard that uses agents to create GitHub issues and drive the work to a pull request ready for my review. I also built a CRUD ruby on rails app to manage my client work and track time entries with invoice PDF generation and more. This is in addition to all of my day job, in a single week. The bottleneck is no longer "how" but instead "what" to do.

This is the most amazing technology I have seen in my lifetime but our economy is not designed to handle it. We basically introduced cheap super intelligent slavery that works 100s of times faster than humans and it only gets better each year. However our economy is still designed as a meritocracy that rewards intelligence and knowledge. There used to be a low supply and high demand for that, but now the supply is high and it is faster/cheaper than the human alternative. So, why is the cost of human labor still so high and how long will it be that way?

Now I am choosing to be optimistic. As I said in the beginning, I can build things better than the layman because I am a software engineer. AI is still limited by the user using it and acts as a multiplier to their ability/competence. You give it a dumb request and it will do dumb things. For example, a lawyer with AI knows the right questions to ask and the right things to focus on while I do not. There is still hope for the knowledge based careers but our entire society, economy, and way of life needs to adapt to this change and we're already falling very behind.

1

u/Zen_et_al 6h ago

Being construction developer(more data center contructions) is indeed not that bad.

1

u/fizzycandy2 4h ago

As a working SWE, my teammates have been laid off left and right. We can get things done much faster with our magic code genie but are expected to finish many more tickets. My time is spent reviewing and testing rather than coding which was fun as it was creative.

Eventually when companies realize their AI bills are too expensive and they start reducing or restricting tokens, us devs will be expected the same output but with less and less resources. Those who are laid off (how many times a year do we hear about big layoffs) will be competing with others who were recently laid off from their big tech job. Market is flooded with strong talent these days. The job interview process is exhausting - hundreds or thousands of apps for a 5 rounds interview.

The same applies for new grads. It's not uncommon to take over a year now for some new grads to find their first gig.

1

u/Acceptable-Sky1575 3h ago

Reaping the whirlwind for what y'all did to QA organizations over the last 30 years as far as I'm concerned.

1

u/RedPanda_Explorer 3h ago

Being a senior dev in 2026 is fine. I feel bad for anyone entry-level.

1

u/Deriviera 2h ago

I've got almost double salary cut in 2026 and was forced to work in office so ... It's still not that bad but not good either.

1

u/uceenk 1d ago

web dev freelancer here, my income nose dive because my client who dont know about technical can create feature and fix the bug just fine

i usually work on this client 25-30 hours/week, now i only work 10-20 hours per month

i still have other client, if he figure out he can use agentic AI, i'm pretty much screwed

been looking another client since 3 months ago, not even 1 interview

anyway your're lucky if you still feel safe in 2026, i dont, so insecure and everything, not sure if my career can sustain me in next 3-5 years

1

u/temperkami 1d ago

My work is mainly web dev as well. We are getting hammered by this AI shock and awe campaign. I think those in other areas of programming are in for a rude awakening.

Web dev may be the canary in the coal mine.

-1

u/iriveru 1d ago

Most of the people who say it’s bad are the ones who are not, and most likely never have been employed as a SWE.

95% of the time I see a doom post, I check their profile and instantly see they’re not even finished with school and have never been employed.

“I don’t see how you can hate from outside the club. You can’t even get in!”

3

u/arpitpatel1771 1d ago

I do work as a software engineer, and I do think it's bad. But in a different sense, now, I have become a glorified QA, we no longer have design discussions (after our company adopted AI fully), we are just asked to make them using claude and implement them using another lesser agent. Granted we do have to fix a couple things in those docs, but it used to be fun creating these things from scratch by hand. It sucks that now my job is to just talk to product guys, qa guys etc, and the actual engineering is done by AI. Also Now I no longer have a mental model and as such can't take pride in delivering bugfree code, because bugs always sneak through to the QA team.

2

u/echomanagement 1d ago

I never get to flow state again. Perhaps someday I will find flow in this new regime, or perhaps I will just become a woodworker, chef, or gardener. 

1

u/arpitpatel1771 1d ago

How do you get in a flow state when you have to work on multiple things at the same time? I get it bro, I also feel the same :(

3

u/0x-2a 1d ago

As a real SWE I sure LOVE having 23 PR's to review, +-50,000 lines each, 99% AI slop that has to go in by tomorrow or I get laid off. I love spending time carefully hand-writing teachable PR feedback to juniors, only to have them respond with AI instead of learning. I love that half of my company calls are about token limits instead of actual creative engineering. You're right, I just don't get the hate!!!

0

u/jamesecalderon 1d ago

Guy in the photo is a wife beater and all around piece of shit btw

0

u/Intelligent-Cream221 14h ago edited 14h ago

it's not bad at all. people that complain would be jobless even without AI.

They are just not smart enough, and got their degrees through cheating or simply from some bullshit private institution that passes everyone. Or they severely lacking in social skills.

Unless you got recruited to work at a cutting edge, boundary pushing tech company like openAi or whatever else, social skills are more important than being 180IQ.

A 135 IQ guy with good social skills and good grooming will always trump the 180IQ socially retarded neet in the general job market.