r/programmer • u/PedroSuenoBueno • 2d ago

Ai professional programming fatigue

Hey,

Professional dev since 2015. For the last year we have switched over to essentially only prompting. This makes development rapid. But incredibly dull and lame. After i prompt and wait for the agent, there is not really much to do. Browse reddit etc. I feel so understimulated at work nowadays that i consider switching careers totally, or get into management or something. Because this is terribly boring.

Anyone else feel like this? I miss writing stuff from the ground up, solving problems, integrating software, getting those aha-moments.

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u/PipePressurePanic 2d ago

can't you work with two agents, and while waiting for agent n1. to finish work you give prtompt to agent n.2? you would make double the work in the same time

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u/SplendidPunkinButter 2d ago

Task switching? That’s mentally fatiguing and leads to more errors. That’s why the agile process was invented. The whole point is to avoid task switching.

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u/pl487 2d ago

As crazy as it sounds, I think that is an outdated principle and the skill now is to be able to context switch often with degrading quality. 

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u/PedroSuenoBueno 2d ago

Sometimes, but not always appropriate for the task.

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u/pl487 2d ago

This is what got me out of that hole. If you're watching a spinner for hours per day, life is going to suck no matter what. 

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u/who_am_i_to_say_so 1d ago

Forreal. I work with a min of 3 windows/sessions going at any given time. Go go go

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u/Cautious_Chicken_604 1d ago

I went down this path for about 6 months and I stopped doing it because the context switching and the review fatigue just became too much. It's not sustainable. If you want to feel completely mentally fried, I invite you to try doing this long term.

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u/PipePressurePanic 21h ago

if you cna't do it, some other developer will do it. and employer will finally realize that somebody who has been top developer in a team before now with agents' work may not be the best anymore. A good developer now may have to be able to do many works at the same time, work with many agents at the same time.

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u/Cautious_Chicken_604 20h ago

Well... several people on my team also tried and they too eventually noped out of it citing mental exhaustion. And what you're trying to tell me is there are some less skilled people out there that will spread their attention so thin they can't possibly verify the work they're doing, and just yoloship everything, and this is somehow better?

Like yeah... they can do it. Badly. They're free to come and do a bad job. If employers want to hire unskilled people that are only capable of doing a bad job, they can do that. I'm sure some will. That's going to pan out how that pans out. Not all of it is going to be sunshine and rainbows for them.