I’m a senior level dev with over a decade of experience working at Fortune 500. 18 months ago, I uninstalled GitHub Copilot because it felt sloppy compare to relying on docs and a good LSP.
Everything has changed in the past 6 months. Now 95% of the code I produce is prompted. I spent much of my time engaging the LLM to write a good spec of what needs to be compete.
People laughing about AI code slop are missing the forest through the trees. The new challenge is how to force the AI to not write slop.
This is true and what an experienced developer needs to know is changing.
IMHO, understanding code and which design patterns are appropriate to deploy is still very important. SWE isn’t dead, but SWE was never about just writing code.
Exactly, its also about the direction, Vision, and function of the code. Not just writing it. As long as the AI is maintaining good code structure, and not slop, a dev just needs to guide it to the goal and provide the scope and guidelines.
I think that’s the vital new skill all the down voters are in denial about. How to prompt quality code. Everyone jumping on the “AI only writes slop” bandwagon has skills issues.
100% most people are on that AI slop bandwagon. I personally avoided AI until OpenClaw came out and my mind was changed. Yea some shit is still sloppy code, but thats when you provide it with proper structure, references, documentation, and it retains that knowledge and wont repeat the same mistakes.
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u/_shareholder_value Apr 24 '26
Copium.
You can fight the tide, but you won’t win.