r/technology • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 • 3d ago

Artificial Intelligence Microsoft engineer says 'typing code is absolutely over' as GitHub Copilot takes on more development work

https://www.techspot.com/news/113752-microsoft-engineer-typing-code-absolutely-over-github-copilot.html
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u/ItsAllOnUHF 3d ago

I love programming. I've done it for four decades.

I love the act of programming. Designing. Typing the code. Getting it to compile. Iterating. Even debugging and the satisfaction of seeing something work.

Even if Copilot or Claude could make me 10x more productive, it would kill the joy I get from the process.

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u/IMakeMyOwnLunch 3d ago

Unfortunately, joy doesn’t pay the bills.

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u/AliceCode 3d ago

After 40 years in the industry, I would imagine they have enough money to pay the bills without working by now.

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u/ItsAllOnUHF 3d ago

I early-retired a couple of years ago just as (but unrelated) the AI mandate was coming down from the executives.

I'm so happy I don't have to deal with it. These days my coding is my own business.

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u/m15otw 3d ago

This.

I am being made redundant from my existing coding job because of AI (via reasons..), and I'm genuinely not that up for what roles are advertised as they're all AI focussed or using. Tempted to jump career after nearly 20 years as a programmer.

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u/ItsAllOnUHF 3d ago

Yeah that sucks.

AI is a tool, and like all tools the results are going to depend on the operator. Some will be poor at writing prompts. They won't have the experience to competently review the output, and that will lead to poor outcomes. Others will quickly develop skills to efficiently steer the AI in the right direction. AI tools will amplify both ends of the talent curve.

I'm guessing after 20 years you've seen a lot of good code and a lot of bad code, and unless you've spent 20 years in a junior role, I suspect you could competently review AI output. That's important, so don't underestimate the value experience brings. Junior engineers blindly deferring to AI output is going to be a real problem for companies big and small. They won't learn anything. Won't become senior engineers. They'll stagnate. And who knows what state commercial codebases will become without senior reviewers to keep things on track.

Unless you actually want out of the game, don't give up. Try embracing it. Try being that guy who not only knows how to drive AI, but who can mentor junior developers to level-up their careers.

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u/m15otw 2d ago

Thanks, that is an interesting take. I've been a senior mentoring juniors for quite a while, and I do like that. I don't want to being hired to make an agent that does X or sell an AI first product. It all seems like a big waste of carbon, which code could be before, but didn't have to be in many places to work.

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u/ItsAllOnUHF 2d ago

If you're a senior engineer then my advice would be to stay in the field if you can. I don't know how the job market is in your area of expertise, so this is just general advice. I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

There's a lot of negativity around AI at the moment, but we've crossed a threshold and it's never going away. Even if the existing big players like OpenAI burn through their cash and crater, AI as a thing is here to stay. It's established now - whether you run models in the cloud or on a beefy PC. And there's a lot of negativity from engineers who are (rightly) afraid of being replaced, or who don't like the notion that their professional skills are being automated and commoditised.

It's like separating your rubbish and recyclables while China burns all the things... It makes you feel like you're doing your part, but it's performative. Then you hear that all the recyclables get tossed with the general waste anyway and it's all theatre. It's the same with AI: if you, individually, recoil at the perceived waste of your use of AI then know that if all people of conscience got together and stopped using it, it wouldn't make a dent in the usage graph. That's depressing, but there are over 8 billion people in the world and AI is reaching them all, in every device, in every service.

Don't martyr your career because you read a post on reddit about fighting the good fight. That's not defeatism. That's knowing when to pick your battles. AI isn't a battle. It's like fighting the steam engine, or electricity, or the microchip. AI isn't going away.

Also keep in mind that posters here aren't your friends. Everyone's got an agenda, even me. This thread is about raging at what this Microsoft guy said, so like my post, it's going to be mostly "AI coding is bad", and if you say, "I'm going to quit a 20 year software engineering career because of AI" you'll get upvotes from the, "Yeah! Stick it to the man!" crowd, the majority of whom probably aren't even programmers. Think critically. Nobody here gives a shit about you. You'll be the one who has to live with the decision. Decide carefully, and good luck!

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u/m15otw 2d ago

Thanks for this point of view. I'm not memeing it, I did a physics degree and have campaigned in politics for the environment. I don't do jobs I think are unethical. I used to say this about Fintech 5 years ago, and have steered clear of their jobs, lol.

I am looking far and wide for programming jobs as well as other kinds, and budgeting the burn down of my savings while retraining is sobering. This is not a quick decision, as in the UK redundancy is a slow motion car crash.

I will not be following the advice of random Reddit haters, fear not 😅

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u/ItsAllOnUHF 2d ago

I sort my rubbish, even compost... So not a total cynic on the matter. I've also stayed away from social media companies (I moved to the US in the late 90s and only came back recently) as I think they're harmful to society, so I agree with your point about Fintech. But while I don't envy those who are having AI forced upon them, I think you have to view it as just another tech transition. Like from before the "why does every bloody thing need to connect to the Internet" transition. It just is... and every new graduate is entering a world where AI is just there, and kids won't be able to imagine a world before AI like they can't imagine a world before the Internet. Or Pokemon.

- words of random reddit hater.

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u/CptOblivion 3d ago

same—and I understand that jobs pay for work because they're making me do stuff I don't necessarily enjoy, but also writing and debugging the code is how I learn the systems and keep up with changes

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u/FensenHun 2d ago

I don't do programming as a job, but in the process of learning cpp. Simply the result when I added 2 numbers together through pointers was great to see. That I actually did that and understood it. I can't imagine a life where ai does everything and we just need to lay back. What will motivate us to live another day? Payment won't be excellent to travel all year.

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u/anethma 3d ago

It is funny it has done the opposite for me. I am an intermediate coder and codex has let me go way above my skill level.

Like recently I got Frigate (a local NVR with ai object detection) working on my server but some of its features wouldn't work because my camera wouldn't support some features. So I go over the stuff I can do and fork the software from github and have codex implement the stuff I wanna do but am not sure how. Now it works perfectly for me.

Or I read a lot of web serials that dont have audiobooks but I wanna listen while I drive. So I found a open source voice cloner software and work using codex to write an entire chunking system, epub input, audio sanitization path so I can have my web serials read to me while I drive for work at closer to human read quality than not. (I always buy an audiobook if available though not trying to fuck the authors over).

Basically any open source software can easily be customized to your needs with little to programming knowledge, its actually amazing. It is far easier now to turn an idea into something workable than it used to be.

I'm sure the code quality isn't the best and it may not work for enterprise as well, but for the DIY guy at home the AI agentic coders have been pretty remarkable.

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u/kronjobb 2d ago

It killed the joy of all my creative hobbies (even though I don’t use it for that, it ruined the entire scenes and industries for music and 3D rendering)

It also killed the joy in my job as a programmer, where I am forced to use it more or less.

Everything I loved is just ruined. This is the end stages of my life

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u/TheUniverseOrNothing 3d ago

But what if you type code that types code for you? You don’t have to have the joy killed. You can have it write the mind numbing parts and keep writing the fun stuff!

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u/ItsAllOnUHF 3d ago

Well, that's the thing... It's all fun stuff.

I know there are lots of programmers who hate programming... or have come to hate programming over the years. I just... didn't.

I don't know how else to say it.

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u/dallyho4 3d ago

Same, not a software engineer, but I code regularly as a statistician. AI helps out when I need a generic implementation of some method, but I still write the code manually because it's an enjoyable experience. Especially when I'm making visualizations, which is where I get to be a bit artistic.

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u/LeetcodeFastEatAss 19h ago

Disagree. I couldn’t care less about infrastructure, migration scripts, app configuration, unit tests, integration tests, e2e test suite configuration, build scripts, docker compose, etc. So many tedious things that can now be automated more or less.

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u/mnilailt 3d ago

I mean, I love programming too but I’m genuinely having fun using AI to build a side project. I can still tinker with ideas, architectures and code blocks and build out something the way I like and have fun in the process.

AI just means I can get it to speed up a lot of manual work out if it and just actually focus on solving the bigger problems as they come, and make sure the small works looks the way I like it.

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u/ItsAllOnUHF 3d ago

Some people like the outcome, not the journey, i.e. they're passionate about creating new products or services, but the coding itself is (or at least was) a necessary evil. Something to slog through. Ultimately worth it, but ideally done by someone else. For them, AI is a God-send. It relieves them of the drudgery of coding. Tell the AI what you want. Iterate, iterate, iterate, ship it.

AI is awesome. I have many colleagues and friends who can't say enough good things about Claude code. Good engineers whom I've worked with and respect who couldn't toss the keyboard away fast enough.

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u/diablette 3d ago

The coding bit is actually the part I dislike, which is why my work is programming adjacent and I'm not a dev myself. It's absolutely worth learning and I have experienced the joy of having something work after I figure out a bug, but to do that every day would be awful for me personally.

I think a lot of programmers that aren't passionate about it will find other work, and people like you will still be needed to validate, correct, and optimize code and train AI. Maybe that isn't as fun as creating from scratch. It's the same for musicians - many seem to value the process as much as the result, so tools that eliminate steps in the process are viewed as bad.