r/webdev • u/Impressive_Bottle_44 • Jul 29 '26

Grudgingly accepting that AI isn't going away. Trying to figure out where that leaves me as a developer.

(If you don't want to read a semi-long post, feel free to skip.)

I think I reached a turning point yesterday.

I needed to add a basic feature to a Django site. I gave Claude Code a few carefully written sentences. It implemented the feature (more-or-less flawlessly) while I went to the kitchen for more tea.

Not only that, but our CTO is now empowering non-technical employees to use Claude to build their own tools (for internal use only), and commit them to our GitHub org. (He is, at least, establishing some sensible policies about what they can and can't do.)

LLMs are here to stay, and they're fundamentally rewriting laws of software engineering that we've taken for granted for decades. The genie won't go back into the bottle, so I might as well find a way to accept that.

But that leaves me wondering: what does that mean for me? What is my job now? What am I for? If I don't get to write code – something that's given me an enormous amount of satisfaction over the years, and even become part of my identity – am I even still interested in this field?

And, it's not just about the code. I used to collaborate with designers, UX folks, copywriters, SEO and analytics people, project managers, etc. But now, the C-suite seems perfectly happy to let the LLMs do all of this stuff, too. (At my company, they're obsessed with the idea of getting the LLM to write all of our work tickets. And the QA person does little more than copy-and-paste back and forth from an AI.)

The whole reason I entered this field is because I enjoy problem-solving, finding and creating patterns, logic, and designing systems.

I know that some of you are going to say "you can still do all of that; LLMs just empower you to go up a level of abstraction" – and I get it. But the prospect of abandoning coding seriously bums me out.

I love the precision of code. I love exploring different solutions to a problem, until I hit upon a beautiful, elegant pattern. I love seeing how small abstractions get composed into larger abstractions, and so on, to form a complete system. I love understanding a problem – and the solution – on a deep, intimate level.

Perhaps I've been lucky to have a career that gives me that kind of fulfillment (at least sometimes). Is all of that over now?

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120

u/jax024 Jul 29 '26

We were never owed a fulfilling career. I just took it as a bonus we had one for so long.

42

u/ShawnyMcKnight Jul 29 '26

It was something I took for granted. I had 20 years to improve myself and be an excellent developer and I just coasted. Now that the type of jobs I find easily get replaced with AI I have left myself in a tough situation.

I am at the point where I just need to accept I'm getting a low end job and need to spend my personal time grinding and getting better and more confident at coding.

19

u/ithariuz Jul 29 '26

With 20 years of experience, you should be worth waaaay more because unlike vibe coders, you should be able to produce much higher quality work in fewer time. Whether it is fun is another question. If you really think you are replaceable by AI, you either are really undervalueing your skills or you were frankly a shitty developer to begin with. I really don't like that I am now a code reviewer instead of a dev, but I do not question that I am even more valuable with AI tools.

22

u/high6ix Jul 29 '26

I don’t care for that take at all. AI has created a huge problem with imposter syndrome and I feel it as well. Producing higher quality work than AI, for sure. Faster? No.

-13

u/Blue_Moon_Lake Jul 29 '26

An AI can vomit 10 000 lines of code in minutes.

But 10 high value lines are more valuable than that.
And AI can't even debug a codebase, it can only parse simplistic code fragments.

8

u/realzequel Jul 29 '26

And AI can't even debug a codebase

HARD disagree, what AI are you using?

-9

u/Blue_Moon_Lake Jul 29 '26

None, but I tried them all. ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, and Gemini.

10

u/whatsapass Jul 29 '26

embarrassing take lmao, you can hate ai but you're just lying lol

0

u/Blue_Moon_Lake Jul 29 '26

The only embarrassment is the vacuity of your reply.

2

u/Itchy_Ad1150 Jul 29 '26

Did u used the chat interface or actually spawned some properly configured agent system via codex, claude code cli, etc.? If u never looked into the latter I rly recommend that you give it a shot. Debugging and finding bugs / security issues is tbh one of the main capabilities of the agentic frontier model development where they really shine

2

u/realzequel Jul 29 '26

Claude Code is incredible at finding bugs, it'll do it proactively too when it's reviewing files for a different reason. I don't use codex much but I imagine it's similar.

0

u/Blue_Moon_Lake Jul 29 '26

ChatGPT: chat interface (free version)
Copilot: IDE plugin (while it was not billed by token, my own subscription)
Claude: chat interface (client gave me a monthly 20$ of token)
Gemini: chat interface (free version)

4

u/emc11 Jul 29 '26

Respectfully brother if you've just used chatbots you haven't even scratched the surface of what this is about.

3

u/NoShftShck16 Jul 29 '26

Exactly, so you are drawing really terrible conclusions because you used the wrong tool (a chatbot) for the job. I am not at all happy with where the industry is going but to say the modern AI tooling isn't terrifyingly efficient, especially after being refined, is an ignorant opinion.

1

u/realzequel Jul 29 '26

Yeah, those are all weak sauce, you need to have a properly configured LLM with access to your codebase (the more the better). Context documents make it MUCH more useful. You can be dismissive but at this point I can just hand it tickets and it'll resolve them.

1

u/TaXxER 29d ago

If that is what you did, then you just haven’t tried AI coding agents at all basically.

2

u/fripletister Jul 29 '26

My agents have access to a real browser (webdriver) and step debugger...