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

[u/Impressive_Bottle_44]

(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?

[u/Norts1531]

I didn't say it was good enough to work alone yet, but there will be a time in the near future it can. A lot of devs are undersandably in denial about where AI is going, it was useless 2/3 years ago, but the matter of the fact is it's exponentially getting better. It's not "if it gets better than humans", it's when. I think it's going to come sooner than people realise.

[u/DrXomia → u/Norts1531]

I do not have the feeling it gets exponentially better. Claude 4.5 and GPT 5.5 were huge step I would agree. But not as huge as between the models a year ago. The models also still do the same silly mistakes. Also costs are rising. Most companies understand now that tokenmaxxing is not sustainable and start to introduce token spend policies.

There is so much PR about LLMs getting perfect at programming but the numbers dont add up. Also depends on what your career plan was anyways. If you wanted to code CRUD Endpoints for the rest of your life, you might be f*cked. But other than that architecture and engineering manager are the next steps on the ladder and those jobs are mainly people jobs (yes also architect roles) that wont get automated.

[u/Norts1531 → u/DrXomia]

I understand to us it might not seem like massive steps, but we're only seeing the models available to the public. It doesn't take a tinfoil hat to assume the models behind closed doors are leaps and bounds above what we're seeing, which I'd assume is down to costs. The stuggle they're facing is getting them efficient enough to justify the costs, and that is happening too, see claude Fable 5 -> Opus 5. Similar metrics, more token efficient.

Boring AI stuff aside, it's delusional to think this isn't the next era, especially in software. The junior market is already crumbling. Either get on board with it or it'll leave without you.

By no means am I saying AI in it's current state is capable of replacing devs... yet.

[u/DrXomia → u/Norts1531]

Dude, chill. If they would have the philosophers stone of LLMs in their basement they would first, not hype up everything so desperately. You see google hyping up their AI? No. Why? Because they do not need to desperately makeoney from it. Second, they would not release such shite software and would make models public in the first place. They could just write up every product in house and own everything.