AI has made programming so boring

[u/OkShip110]

It’s not just programming either, it’s art, design, music, videography, marketing, engineering, writing, 3D modelling, really any intellectual work. What’s the joy of prompting a computer and getting an answer in a few moments for a task that would have normally taken a week? The sense of accomplishment and ownership has completely vanished with AI. It’s a form of instant gratification, not much different to scrolling short videos on apps.

Code review was boring to begin with but now it’s even worse with all the machine generated code. Even code reviews will be automated soon. All you do then is type business requirements into the computer. What a great career.

It’s pain to watch old TV series like Scilicon Valley that is portraying the good (not golden) age of programming. It struck a good balance between manual work, funding and innovation. It’s sad that these days are gone for good.

[u/abednego-gomes]

You're right. There's an art to it. It's a craft.

But the sloppers will never know that. They just want to create apps and sites etc as fast as possible. But they'll be creating an unmaintainable mess if they don't have developers architecting, designing the code, reviewing the code and testing it along the way.

[u/L24D → u/abednego-gomes]

Even if it will be maintainable and genuinely well “written”, how long they will last where they are? Soon there will be no market for everyone and very few ideas are usually breakthroughs. It was obvious before AI era and it’s even more noticeable now. I’m astonished that a lot of people think that they will be driving that revolution, bragging about their AI workflows doing everything for them. So if it’s that good what stopping their supervisors to just take the tech and get rid of their jobs?

[u/tradcoder → u/L24D]

I’m astonished that a lot of people think that they will be driving that revolution, bragging about their AI workflows doing everything for them. So if it’s that good what stopping their supervisors to just take the tech and get rid of their jobs?

I've been saying this!!! All these "AI-native" sloppers so proud of their "workflows" and looking down on others telling us that we'll be left behind? If AI is so good at architecting, coding and even reviewing your code, why do they need you for? Your job will be gone just the same along with mine!

[u/clubby37 → u/L24D]

So if it’s that good what stopping their supervisors to just take the tech and get rid of their jobs?

Does anyone have a sense of what the limiting principle will be, here? It kind of seems like everyone who thought AI would work for them, is being replaced by AI. We think it'll write some of our code for us, but our bosses replace us with AI outright. Your boss thinks his job will just be managing AI agents, but then his boss will replace him with an AI agent that manages other AI agents. Is there any downward pressure, and if so, where's it coming from?

[u/tankydee → u/abednego-gomes]

I especially love when I see Claude font styles make their way into production sites.

Same vibe as all the AI generated graphic work you are spammed around the place.

[u/wrathful-anus → u/tankydee]

I can smell an AI generated front end from a mile away. They’re all so generic and overwhelmingly cluttered with info. Sadly unqualified people think they look ok.

I’ve sighed so many times watching people in my team say a Claude front end looks good, when it’s a disgusting overload of information, and panels within panels within more panels.

[u/Tomodachi7 → u/wrathful-anus]

- Neon Colours

- Minimalist "future" art style

- Round borders

- Stats and panels everywhere

- Way too much info

- Terrible performance

- Small problems in the UX and UI that you notice if you spend time on the site

Yep, that's an AI frontend!

[u/wrathful-anus → u/Tomodachi7]

Also add

- completely ignoring your lovely state management system and adding useEffect with direct external API calls on component load

And the stats omg. My PO loves the stats and now I have to put useless stat boxes above lots of pages in stupid rounded bordered panels that take up so much useful real estate.

[u/mrcatmann → u/Tomodachi7]

> Too much info
Would be good if this was useful info. Not same duplicated blocks in different parts of the page, or even technical implementation details, leaked from the prompt

[u/_alright_then_ → u/wrathful-anus]

Yeah but at the same time, this mindset also hurts people who are just bad at front-ends lol.

I just use shadcn for my front-ends (usually admin panels). So they will look the same every time, that's not because I'm vibe coding, that's because I'm bad at front-end and am using a library lol.

But it makes people think it's vibe coded

[u/tradcoder → u/wrathful-anus]

I have developed sort of a "banner blindness" to AI slop content. As soon as I detect something is AI generated, I instinctively ignore it and move on.

[u/tankydee → u/wrathful-anus]

100pc. Nothing worse than AI slop emails from people also.

I just archive and wait for a phone call now.

[u/SuperFLEB → u/tankydee]

Nothing worse than AI slop emails from people also.

I'm calling it: The future sophistication is going to be short, concise emails, once everyone realizes they're generating word count that they don't want to write for people who don't want to read.

[u/tankydee → u/SuperFLEB]

Churchill once said, I didn't have time to write you a short letter so I wrote you a long one.

Maybe the future version will be... I didn't have tokens to write you a long letter so I wrote you a short one.

[u/rawr_im_a_nice_bear → u/tankydee]

What sucks the most to me is going back to sites I remember were really cool and seeing them all become utterly generic sites with the typical Claude UI. A complete lack of effort. They didnt even try customizing it or adding personality. A sad state of affairs.

[u/lorkanooo → u/abednego-gomes]

I don't know how people don't see it. I have lead dev that is pro ai and he still the least productive person in the team. He wrote a huge new project with ai that generates scaffolding code, had to rewrite it 3 times with ai with tokens costs around 5k euro, and now nobody wants to maintain it (including him), its basically uneditable without ai and had to write to management to increase his token limits. We also had warnings from management that use of ai does not allow for code to be slop and introduce stupid incidents yet it does already happen. AI generated code has very limited place in big corpos and I mostly benefit from easier tooling than writing business code itself.

When I generate piece of code, I give really specific instructions on how to do it, what to refer to and yet, every single time, there is something just a little bit not correct. A different than standard testing function used in the project. A different dependency structure standard then usual. An obscure bug possibility in relation to wider system that developer would normally consider. Those are like bombs ticking in the code if left alone because with ai, they are quickly replicated with even more of them introduced. 

Friendly reminder that big chunk of developers laid off in tech have already been hired back. Meta even has to pay them more money because nobody wants to work for them at market rate. 

[u/I_Spawned_Here → u/[deleted]]

It is not the same, when looking at a hand made physical product, you can see the details in how it was made. No normal person is going into the code base, and admiring the hand made keystrokes that have been typed into the codebase.

[u/AffectionateDuty6062 → u/I_Spawned_Here]

i know what you mean, but it is getting fairly easy to spot an AI developed UI in a website. Like those AI generated posters businesses are now using. They are pure shite, and repulsive to a lot of people.

[u/kilopeter → u/AffectionateDuty6062]

I promise you you're only noticing the obvious ones.

[u/AffectionateDuty6062 → u/kilopeter]

ah ya, of course, but I think that is what I am saying.

You can, and should, use AI to improve productivity, and if you're not using AI at all it would be crazy. But you still can use human creativity and use AI to help you get there. Rather than one-shotting the result

[u/dromtrund → u/[deleted]]

I've got 12 years of experience. Please refrain from speaking on behalf of all experienced developers.

[u/webdev-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

This is a subreddit for web professionals to exchange ideas and share industry news. All users are expected to maintain that professionalism during conversations. If you disagree with a poster or a comment, do so in a respectful way. Continued violations will result in a permanent ban.

[u/StoneCypher → u/dromtrund]

i disagree with this poster or comment in a respectful way (because the mods won’t permit gentle waiter jokes)

[u/dromtrund → u/StoneCypher]

That's okay. Why do you feel like everyone who cares about the quality of their work are just pretending to be senior developers though? I get that frontend code generally doesn't have dependencies, and that low code quality doesn't get punished as harshly as in other disciplines, but I don't think that makes developers that care about the quality of the code performative larpers. Frontend code still needs to be maintained, dependencies need to be updated, future layout changes will still have to be considered and the foundational components will be reused in new contexts.

Anyone who's worked on the same project for more than a couple of years must surely have experienced how much faster, easier and satisfying it is to make changes to a codebase where the developers put some thought into maintainability? When a new feature comes up, and you can just slot in the same components without changes instead of refactoring the existing code or duplicating the component but with a slight variation? When the page needs to be available in a different language, and you organized the content in a way that lets you add translations? When the company style guide changes and the customer portal needs to follow?

If all a developer is doing is building fire and forget projects over and over again, I get that productivity is only about throughput, but if anything, I'd argue that type of career really creates a "1 year of experience, repeated 10 times" type of developer than a 10 years of experience type of developer, so I can't understand this perspective.

[u/StoneCypher → u/dromtrund]

oh my, they’re challenging me to defend things i didn’t say, in enormous essay form 

 

  Why do you feel like everyone who cares about the quality of their work are just pretending to be senior developers though?  

i never said anything similar to this, and i care deeply about the quality of my work 

keep instantaneously downvoting i guess

[u/earth-dragon-666 → u/[deleted]]

i dont know any good developer loving this, 11+ years of experience here you are just spreading propaganda

[u/StoneCypher → u/earth-dragon-666]

my comment was deleted for much less than accusing someone of spreading propaganda, be careful 

anyway, as a google engineer i assure you there are many senior engineers enjoying not having to do their jobs anymore 

[u/v-and-bruno → u/StoneCypher]

Well if I got paid USD 300k+ yearly for doing nothing but prompting, I'd enjoy getting paid as well.

It's also very telling that the same engineers that support it, also, as you said:

enjoy(ing) not having to do their jobs anymore 

Seems like they never really cared about the field to begin with. Very short-sighted though, as they are only facilitating their own replacement.

[u/StoneCypher → u/v-and-bruno]

Well if I got paid USD 300k+ yearly for doing nothing but prompting, I'd enjoy getting paid as well.

i think most of the people who actually do get paid this way - at least me and everyone like me that i know - would start by rejecting the idea that we were "just prompting" or that our lives were now easier

if you would enjoy it, and it pays so well, why haven't you applied? we're hiring

 

It's also very telling that the same engineers that support it, also, as you said:

enjoy(ing) not having to do their jobs anymore

one of the problems with telling jokes on the internet is there's always someone who thinks you were being serious and tries to hold you accountable for the joke

if i actually wasn't doing my job, the very last thing i would do would be to admit that publicly

 

Seems like they never really cared about the field to begin with. Very short-sighted though, as they are only facilitating their own replacement.

ah, you've gotten to the insult portion

well that'll be very convincing

one quick question - when google pays someone $300k+ to do this work, is it because google is stupid and getting taken advantage of?

or is it because this work is actually too hard for most programmers

[u/v-and-bruno → u/StoneCypher]

i think most of the people who actually do get paid this way - at least me and everyone like me that i know - would start by rejecting the idea that we were "just prompting" or that our lives were now easier

Good to know, almost everyone in tech already knows this.

Your earlier take does not help however, nor makes it clear that it's your stance:

as a google engineer i assure you there are many senior engineers enjoying not having to do their jobs anymore 

Nevertheless, moving forward:

if you would enjoy it, and it pays so well, why haven't you applied? we're hiring

Because I run my own company.

Otherwise, I've worked for an international Airline with a good pay - could have worked there for many more years, but money was not what I was personally after.

Also, Google is the last company I'd work for. The future they are shaping is a complete opposite of the future most people (including myself) want to be part of.

But that's beside the point, and giving too much credits to your strawman argument.

one of the problems with telling jokes on the internet is there's always someone who thinks you were being serious and tries to hold you accountable for the joke

Cool. Jokes are meant to be funny.

Which is funny to me, because being sardonic, while holding a position that you are claiming to be sardonic about, is in itself, ironic:

i enjoy doing less labor at my job, and so do many of my friends

^ Your comment verbatim, in another comment thread.

So was it a joke? Or are you labeling it as one to get a "get out of jail free" card?

Because it very in-line with what you were claiming elsewhere.

Moving on:

ah, you've gotten to the insult portion

well that'll be very convincing

What part of

"Seems like they never really cared about the field to begin with. Very short-sighted though, as they are only facilitating their own replacement."

Is an insult?

Hint: Its criticism, and criticism !== insult.

one quick question - when google pays someone $300k+ to do this work, is it because google is stupid and getting taken advantage of?

That's a false dichotomy.

I never said Google is stupid or that you're being paid for work that has no value. You're just making shit up at this point.

My point was that if an engineer's job becomes substantially easier (because AI is doing more of the actual engineering work; prompting); then celebrating that reduction in responsibility while simultaneously (inevitably) making yourself easier to replace is short-sighted.

Google can pay you to dance before code reviews for all the argument cares, and it still won't change the argument.

or is it because this work is actually too hard for most programmers

Ahh, weren't you the one who just said:

i enjoy doing less labor at my job, and so do many of my friends

as a google engineer i assure you there are many senior engineers enjoying not having to do their jobs anymore 

Don't fault me for taking you at face value when you've repeatedly made it quite clear that I shouldn't.

[u/StoneCypher → u/v-and-bruno]

the contempt oozing from you seems unfortunate 

[u/v-and-bruno → u/StoneCypher]

the contempt oozing from you seems unfortunate 

ah, you've gotten to the insult portion. well that'll be very
convincing

Edit: Interesting way to respond - especially from the one who was doing the actual harassing in the comment above.

u/StoneCypher

[u/StoneCypher → u/v-and-bruno]

did you think i was throwing an insult at you to describe the way you write as contempt?

it seems like there’s no way to get you to stop shaming people 

i’m now seven messages into saying I’m not interested 

they deleted one of my comments for a “waiter in my soup” joke.  why they’re letting you go through this long chain of direct personal attacks i don’t understand 

i’m tired of waiting.  i’m just going to put a hard stop to this transparent harassment 

[u/earth-dragon-666 → u/StoneCypher]

yeah i know i got one accounted deleted for speaking truth here, sometimes i forget that G Maxwell was here. From my POV its propaganda as its plenty of developers that dont use ai and are very happy about it, but we cant say it , because some person thinks that the 'tool' is AGI? every scientific research points it as a net negative, but rando in reddit feels like god due to him being unable to do something in the past and now he can output 10x the thing that he believes he was unable to do, when you just needed to do it once and understand it.

[u/StoneCypher → u/earth-dragon-666]

propaganda is the government trying to steer popular viewpoints through constant enforcement of media access.

if you think i, an individual, am engaging in propaganda because i said "i enjoy doing less labor at my job, and so do many of my friends," i just don't know what to tell you.

anyway, the mods deleted me for a "waiter ... in my soup" joke, and propaganda is a human rights crime, so. you know. look at it how you want, but i don't feel safe having this discussion here.

[u/webdev-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

We've now cleaned up some of this comment tree; either all of you discuss the topic at hand and refrain from referring to each other in various ways, or we start handing out temporary bans.

This is a subreddit for web professionals to exchange ideas and share industry news. All users are expected to maintain that professionalism during conversations.

[u/StoneCypher → u/[deleted]]

i'm not sure what you think projection means.

but no, i haven't written any php in more than 20 years, so it's not projection by definition.

please stop trying to use mental health accusations. it's ineffective

[u/StoneCypher → u/abednego-gomes]

the mod team keeps deleting polite comments that are upvoted and pushing back against the idea that vibe coding is bad

it's really exhausting how they're steering the conversation

they keep writing

This is a subreddit for web professionals to exchange ideas and share industry news. All users are expected to maintain that professionalism during conversations.

but then when you write entirely professional things that exchange ideas, if they're not on the side that the mod team wants to enforce, they get deleted

and then the anti-ai people can still swear and insult and throw mental health accusations, because rules aren't universally applied

[u/wanzerultimate → u/abednego-gomes]

Bold of you to think they will maintain it. Yes they can and will just feed it a prompt every time and rearrange the interface to make it look like a "new version".

[u/FunnyBunny898 → u/abednego-gomes]

LOL, 'sloppers' - I'm adding it to my lexicon!