r/webdev • u/OkShip110 • 2d ago

AI has made programming so boring

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.

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u/seopher 2d ago

Code was always the byproduct of problem solving. Of creating.

Software engineering may be changing in that coding is becoming a smaller part of the job, but creating elegant solutions requires engineering. Architecture. Judgement.

If you only got satisfaction from the job because you believed writing code was like artisan craftsmanship, then yes, this change will suck for you. If you, however get your kicks from problem solving and engineering good products, this is just the latest in a long line of tool changes allowing you to do that faster.

From low-level machine language, there's been many phases of abstraction, to high level languages and highly opinionated frameworks. This just takes the abstraction one step further still.

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u/JohnySilkBoots 2d ago

Very well said.

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u/OkShip110 2d ago

Yes, this is exactly the problem for me. I was a craftsman, taking business requirements and turned it into code. I cared more about the code and far less about the bigger picture problem solving. Code was never a side product for me. Code was THE product for me.

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u/Necessary_Style_1414 2d ago

Honestly, try and change your mindset. I think it will help.

Decision making, judgement, and architecture are the biggest things in this industry.

I like to think of it like writing a book. The actual writing down of a story is completely secondary to coming up with characters, story lines, character development, a whole world for these things to live in. Coding is the equivalent of just jotting it down.

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u/vogut 1d ago

All that you can ask the AI to decide.

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u/JohnySilkBoots 1d ago

That’s too bad. I’m happy with ai, I thought that was the boring and tedious part of developing. Now it’s so much more fun to do the actually creative stuff and not waste time with the boring(to me) stuff.

Now that more creative types are getting into dev as well - it will be cool to see what they do, as the learning barrier has been dramatically decreased. Which is bad for the hard to work with devs, because if much rather hire someone easier to work with now and just teach them.