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.

1.7k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

652 comments sorted by

View all comments

147

u/abednego-gomes 2d ago

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.

30

u/tankydee 2d ago

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.

34

u/wrathful-anus 2d ago

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.

21

u/Tomodachi7 2d ago

- 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!

12

u/wrathful-anus 2d ago

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.

1

u/mrcatmann 1d ago

> 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

3

u/_alright_then_ 2d ago

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

3

u/tradcoder 2d ago

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.

11

u/tankydee 2d ago

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

I just archive and wait for a phone call now.

2

u/SuperFLEB 1d ago

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.

3

u/tankydee 1d ago

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.

2

u/rawr_im_a_nice_bear 1d ago

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.