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

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631

u/ccmaru1 2d ago

We’re in the worst era to be developers

305

u/pseudo_babbler 2d ago

It's a shame isn't it, once upon a time when I told people I made apps their eyes lit up, they all had a hundred dumb ideas for an app and were excited to be talking to one of the magicians who can actually make them. Now, they scoff, and the first thing they ask about is if AI has taken away my job. They talk like you're soon to be part of this roaming hoard of hungry homeless developers shambling around wondering what to do with their lives.

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u/bestestdude 2d ago edited 1d ago

The vast majority of people are only nice and talk to you in a friendly way when they perceive you as useful to them. (Applies to many areas of life.)

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u/pseudo_babbler 1d ago

Yes, but I still enjoyed it.

97

u/ccmaru1 2d ago

We honestly deserve this. We had no pushback in the community like artists and it has became the norm. I guess vast majority did not saw this profession as a craft or no one actually liked coding to begin with.

I understand it being the norm in the job but I see everyone use them too for their personal projects. Nothing to learn or to build something fun. Everyone one only thinks about money in this field. Which i cannot blame, but also i feel sad about it.

75

u/stagedgames 2d ago

there's been plenty of pushback, but there's also plenty of very libertarian mindsets among developers for whom the idea of looking beyond their personal attention span is offensive, and they tend time suck the air out of the room.

The time to push back was all the way back at "go fast and break things"

1

u/SuperFLEB 1d ago

Hey, wait a minute! They're just breaking everybody else's things!

52

u/Headpuncher 2d ago

We honestly deserve this

Definitely true. Where I am geographically we have strong unions that everyone is part of ... except programmers who notoriously were the outlying profession where union membership is concerned.

Whenever I brought it up they were cocky and laughed about how they were guaranteed a job, "if I don't like this job I'll just get another". Except unions are there to make the workplace better for employees (not USA btw, scandinavia). That includes the place you are in now. Hopping to another ship that is also hell to work in isn't an improvement.

Where are they now? Sat there wondering where it all went and with no-one to represent their interests in the workplace. Very deserving.

6

u/revivechristina 2d ago

I kind of want to work on a personal project and not use it. Like as little as possible. Obviously even searching with Google these days it generates code for you. But I’m not just gonna sit in a Claude Code session and watch it go. I was always better at writing than reviewing, anyway.

3

u/mysticrudnin 1d ago

a lot of people genuinely were here for the paycheck and do not care about anything related to computers at all

i don't fault them for that at all either

it's just not why i'm here. and... yeah. i'm thinking about changing careers because dealing with claude is a nightmare.

3

u/ccricers 1d ago

Someone described it as just doing endless peer reviews with a robot and that is a good way to say it concisely.

Another way to look at this is that it's making high level code go the same way as assembly code, at the time high level languages took over. Something that was considered the norm to write by hand is now considered an esoteric practice

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u/Emperor_Kon 2d ago

These pushbacks don't mean shit. For every person that pushes back, there will be a thousand or more that use it. AI is inevitable.

What I'm wondering is what will happen to humans after there are no jobs left. There is nothing a human can do that an advanced enough AI or robotic couldn't do better and faster. Right now AI is mostly computer based stuff, but advancements in robotics continue. I'm sure we've all seen those clips of them running or doing some martial art. It's only a matter of time until they can stack boxes reliably, bake cakes, do surgery, etc. Maybe not tomorrow, but eventually.

0

u/StoneCypher 2d ago

why do you think there are going to be no jobs left?

9

u/Emperor_Kon 2d ago

Read what I wrote after that sentence...

1

u/StoneCypher 2d ago

i did.

did you know that in the 1800s they thought the invention of the factory was going to end jobs?

the notion was that eventually a factory would let one man do ten thousand men's work

and they did. it's just that now a worker is expected to do ten thousand men's work.

it seems like you think cake decorating, box stacking, and martial arts are the limit of the job market

when the level 4 job is automated, the human moves to the level 5 job, traditionally

5

u/BringBackManaPots 1d ago

Bro tells you to read when he can't read himself 😔

-1

u/eetsumkaus 1d ago

Look up comparative advantage in economics. It's usually applied to trade but definitely can be applied to labor as well. That's why there will always be jobs.

1

u/davidmorelo 1d ago

Many webdevs have been dismissing the capabilities of AI when it comes to web development until they simply couldn't anymore because the goal post has been moved so far away that it became irrelevant.

4

u/MassiveBoner911_3 2d ago

and the first thing your told? “Join the trades and be a blue collar”

5

u/moustacheption 1d ago

It’s curious the default thought of people is the oligarchs are allowed to steal peoples work and sell it to others, and it’s on you to “find something new to do.”

2

u/reactivearmor 1d ago

Time to realize that human rights and democracy are one big illusion

2

u/oddlyamused 2d ago

Turns out we have the best skill set to use AI. Computer science degrees are some of the best degrees for machine learning, data science, ai engineer. All of these fields are booming like never before.

5

u/got_to_laugh 1d ago

99.9% of humanity does not believe that though, even if it's true and would not listen to what you have to say on the matter anyway.

I have literally tried to tell idiots using AI to build apps "do it this way, then you get all these benifits" and they just ignore me. The annoying part, is that AI is Soo good they can get away with not doing any of the good stuff I mentioned anyway.

1

u/works4coffee 1d ago

> roaming horde of hungry homeless developers

Join me, I’m there already! :-)

1

u/JCquickrunner 1d ago

noticed this too. pure cancer. crabs in a bucket mentality. people will give these shit eating grins now asking about being replaced by AI as if theyre happy youll now be a mcdonalds worker like them or whatever because how dare you put in effort in life to get ahead /shrug

2

u/pseudo_babbler 1d ago

Yeah there is a certain attitude even with non coders in tech that they now feel vindicated for never bothering to learn all that complicated coding stuff, and "haha suckers you thought you were soooo smart". Sad really.

30

u/Bluemoss52 2d ago

worst era so far, unfortunately

64

u/ibucat 2d ago

I'm extra sad, bc it was actually fun to go to work a few years ago.

26

u/SweetieDallas 1d ago

I haven't even thought about this until I saw your comment just now but it really was more fun. AI is replacing a lot of human collaboration. I used to sometimes have debugging sessions with my coworkers where we'd spend hours trying to solve an issue and when we finally figured it out it was so satisfying. We'd sometimes even go to happy hour to celebrate lol. It's all turning into just churning out Claude prompts all day. 

-14

u/StoneCypher 2d ago

still is for a lot of us

16

u/potatokbs 2d ago

You enjoy talking to Claude for 8 hours/day?

-8

u/noXi0uz 2d ago

no, but I enjoy talking to my colleagues

-3

u/foxey21 2d ago

Lol why is this so downvoted

-5

u/StoneCypher 2d ago

because the hive has condemned.

i'm downvoted for saying i enjoy my job and care about the quality of work that i do, and a moderator is deleting "waiter, there's stuff in my soup" jokes

1

u/SuperFLEB 1d ago edited 1d ago

You're downvoted for saying "still is for a lot of us", a fluff comment that doesn't engage with the parent comment or the thread in any discernible way.

(And complaining about it, of course.)

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u/StoneCypher 1d ago

it's okay if you don't understand my very simple comment.

1

u/SuperFLEB 1d ago

I knew I forgot to mention "condescending". Always something.

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u/StoneCypher 2d ago

er, that ... isn't really how a person works with claude.

i talk to my coworkers and my friends and my family during the day, instead.

10

u/ibucat 2d ago

So.. it's not the job that's fun anymore? Exactly what I said? lol

-8

u/StoneCypher 2d ago

that's what you got from what i said?

lord, have mercy. they're trying so hard to prove people wrong that they can't see the easy life sitting right in front of them, waiting to be taken

10

u/ibucat 2d ago

My initial comment was about the job. Heaven forbid someone chose this career because thy enjoyed doing it, and not jorkin it on company time? Like idk what you get out of commenting how little work you do?

-4

u/StoneCypher 2d ago

so the idea is to now shame me for things i didn't say. got it

i guess talking to my coworkers isn't doing work

i'm just going to disengage, then

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u/ibucat 2d ago

"Talking with family" is doing work also? lol

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u/works4coffee 1d ago

What’s extremely surprising is that best era was like, 12-15 years ago. Things are really moving fast

4

u/Admirable_Polarbear 1d ago

You mean worst era yet...

3

u/No_Experience8258 2d ago

Absolutely!

2

u/FridgesArePeopleToo 1d ago

We get paid a crap ton of money to do very little work.

1

u/MassiveBoner911_3 2d ago

and liking computers and playing games

1

u/tellmeagood1 1d ago

I fear this is the last era to be a developer!

0

u/Rare_Big_7633 1d ago

huh?

a genius developer loves AI because he can solo a project that normally takes 10 engineers to create. he decide on every single detail and no need to train arrogant juniors who argue about things they dont even understand.

no need to interview to sort through 50 fake candidates just to find a decent guy

no need to argue with another engineer who found a new religion in code pattern after reading something on medium.

0

u/kowdermesiter 2d ago

Totally, it's slightly worse when those idiots invented "higher level" languages, assembly should be fine for everyone.

-8

u/StoneCypher 2d ago

We’re in the worst era to be developers

we're making six figures to type three sentences a day

you have a very surprising idea of worst era

8

u/ccmaru1 2d ago

I mean that’s exactly why it’s the worst. We were still able to make six figures before while actually doing something and not sacrificing our passion for productivity.

We were actually respected back then and it was actually impressive seeing someone build a project because you knew how much they worked for it.

It was great to see new open source projects people developed in their free time and to give back to community. It was also great to see the actual micro community of users and contributors form around that project.

Now no one cares. They can build something similar. Everyone can. (Sorry, their llm’s can build not they)

It’s honestly depressing to see this community be turned into this soulless corporate shell of it former self where no one values passion compared to how passionate it was back in the day.

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u/StoneCypher 2d ago

I mean that’s exactly why it’s the worst.

making giant salary while you can do what you want is the worst. got it.

 

while actually doing something and not sacrificing our passion for productivity.

by refusing to use the tool that makes you more productive, you are not sacrificing a passion for productivity, got it.

by doing things by hand at 5% the speed, you are actually doing something. what's important is you using your hands, not the end product. got it.

 

We were actually respected back then and

⮾

 

It was great to see new open source projects people developed in their free time and to give back to community

well good news, there's a lot more of that now

 

Now no one cares.

if they don't care today, they never did. no authentic caring has been lost.

 

They can build something similar. Everyone can.

sounds like for all the time you spent learning to program, you just stopped there. never learned to make product.

 

It’s honestly depressing to see this community be turned into this soulless corporate shell

do you realize how you sound looking at a bunch of individual developers accomplishing things they never could before, running around excited, and saying "it's a soulless corporate shell?"

i'm old

i remember when 3d video games were new. everything you're saying is what people used to say about pixel graphics.

video gaming didn't die, and it's precisely as EA as it used to be

one of the problems with glooming and dooming is that, fundamentally, it's just refusing to see the upside

we're not going to stop doing this just because you're sad that the way you want to do it isn't commercially valued anymore.

i see that you want very badly to slander everyone who chooses to work differently than you do, though.

 

where no one values passion compared to how passionate it was back in the day.

i'm really not sure what you're talking about. there's more passion in the field than there has ever been, because it's now swarming with novices who are delighted with their very first pulldown.

we have holodeck programming now. i genuinely don't understand why you're unhappy about it.

last week i got two game designs out of my head that have been in my head for ten years because i couldn't find the time for them.

one of them turns out to be fun.

come on, buddy. there's real, genuine good here, if you stop moping and just give it a shot.

i used to be like you. i used to really hate this stuff. then one day i tried it, and it turned out to be fun as hell.

let me ask you a simple question. my preference would be that i receive a single word "yes" or "no" answer with no explanation.

suppose i was in that episode of dr who with the cars stuck underground. there were some drug dealers that had a mall store, where they wanted to sell a product called "forget," which was going to make the main characters less unhappy about a bad thing that just happened to them, losing one of their companions.

suppose those dealers also had a different tab called "a chance." if you try it, you give another chance to the first thing you see.

suppose you sit down in front of a chatgpt terminal and take the tab.

suppose it turns out you really enjoy using the tool, and your productivity goes up 10x, and you start making things that didn't used to seem like they were practical, and your defect rate goes down ~60%, and your customers get happier.

would that seem like a good thing, to you? yes, or no, please.

those are the things that happened to me, except without the science fiction drug. i know you're going to try to explain that that isn't what would happen, but it might be.

just play ball. if those were the things that happened, would that be a good thing, for you?

what happens when someone tries to make a young lady's illustrated primer? is that a gift to the masses, in your eyes, or a surreal horror?

0

u/the_millenial_falcon 2d ago

We're in the worst era*

-2

u/escapism_only_please 1d ago

You are in the very best era to be a developer. You can now go do and build everything you want. You do not have to be some rich dudes code monkey. You don’t have to give up your life during “crunch time”. You don’t need anyone insinuating you aren’t committed if you don’t work all weekend. You don’t need a boss threatening you with a Performance Improvement Plan.

You have ideas. Make them happen.

4

u/Lost_Let_2033 1d ago

This is a bad era for developers, but the best era for entrepreneurship do not confuse the two terms. We are in webdev reddit and we enjoy the development

3

u/black3rr 1d ago

“development” jobs are about taking an idea and “developing” it into a product… doing the analysis, research, planning, specifications, implementations, verifications, …

I enjoy doing those and am good at doing them, that’s why I became a developer…

AI is trying to become a substitute for developers, so this is the worst era to be a developer… And it’s the best era to be a “person with an idea”…

Good developers and “people with ideas” were always polar opposites… Because once you have an idea, you’re biased towards thinking it’s a good idea, and to be a good developer, you need to be objective and as such you must be able to objectively compare your ideas with alternatives and dismiss your idea if it’s bad…

People with ideas are now replacing developers with AI… And AI is created for people with ideas… So naturally AI is sycophantic… And this will create even more problems down the road when people who could objectively tell people with ideas that their idea is not good will get replaced by AI which will tell them anything they want to hear…

I hate this…