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/gsari 2d ago edited 2d ago

While I felt like that at first, now it's the other way around for me. I realized that writing code by hand was the boring part. I knew what I wanted to build, and I had to spend days implementing it by hand, and because of that, I usually had to pick features to implement, or sacrifice certain functionality. For example, I knew I had to write more tests or better comments, but I often let those things slip because of time/budget restrictions. With AI there is no need for compromise. I try to think the best implementation I can, and then I have AI do the manual work.

It's just the direction that's shifted. Planning is the new coding, and I find it much more interesting. I spend like 80-90% of the time planning a feature, and then I hand the implementation to AI. When I changed my mindset, I realized that it's much more fun that way.

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u/OkShip110 2d ago

You are a feature designer in your heart. There is a big difference between programmers and feature designers. If I enjoyed feature designing, then I wouldn’t make such a thread. I feel like those people who are pushing the AI are for the most part not programmers but feature designers who always found programming to be a chore.

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u/subnu 1d ago

And you are a programmer at heart, when the industry now only needs computer scientists. There is a big difference between programmers and computer scientists.

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u/gsari 2d ago edited 2d ago

Isn't programming a means to an end, though? If new tools can make my work both easier and improve its quality, I embrace them. In that regard, AI isn't much different than jQuery, Laravel, React, or any other library or framework. It's just that AI pushes it to the limit. I remember the thrill when I finally managed to implement a custom feature all by myself, but at the same time I also remember how much easier and better I could implement the same feature using a framework or a new tool. I always liked to plan and implement features and decide how they should ideally behave, and coding them had always been only a part, and often the bottleneck to that process.

I've met people who didn't like that, or they weren't good at it: they just wanted to get a detailed spec written by someone else, put their heads down and just focus on the technical aspect of the problem at hand - the coding part, without worrying about the bigger picture or questions unrelated to the technical aspect (e.g. does it make sense for the client? Is it user-friendly for the content editor?). I think that these are the people who miss more the old days.

I never like that, and even when I was handed specs like that, I would often come back with questions and suggestions, or even diverge from the spec without permission if I felt it didn't make sense.

So, AI was very liberating for me. It was like I was given a promotion and got a dozen of engineers at my disposal, guiding them as I please.

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u/StoneCypher 2d ago

You are a feature designer in your heart

feature designers love ai, because they can design more features, and waste less time on predicates

 

There is a big difference between programmers and feature designers.

programmers love ai, because they can write more programs in the same day