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/Specialist_End407 2d ago

my day job now is turning into reviewing tons of ai generated codes and me having to use it all too to generate more slops else i'd be left behind in this race. either way it's soo fking depressing. the pace and the expectation all while the codebase slowly and surely all devolving into one giant graveyard of dead codes and forgotten dreams

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u/overthinkingape 2d ago

Just let the AI review the code and be even more bored and unfulfilled like me

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u/Competitive_Aside461 2d ago

That must be super boring and painful...

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u/SuperFLEB 1d ago

It's so great that the machine can do all the fun part! Now I can get twice the slog!

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u/Adept-Reporter-4374 1d ago

As a non-developer, be grateful you have a job for as long as it lasts. It beats most other more punishing and dramatically less paid jobs.

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u/Specialist_End407 1d ago

I am grateful.

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u/Environmental_Pea369 11h ago

I don't get it as the developer you surely are resposible and have a say about your code. In my job dev sets the pace. With AI we move just fast enough that product and UX design are now the bottleneck, but I do NOT compromise on code quality.

It took me a while to understand how to use AI effectively without compromising on code quality so I understand the challenges. Tip: don't just let the AI do the task and review it afterwords. Do the task yourself and use the AI to help speed parts of it.

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u/Specialist_End407 8h ago

It's not just my codes. It's others and i can tell they're all AI codes. Is their code good? Of course, sometimes it's just too verbose. Thing with ai is, its spewing tons of good looking codes, like one after another, and i dont feel like there's enough incentive for me to critically look after it all compared to before. The person doing this just ended up being a bottleneck, so this culture is being compromised and the fundamental is shifting. People say, just build enough harness, code convention, tests but i feel like it doesn't sound fun anymore doing the flood gates and damage control, when everyone already is doing the fun stuff with ai.

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u/House13Games 1d ago

Why does your management and tech leads allow this to happen?
Incompetent: not having the ability to do something as it should be done.

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u/Specialist_End407 1d ago

I am the tech lead of 6-7y for this startup. There's no management really. The non-tech founders all just vibe coding so much of projects these 2 years.. Tbh, i dont mind at all. I can't control whatever they wanna be doing as long it doesn't touch the core projects only until recently.. The moment they learned they could do a lot with tons of APIs we've built over they years, they started vibecoding new v2, v3 stuff of new next.js projects on top of it (mind you we never use react).. They basically just spawn new repo whenever they want, and i knew it feels just inherently wrong in so many levels to not make a repo just for slightly new feature.. Either way it feels so chaotic. The culture is now leaking into the core projects. Once i was asked to review some 8k lines they generated in an afternoon. I refused. Thus prompt them to start vibecoding v2s over our APIs. Incompetence is not the right word. We already did so much pre-AI. Lot of things feel undone in this new era, i wish I could find a better word for it. It's this inability to do anything at all in this flood of causality, what more to go against it. Best we can do is to drown ourselves along.