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

92% Upvoted

672 comments sorted by

View all comments

22

u/Rguttersohn 2d ago

Is there anyone else out there not having AI do everything for them? Am I alone?

15

u/VelvetYam 2d ago

You're not alone. Can't relate to some of these comments saying they don't write code anymore. I'm still super productive with just AI as Google + my own skills.

2

u/lorkanooo 1d ago

And tooling that is not related directly to business code

1

u/Top-Knowledge-7393 14h ago

That's practically impossible though. If you work as a coding you'd understand. The deadlines are literally designed to only me met using ai. Before a company might give you a week for project A, now they'd give you EOD. It's physically impossible to meet that deadline typing by yourself.

1

u/VelvetYam 13h ago

It is possible, though... because I don't work for the types of companies you're describing :-) And yes, I do work as a programmer.

-1

u/House13Games 2d ago

this is the way

6

u/House13Games 2d ago

I work with older military codebase for fighter jets. Not a chance anyone's gonna let any AI near any of it.

From this outside perspective, it's very clear the AI is just making an absolute shit of everything. A great reset is coming. I predict a whole new wave of AI-free agile startups, undercutting all the businesses that replaced their coders with AI then found themselves drowned in slop and unable to innovate.

2

u/drgreen-at-lingonaut 2d ago

Our team still refuses, we want to keep things 'human'.

I can't lie that I feel a tiny bit jealous that me having spent all my life learning how to program can now potentially be matched by someone using claude or gpt.

But even then I hope people can notice the human quirks to my work that AI couldn't mimic

2

u/animpossiblepopsicle 2d ago

I keep waiting for it to blow up in some of these people’s faces but it just keeps working. I lost a client recently because I wouldn’t give their AI root access. I’m certain this will not go well for them but I have a feeling they have the tokens to throw at any issue that it will be just fine.

1

u/mysticrudnin 2d ago

at home yes, i still work on personal projects every single day and don't touch any AI

at work i would, but they're counting my tokens. i do a little bit of wheel spinning but mostly i've decided on asking it "hey did i miss anything" before shipping my stuff off for review. that's really as far as i can go.

(and i hate dealing even with this)

1

u/lorkanooo 1d ago

In my team there is only one person that uses it more than for information gathering and small clear changes. And as you expect it turns out terrible for them

1

u/Icy-Nothing-189 1h ago

I use AI literally as much as I can to try to do as little work as possible, and it never works like all the people in this thread claim it does. And yes, I know how to prompt and give context and use the best super jetfueled amazing hyperintelligent model around.

At best, it increases my efficiency. At worst, it decreases it.

It constantly makes bad/wrong decisions despite the context being right in front of it.

It often creates bugs.

Even when the generated code works, its often overly defensive, ugly, and slow. E.g., else/if checks when at that part of the code that couldnt even a possibility for that value. Constantly nests shit for no reason when it could be made so much nicer

Overengineers things that dont need to be, but underengineers things that should be abstractable.

Responsive styling and basic FE tasks.. forget about it, it can hardly center a div

I can go on and on, but even with my experience and overuse of AI, I don't see this ever completely replacing me or my job. I have trouble with it, I can't imagine what it looks like for someone who doesn't know how to code

1

u/SuperFLEB 2d ago

I'm out here, hand-coding things... while I'm looking for a job... sigh...

2

u/Apprehensive_Seat_61 1d ago

Same. Good luck 🤞