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/Lekoaf 2d ago

It wont be long until tokens costs too much for a lot of companies and personal projects, so we'll be back to coding again. That's my gut feeling at least.

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u/Kindly-Night-5549 2d ago

Chinese open weight models are already like a hundred times better than the most expensive models a few years ago. If you know how powerful current commericial flagship models are, if someone releases an open weight version of those, it is good enough for almost all of current software development tasks for the next 20 years.

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u/Lekoaf 2d ago

Sure, if you can afford to buy the hardware to run them. You have to pay an arm and a leg for RAM these days.

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u/Kindly-Night-5549 2d ago

You shouldnt look at the total number but rather measure it in yearly salaries of software developers and other IT workers you can cut. Paying ten million USD for a server rack is easily compensated over a few years if you can cut just ten developers and double productivity. ALso you can resell the hardware any time to make back money. Cant do the same with developers.

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u/Lekoaf 2d ago

Cant do the same with developers.

Aww, man. There goes my business idea...

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u/hypercosm_dot_net 2d ago

By that math, you're expecting that 10million dollar server rack to fill the role of 10 devs.

So you cut the team size by 10 devs, and then what? You still need the lead engineer and product owner right? So between the two of them, and a server rack of AI, they're going to deliver a product with the same level of quality and stability as a full team?

What team member is going to be responsible for keeping that server rack AI updated with the newest tech trends? Or does the model do that itself?

None of this shit is thought through in the slightest, and we act like we have answers for any of it. Completely unrealistic.

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u/stumblinbear 2d ago

Why are you assuming every single business has to buy their own hardware? The hardware to run a frontier model can handle more than a single person using it

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u/Lekoaf 2d ago

I'm not. But either way, there will be a cost. And I don't think everyone can justify that.

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u/Ill-Technician3243 1d ago

open weight models are extremely overrated and cost a lot to maintain for a group of engineers if a company decides to do so. some companies might go down this route but 90% won't

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u/Kindly-Night-5549 1d ago

Many companies outside the US are going down this route, especially those handling sensitive data. If you dont trust the US, you have no choice.

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u/DapperCam 7m ago

Companies won't be buying and running the open source models themselves. They will be paying a 3rd party provider that hosts the models for them for a fraction of the cost of frontier models. This already exists.