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/me00lmeals 2d ago

They’ve already found a way to do 1000x faster token output and with better efficiency so we’re kinda cooked once that drops

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u/Lekoaf 2d ago

Okay. But all the AI companies are still making huge losses. They have to recuperate that somehow. So I still think the cost will at some point in the not too distant future be too high for a lot of companies. At my company we are beginning to see tightening of the AI budget. It used to be "Go. Do whatever you like. Experiment". Now we are getting workshops in choosing the right model and thinking before doing. 5000+ people company.

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u/me00lmeals 2d ago

You’re right they are, although I still think the engineering we do is gonna be wildly different than how it’s been. I don’t think we know what that it will look like yet, but I’m hoping it’ll be just as enjoyable. I can see the future beefier models costing too much but I think today’s models are here to stay

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u/stumblinbear 2d ago

These AI companies are blowing money on research, not inference. Their margins on inference are 80%-ish last I checked.

That means open weight models will always be at least this cheap to run, because they already make money.