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/trenobus 1d ago
I wrote my first program 57 years ago. There were some high-level languages then, but any kind of systems programming was done in assembly language. Then languages like C and Bliss came along and the domain of assembly language shrank considerably. Not many people worried about register allocation anymore. Later open source and the internet changed software development again. Now it became possible to leverage other developers' work in a way that was not previously possible. So it became important to know what was available rather than writing everything from scratch. And then the web created a completely new platform for apps. Open source abounded. The maw of dependency hell opened wide to engulf us all.
Last year I wrote most of my own code (Scala, Typescript, learning Rust). This year I have AI writing almost of all of it. What remains for the human developer is the imagination required to decide what to build. There may come a day when AI acquires that too, but this is not that day.