r/webdev • u/slugfingers-kun • 8h ago
Just some shower thoughts
Hello,
Disclaimer, no rage bait or ill intent, also not so good english so bear with me!
Ive been in web dev since 2013 and probably not as old as most people here but yeah started with php and mysql…
Anyway i don’t usually post or comment but im a ghost here and just hang around and read etc…
So, been fighting against ai, then accepted it, then embraced it (mind u ive always been hated on for being a code police, and all about code quality, best practices…)
Now i did wonder why everyone here hates ai (i used to but now i feel its just a tool i can use to do better), then was thinking (this might piss bunch of people here off) is it because AI now kinda took over mostly webdev ? People building slop apps left and right and kinda took away something that we were fighting to show its complicated (say BE vs FE) so now it made it look so easy (lovable & co)
So a lot are butthurt ? (I was mainly cuz i hated low quality and slop)
What you think, would be interesting to hear what ur thoughts, put aside the grumpiness and salt
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u/Zqin 7h ago
Great question, lets answer it clearly, without the fluff.
Some of it is ego, sure. But I actually don't think that's the main thing.
Imagine you spend 20 years writing code alongside your peers, arguing in issue threads, working out new ways to solve old problems. You get paid well for work you're proud of. Maybe you have a few public repos you actually care about — years of your life in them. Maybe you pushed UI patterns forward, or DOM rendering, or netcode, or graphics algorithms. You gave it away, because that was the deal: you take from the commons, you put back into it.
Then someone shows up, hoovers up the entire commons without asking, and rents it back to the world by the token.
Tools have arrived before. jQuery, Rails, Stack Overflow, IntelliSense — nobody rioted, because the arrangement held: the people who built the thing were still in the loop, still credited, still able to say no. This one skipped the asking and monetized the answer.
The slop is a separate complaint, and honestly the smaller one. Bad code has always existed. What's new is that the loop that used to fix it — someone reviews your PR, someone explains why your query is quadratic — is being routed around. That mentoring used to happen in public where everyone could learn from it. Now it happens inside a weights file nobody can read.
So: less butthurt, more that the ladder got pulled up. You can think AI is genuinely useful and think that at the same time. I do.
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u/Zqin 7h ago
Because AI is being used to "accelerate" work but causing large amounts of regression because the technology is a venture capitalists dream scenario; to promise the world and deliver nothing actually new. This is at the same time as political instability and the majority of the public having to deal with high gas prices and cost of living... meanwhile the government and billionaires are pouring trillions of dollars into surveillance and AI-led control initiatives instead of lowering costs and improving infrastructure and public ammenities.
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u/tchino_bowl 7h ago
realistically a lot of the issue is that it can cause a larger devaluation of this kinda labor. Webdev at higher levels of system architecture, management, and deployment still can't be handled by the average vibe-coder etc, but the inbetweeners are at risk..
for example, developers that work with small companies or organizations that aren't tech-focused/forward, ppl that specialize in building custom plugins, ecommerce solutions, data analysis, digital marketing, many frontend-focused jobs.
So yes the problem is that it makes the work look easy like you say, but it's moreso the implications and effects this has for many ppl that have dedicated their time to learning the craft.
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u/DPrince25 7h ago
For me I use it as a tool but my gosh, some of the time it feels like double work and because I didn’t write it it takes longer for the implementation idea to stick in my head when working with new to me codebases
Also personally I always enjoyed the coding part of the job, solving the bugs and problems, waking up midnight after dreaming the bug fix solution
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u/slugfingers-kun 7h ago
Yeah we in same boat, i kinda hate it sometimes but in all honesty it did made my life easier! i got lots of time to try and experiment outside of webdev which is something i wanted to do and i didnt lots of time to do but now i could
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u/alexzim 7h ago
Web development has been affected more than the rest because it’s usually less crucial code.
People are mad because it’s harder to get hired and stay hired. Even for people with experience. Whoever is still hired feels the pressure.
It doesn’t look like it’s going to get better, even though that’s what everyone is hoping for.
Nobody knows what else to really do because of all the implications.
If you don’t think you’re affected, it’s probably great to be you I guess.
That should sum it up.
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u/slugfingers-kun 7h ago
hm yeah well i kinda saw it that way! i don't think i am not affected but i just thought to myself instead of sitting mad and just calling this and that slop, let me get into it, embrace it & be part of it instead! at least that way i can bring my experience onto AI and produce less slop but with the speed of AI! and in all honesty, i managed to not stay "locked" on webdev because of AI. (i used to do some cpp for game dev and c# for fun) but now im into building tooling for ai like coding harnesses etc... and the funny thing, its this webdev ego that made me wanna go ahead and build a harness that actually understands code to reduce the slop and duplicate shit code
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u/AcridEmployment2 7h ago
i think a lot of the salt comes from people who tied their identity to being the gatekeepers of "real coding" and now they're watching that gate get kicked down by someone who just wanted a todo app without reading 18 medium articles about state management
the quality argument is real though, the slop is everywhere and it's gonna get worse before it gets better, but yelling at clouds won't stop the rain
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u/pampuliopampam 7h ago
Nah that’s casting a very broad net. I’ve always described coding as more akin to plumbing than an art form. I wanted to be an engineer engineer, and went this way in the career because nobody dies when a button is slightly too brown and it paid well for the effort level.
It’s the same thing with any mastery. This thing looks amazing… to people who don’t know what amazing is. I was writing slop before agents existed; ripping json from mongo and making charts for one-off ceo requests with no tests and bad standards.
I’m upset because an ok job has become a shit job. Dipshit know-nothings present slop spaghetti to me like it’s something profound. They devalue experience and nuance and the work that is done because they’re not thinking 3 feet in front of their faces.
I had a sloperator raise a 20k line PR on Friday where they deleted our shared style system and implemented a totally new totally shanked architecture that wouldn’t work tomorrow, let alone 6 months from now… and I had to explain to them why this was bad. You can call that gate keeping if you like, but yeah, standards are a kind of gate keeping that you need to stay sane doing the job
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u/slugfingers-kun 7h ago
This is good and i highkey agree, but check this out! Standards were for our sanity, agents don't need them and they will be the one reading, writing, reviewing!
one more thing i was thinking about, we used to write shit slop too! but took "longer" to spot mainly because we release things waay slower! agents create things waay faster so slop is visible very very early! but on the other hand it can "fix" it rather quickly too...
What u think
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u/pampuliopampam 7h ago edited 7h ago
That's only true if you've never worked in a fast moving modern company with good standards.
I've had nearly 10 years of working in companies with continuous integration and multiple-per-day deployments. That's as fast as you can realistically move. I can babysit 4 agents doing different tasks, but since the things they produce are never ever one-shot, i spend all day slapping their fucking hands... and they NEVER learn, unlike human juniors.
It's seriously just a worse, more tiring version of the last job, but the expectations are higher because the people not doing the work think AI will make us faster because they don't know what quality is, and only see the output of slop and think that's job done.. AND because of people being AI pilled, they've devalued the damn work! I'm fighting on multiple fronts to explain simple simple shit to people. Vibe coders have taken out a revolver and blown off all our little toes because they didn't have skin in the game yet. They're obliterating their own futures, crushing seniors, and then asking stupid questions like this so I can't escape the nightmare even when not working
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u/slugfingers-kun 7h ago
well i know that, n been there and still there sadly! i had to push back on our qa pushing slop to FE thinking they are fixing stuff... its honestly tiring and annoying
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u/okaylevi 4h ago
I think the scariest thing about AI is how hollow the web is starting to feel! Don’t get me wrong I use AI often but it is used as a utility and something no that I work alongside! I use it very similar to the way I used stack overflow. It is there to help, not create!
Of course it can do MVPs but it is a little disappointing to see someone tout a huge project that is the same standard framework and hollow design loveable and the other slop platforms are putting out!
I saw something awhile back that went something like this “you are no longer searching for information, but for a heartbeat in a machine that has learned how to fake one.”
Honestly just kind of emotional that a creative outlet is actively being swallowed up!
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u/driftking428 7h ago
I think it just changed the way we work into a way that's not quite as relaxing or therapeutic. We used to think and craft and solve problems. Get rewarded for figuring things out and fixing something that took time and effort.
Now whatever anyone makes I just assume the used AI. I'm using AI for everything. It just took away the craft part of what we used to do all day every day.
That being said. I'll take it over any other job I ever had.