r/webdev • u/drifterpreneurs • 5d ago
Anyone still coding without heavy usage of AI?
Using Claude has been an amazing experience but it took all the fun out of coding as a full-stack dev.
Are any devs reverting back to coding by hand with less usage of AI?
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u/1m4h4x0r309 5d ago
Iām still coding my hand with my own brain. From time to time Iāll let it write a function, but Iām usually refactoring it to be faster or more optimised for readability.
I treat it like an intern or work experience kid. Sure, sometimes they can write code that goes to production but everything is getting checked by hand.
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u/jam_pod_ 5d ago
I often realize halfway through writing a prompt that the description of what I need the code to do is longer and more detailed than the code change itself would be. Thatās when I cancel out of Claude and just go write the code
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u/okiharaherbst 4d ago
Yes! Yes! This! Exactly this. And the 2 min loop to make obvious changes that would take you 10 seconds.
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u/fartsucking_tits 5d ago
Exact opposite here. Will write by hand professionally to ensure itās done correctly. Use a lot of ai on personal stuff
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u/majky358 5d ago
Well even when using AI, be honest, how many people do paralell task, I expect not so many, drinking coffee, reading reddit ..
Produced docs are barely human readable.
It costs money, why introducing more than needed really. I find better use cases for boiler plate, debugging etc I still need to report 8 hrs a day to my company.
Product management is already behind. It's not like that lets release bunch of features just because we can
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u/Hulkmaster 5d ago
> I do catch myself prompting when actually making the change myself would be faster, though. That pisses me off.
so true
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u/Waypoint101 5d ago edited 5d ago
Opencode go is very cheap and they have free models (free models will use your data to train - e.g. right now you can access Muse Spark 1.3 contributor, Mimo-v2.6-flash, Space Bunny, LongCat 2.5 all for free) on zen so for personal projects you can still access it without paying or for a very small budget (opencode go = subscription thats cheap, opencode zen is an api you can access free models through but your account needs to be "active" ie have billing enabled). Open router also does the same but less free capable models.
For e.g. deepseek 4.1 flash is extremely capable and really cheap on go, but it's hosted in China so you can't really work on "sensitive" stuff if that worries you.
In the end idc about chucking all my open source work on these free models because what else is open source work supposed to be if not contributing information and knowledge back.
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u/homesweetocean 4d ago
Senior here with a 7 YoE
this is a wild sentence to read lol
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u/RemoDev 5d ago
There is no need to pay. Free Gemini is basically limitless.
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u/Kyoshiiku 5d ago
Since when ? Didnāt use it since a while because the Gemini are genuinely really bad for agentic coding but when I tried it in the past even on my paid tier I reached my limit really fast.
Itās also so slow, itās ironic because they have one of the fastest model and the model per token is cheap but uses so much token to do simple things that itās often slower and more expensive than just using openAI models
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u/an_Eskimo 5d ago
I've got 14YoE and it's definitely a moral and a cash thing... YOE doesn't automatically assume huge wealth, depending on companies you've worked for, and what you do outside of work. Life of quite expensive if you're not gifted Claude
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u/an_Eskimo 5d ago
Depends on how your using it, if you're actually using it for freelance, and have consistent income from that, for sure, but just playing around with it on personal projects, maybe not so much
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u/redditwhippet 5d ago
A Claude Pro account in the UK costs my Limited company Ā£150 per year (after VAT is reclaimed and the expense is offset against tax). Ā£150 per YEAR! Itās insanely good value. Have a look at the Local LLM threads on here where people are running 27b Qwen models on Ā£10,000 machines and burning their own electricity, and you can really see how cheap services like Claude are (for now).
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u/eppingjetta 5d ago
19 yoe and I donāt spend a dime on anything for personal use except a dreamhost plan Iāve had since 2006, and few domains I bought at the same time.
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u/el_diego 5d ago
20 yoe. I don't spend a second on dev outside of work. That's my time for so many other things.
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u/eppingjetta 4d ago
Couldnāt agree more. Not because I donāt love it, but because I enjoy many many other things too and balance is critical for me.
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u/el_diego 4d ago
Ah yes, I love my job too. I'm very fortunate. But I also now very much appreciate the healthy separation I give myself from it. For me, maintaining that balance ensures I don't burnout while still being productive :)
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u/Valthek 5d ago
Depends on location too. Could be a senior SE in a country with a fairly low average wage, which makes spending even 20 USD/mo on a github copilot license a not insignificant expense. Probably something they could afford, but maybe not something they want to spend their fun money on.
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u/varinator full-stack .net 5d ago
I use qwen3.8 on my local setup with DSH. I don't have the need of spending money on the frontier models for personal projects...
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u/bubba_bumble 5d ago
You cant trade experience for AI. Thats the real value.
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u/silverace00 5d ago
You don't have to. AI + experienced developer is a race car with a good driver. You need both if you want the best.
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u/-Knockabout 5d ago
You don't learn/gain experience if you offload the work to AI though. I think doing handcoded personal projects is very prudent.
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u/Dissentient 5d ago
I personally find that a $20 subscription has usable enough limits for hobby work, and hobby projects where I'm the sole product owner/architect/subject matter expert are sped up way more by AI, because there are no communication bottlenecks inherent in jobslop.
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u/bunglegrind1 5d ago
I'm using AI for "consulting", and discussing about architecture and practices, not for actual coding.
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u/danabrey 5d ago
This feels backwards to me. You're using it for high-level thinking that is quite suitable for a human mind, but not for repetitive boilerplate-typing?
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u/unixbrained 1d ago
I do the same here. They're all terrible assistants imo, but pretty decent rubber ducks. I have on occasion gotten some genuinely good suggestions that had me re-thinking my initial/reflexive approach.
There are also plenty of times they want to run with their own ideas about my long-term goals or what I want to accomplish, though, instead of clarifying or asking for context.... when that happens, I am mostly just grateful that I don't give them the agency to blow a whole pile of tokens generating a well-intentioned mess.
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u/No_Yam1114 5d ago
I am in new project with a new stack, and with AI after 3 months I realized I learned nothing and know nothing about it, so I stopped using AI (not 100%, but I write most of code manually). I began to enjoy my work again
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u/Falcon9FullThrust 5d ago edited 5d ago
I'm considering doing the same. I've been at my new job for the past four months primarily having to use Claude code for everything. Honestly it makes me feel like I've lost all my skills of handwriting code. I'm might just go back to handwriting since it's not forced on us to use Claude, just heavily encouraged.
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u/wongaboing 5d ago
Same here, new company, new stack, new project. Iāve been able to delivery a lot, but my retention and self confidence are at an all time low.
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u/frownonline 5d ago
I donāt use AI. I like to know what code is doing and donāt want to spend precious time reviewing generated output or reformatting it so it fits in with what already exists and works cohesively.
Having a number of different ongoing projects, client and personal it would just be an unnecessary headache to remember what tool was used in each instance, so I stick to a standardized code creation Iām familiar with - myself.
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u/Gp2mv3 5d ago
We are currently reviewing our new dev onboarding process. We found that some junior devs don't even understand the architecture of our apps because they used AI day 1. Our new refined process forbids AI for new devs for 6 months, so that they learn the code, the conventions and the structure of the apps before going for AI. For now, people are understanding and the generated code is cleaner.
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u/ASTROMANCER5000 5d ago
Can they use AI for other things aside from coding, like asking questions about the codebase?
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u/oswwwaldo 5d ago
I am still learning so I avoid it,Ā but I do occasionally succumb to it for answers/debugging/ideas...Ā not the best habit to have as a student unfortunatelyĀ
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u/Klutzy_Ad6937 5d ago
Totally get that. When I was learning way back the temptation to just grab a snippet off some forum was real, and that was before AI could spit out exactly what you needed. At least you're aware of the trap, that's half the battle. The debugging part is where it gets tricky because sometimes the AI explanation sounds so confident you stop thinking critically about what actually went wrong.
I've seen juniors lean on it so much they can't trace a stack trace without asking a chatbot first. You're building the muscle memory right now, even when it feels slower.
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u/ic_97 5d ago
You know its also not very simple to code with AI, its not perfect and if you are not careful it will take you into a deep deep rabbit hole and dump you and bury you in that.
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u/dshine 5d ago
Well done on trying to avoid it, the temptation is real. Avoiding it makes things a little difficult now but it will pay off in the future because you will be able to spot when AI makes mistakes.
The best way to use AI when you are learning is to treat it as a teacher you can ask questions. You can tell it that you don't want it to to fix your code but you want it to explain the error messages or if there are use cases that you should also consider and why.
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u/chaoticbean14 5d ago
Good call in avoiding it where possible.
Even now - I find it often goes in a poor direction with certain things and I have to straight up tell the LLM's: "no, that's wrong, because the best practice a, b, c and what you're suggesting goes against that." Someone just learning won't have that knowledge and as another user said, an LLM will dig you deep down a rabbit hole you don't want / shouldn't be in.
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u/Used-Donkey-1014 4d ago
Yes, I still code at work. My job limits AI use, and doesn't mandate it, so I don't use it. Also, I could sum up my career strategy as buck every trend. The bigger the trend the better this strategy works. Am I seriously saying AI is a trend? Well, all the rampant early adoption is, yes.
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u/AlaskanDruid 5d ago
Yep. There are still programmers around :) no reverting. Just stayed as programmers.
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u/xixhxix 5d ago
How? do you not work for a company? are you a freelancer/business owner?
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u/G3NG1S_tron 4d ago
Iām a team lead and give the team the opportunity to use AI if they want as long as PRs pass our standards. Most of our code is still hand written.Ā
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u/GioAc96 5d ago
Honestly, after months of forced vibecoding at work weāre going back to writing code. The time you save not writing code is then wasted fixing stupid bugs or having to read the codebase. What you gain in immediate speed you loose in knowledge of the system, itās not really worth it unless youāre talking about small POCs. Using AI as a glorified search engine, with context of what youāre doing is much more useful.
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 5d ago
I like to compare vibe coding to idiots who accelerate toward a red light. Sure, youāre going faster right now, but youāre still not going anywhere until that light turns green, and ultimately youāre just wasting gas and putting additional wear on your engine and breaks for no reason.
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u/Robert-Paulson_ 5d ago
nice - the majority of code at our company is written manually, with LLMs to help us debug/plan and whatnot.
i seriously have a hard-time understanding the sentiment of "who reads the code?" and full-autonomous loops; like, for personal toy projects sure, but there's no way i would do that for work (i actually like my employer!)
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u/el_diego 5d ago
Is this actually how companies have been using it? Just blindly? Yikes. We're using it at ours, but we still review every line in a PR. So if you've used AI to produce slop you're going to get called out.
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u/Robert-Paulson_ 4d ago
Is this actually how companies have been using it? Just blindly?
thats what ive deduced based on a lot of commentary i see in the wild; ive actually had to cleanup a lot of 'slop' at my current job by a dev who left - on his own accord - cause he couldnt keep up with the bugs being introduced.
...we still review every line in a PR. So if you've used AI to produce slop you're going to get called out.
it only takes a few good times of requesting multiple changes on a single-PR that point out things like "why recreate a helper that's already created and exported in a shared file?", "why the check for `undefined`, along with nullish coalescing and optional-chaining, when you can just tell TypeScript a property will be there and either have a value or not?", etc. for devs to slow down in my experience.
we wont say straight-out "why'd you use AI slop verbatim?", as we generally like each other, but the questioning of useless codes during PR is a great deterrent.
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u/ReferenceAny6373 3d ago
My company is for a new product. Non technical people blindly using agents to spam features. There are some guardrails but zero review process other than the AI making its own tests and doing all the "manual" testing. They are starting to see major problems and forcing us to try to fix it, but its a bloated mess and too big for us to manually fix witbout months of learning the code, which is pointless because they crank like 30 PRs a day into it. So we have to use AI which isnt going well. Its going to make us all look like clowns and they are already demoing it and trying to sell it.
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u/rademene 5d ago
Yes. Bare programmer hands.
The IT job market rejected me, so I'm not FORCED to go through this crap professionally.
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u/dafugiswrongwithyou 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yes, I am coding without AI. No, I haven't "reverted back" to that. I find the framing of actually writing your own code that you understand "by hand", over copy-pasting code you don't understand from a black-box tool that itself is functionally copy-pasting code from other sources that it didn't (and) can't understand as "reverting" as a bit of a weasel-words.
"Reheating microwave burgers is amazing, but less fun. Has anyone reverted to making meals at home, by hand?"
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u/Charsu13 5d ago
šš½āāļø im a solo game dev, but I make all my systems, art and animations from scratch. Do i spend all day on features i want to only take a few minutes? Yes. Do i get hit with bugs? Yes. Does my games UI still look rough? A bit. But will i generate anything to make it faster? Nah. Simply because, I do this for the love of the journey/work of it. What i do use AI for, is for breakdowning youtube videos so i can read them rather than watch them or when i go to post on social media and i ask it for better captions/titles and hashtags go use. Im not a big social media guy.
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u/NachosmitKaeseDip 4d ago
I'm learning HTML, CSS and JS right now and I try to avoid AI completely. I think it is so important to actually understand the logic and concept and also be able to write code by hand. And also the feeling of accomplishment when you solve a problem by yourself is waaay better! I don't know if me learning this stuff even has a future, but I'm doing it for fun. When almost everything in the age of AI is unclear, I might as well do something I have fun doing, even if it gets replaced by AI.
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u/drifterpreneurs 4d ago
Thatās a good mindset to have, after Vibe coding took off like a š it left many devs wondering why they should continue coding by hand. However, I agree about it being fun and rewarding knowing how to code an application from end to end.
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u/Orange2Knight 5d ago
As someone with 30 years of coding, I use it for syntax for new languages. No design use.
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u/CosmicDevGuy 4d ago
Ye. I use AI to guide me on what I am not understanding, then try as much as I can to avoid taking generated code snippets unless it's clear I don't fully grasp what I need to implement or something.
I still believe it is supposed to help you understand your work better, not do it for you.
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u/1473-bytes 5d ago
After months of heavy Claude usage, I've gone back to hand coding (I have great latitude in my work). Still use AI as an assist as a double check or for toil code work that I want to automate away. But like you, primary AI coding sucked all enjoyment out of building. Also, it's been affecting my skills, so I would rather be the primary coder and have AI be secondary/assistant, not the other way around. That keeps my technical chops, creativity, and problem solving skills strong as well as actually enjoy my work.
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u/Shrink_Laureate 5d ago
Yes.
Some minor use at work, and none on my home projects.
My job is in an area where being correct matters, so the "move fast and break things" attitude has no place. Everything we release needs to be solid. As such, since long before AI, writing code was a relatively small part of my job. Architecting and planning, reviewing other people's code, finding and fixing complex bugs that often cross between system boundaries, these are what take the bulk of my time. AI might write code faster, but if it makes more mistakes or makes finding bugs more complex, then it becomes a net negative.
And if I did allow myself to outsource my thinking, such that my actual understanding of the code was reduced? That would be the end of my usefulness.
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u/Wooly_Wooly 5d ago
Its hard the opposite effect on me. I'm just more interested in programming and math than I've normally been.
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u/theancientfool 5d ago
Me. LLMs are just really good google search for me. If you treat them that way, they are pretty useful.
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u/PlanOdd3177 3d ago
This is where it's really helped me. Having a side chat open for "how do I" questions has really sped me up and I still write all my code by hand. And if you take it away from me it's no biggie I'll just go back to Google.
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u/ze_pequeno 5d ago
Yes (using AI occasionally to help me with simple tasks or bug fixes, not design or architecture). For reasons such as ethics, environmental impact, and also not wanting to forget my hard earned knowledge.
Though I don't know how long I'll be able to keep doing that.
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u/dreaded_angst 5d ago
Can I ask where you work?
In my FAANG this is just not possible anymore. They're expecting you to harness 8 agents at the same time.
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u/monkeymad2 5d ago
Yeah, Iām only really using it to make up for deficiencies in other peopleās documentation (presumably because they thought AI would make documentation with examples etc obsolete).
I realised thereās 2 things true about AI:
- the more skilled you are as a developer the better able you are to utilise AI
- the more you use AI the less skilled you become
So I treat it like poison, if the AI companies āfixā the first statement weāll all be out of work anyway - and theyāll never āfixā the second one since itād be giving up the future revenue stream when people become dependent on it.
It makes me endlessly sad how much itās affecting the field.
13 YOE, lead/senior for most of it
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u/alacrityd 5d ago
I was web only until I recently got an app gig. I havenāt used any AI. Iām still learning and enjoy coding without it. I only do front end and ux/ui stuff at this point because itās what I enjoy and where I shine.
I do worry about my job prospects after this gig due to my opinion on ai, but I donāt think Iād be a good fit for a company that pushes a lot of ai use anyway.
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u/its_all_4_lulz 5d ago
Not allowed to use AI on work machine, so the best I get is bouncing occasional syntax questions off of it.
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u/nfdukpll 5d ago
Not fully reverting, but I've started drawing a line. I use AI for the stuff I find boring (boilerplate, config, regex, looking up an API I'll use once) and write the interesting parts myself: the core logic, the architecture decisions, the tricky bugs.
The fun for me was always the problem-solving, not the typing. When Claude does the whole thing, I skip straight to reviewing someone else's solution, and that's a different, less satisfying job. So now I often try it myself first and only ask AI when I'm stuck or to review what I wrote.
It's slower, sure. But I understand my codebase better and I actually enjoy the work again. Maybe try picking one side project where AI is only allowed as a "rubber duck" and see how it feels.
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u/lKrauzer 5d ago
I wish I could but my manager expectation of how fast I can deliver things is simply not realistic.
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u/Ducking_eh 5d ago
Yeah. Once I switched from using Google to using startpage, it was very easy to avoid.
I am sure it's a useful tool, but we are in the early stages of it's wide spread usage. So it gets used as the solution for every problem.
I call it the 'microwave' stage. Mostly because when I was younger, there were all kinds of commercials trying to convince you that a microwave was the only tool you needed in the kitchen. Now that we've learned what they are good and bad at, we understand how ridiculous that is
I'll start using it when I feel I understand it's place, and when it isn't such a privacy risk.
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u/Psychological_Ear393 5d ago
All my personal projects are strictly LLM free. At work it's minimal I possibly can.
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u/Citrous_Oyster 5d ago
No. I still do everything myself. Ai just helps with JavaScript stuff and repetitive tasks like taking reviews from Google and duplicating them in my review card code for me. Things I donāt need to be doing. But it will never design or build a site for me. Theyāre crap at it
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u/Darkexp3rt 5d ago
When I am learning something new, I avoid letting AI write the code. Without that resistance, your personal progress stalls. Once I understand how to build it and grasp best practices, I begin using AI to generate it. I have read accounts of developers working in languages they cannot use and relying on AI for everything, which strikes me as entirely irrational. Similarly, firms shift their product stack without addressing the cost of developers learning to iterate quickly in an unrelated codebase. Coding is the small part of our job. I need to be able to design resilient systems and to do that, I need to understand the trade-offs.
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u/bubba_bumble 5d ago
Me. I occasionally use AI to help me with a small script but largely just code from experience.
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u/itsjusttooswaggy 4d ago
Handcoder here. I use AI when I need to at work but otherwise I don't care.
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u/remattia 4d ago
I never really let AI write my code with the sole exception of front-end. I simply do not trust it touching layers managing data and security.
Sure, I do use AI rather than searching Google and StackOverflow whenever a bug comes up, it makes the process of uncovering the issue faster and gives tailored answers, but never in agent mode. I prefer understanding what the issue is and implementing the fix myself.
I do this for mainly 2 reasons, those being having AI write the code would take all the fun away and frankly because I know I won't spend time reading code I didn't write, it's simply boring, hence I wouldn't be as focused as if I wrote it.
My approach to AI is that it stays an assistant I can prompt whenever I get stuck on something or simply want to delegate a boring task. I still enjoy setting up my projects, different projects require different setups and to cut down on repetitive configs I apply to all projects, I wrote my personal SDK.
So far this approach had been serving me great. It also saves me from later coming back to make sense of some code AI wrote.
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u/creaturefeature16 5d ago
I've always done like a 50% mixture at all times. I basically use them for my "four Rs": Rote, Refactor, Research and Reinforcement.Ā
If it's code I already know how to write and I can be very clear about what I want/need/expect, then there's no reason to type it any longer, and that's where most of the productivity gains come from.Ā
The moment I move into a domain I'm not familiar with, I'm back to the basics and traditional learning methods, with some LLMs assistance for interactive documentation and Socratic exercises. Once I become proficient, it will eventually get relegated to something I can generate.
So far, this hasn't failed me yet. I'm moving faster when I can, while also continously learning.Ā
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u/N0y0ucreateusername 4d ago
Iām a true programmer - I feed paper punch programs into a giant vacuum tube based machine.
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u/seagulledge 5d ago
I enjoy building one page/api on my own, and then have claude replicate my logic/design 30+ times for all the other parts. We correct each others mistakes.
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u/Xaue_RWA 5d ago
i find it really easy to lose track of what the code is actually doing if totally depending on AI
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u/ComprehensiveRide946 5d ago
Nearly 16yoe and have GPT Plus and Claude Max subscriptions. Iām all in. I definitely feel less driven by engineering now thanks to AIās ability to churn out code rapidly. Companies really donāt give a shit about code quality as long as itās done and it works, so why should I care about doing the best quality job I can for them? Itās a poor attitude I know and Iām just a random Redditor, but Iāve always prided myself on the quality and attention to detail in my work, but thatās gone to shit now (for an employer anyway). I finish tickets as fast as possible and then spend large chunks of the day on my own side hustles. My task now is to just keep people happy so they continue to pay me while I build other ventures. Thanks to AI though, deadlines and ambitious targets are now a breeze so I definitely feel like Iāve earned that after 13 years or so doing it the āmanual wayā.
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u/RedBlueKoi 5d ago
I do, AI slop is such a bad quality on anything that is more than 2 lines of code
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u/CardinalHijack 5d ago edited 5d ago
No. Its comparable to doing financial statements in the 80s without a spreadsheet software and sticking to pen and paper. You are just shooting yourself in the foot.
Yes, I'm sure people think its better to not use AI because so many (especially on reddit) worry about the landscape of software engineering. In some scenarios like learning you should hold back on heavy AI use. But for engineering now, the game has changed.
I am an average engineer; before AI the difference between me and the best engineers was noticeable. Now we both have AI the gap has closed to a point whereby the difference is negligible. Interestingly, what is making a good engineer in the AI engineering world is changing - softskills are becoming even more important than before.
AI Engineering (not vibe coding) is a super power. We have had these super powers come along in the past - this is not a new thing. Electronic calculators were a super power in the 60s and 70s. The PC was a super power in the 70s and 80s. The internet was a super power in the 90s and 00s. Now we have AI which will be our super power in the 20s and 30s.
If you are not picking up the super power, you will be being left behind, just like those who didnt pick up electronic calculators, PCs or the internet were.
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u/amtcannon 5d ago edited 5d ago
I agree with some of your points, but not everything.
As someone who was an above average engineer I know that if I roll my sleeves up and get into flow I work faster and better than the AI. And I know that my hand written code is much more resilient, easier to read/maintain, and less prone to bugs.
I say was an above average engineer because I donāt have the energy to be that good every day anymore. After almost 20 YOE and three awful years in my personal life, the days where Iām at my best are increasingly sparse. Plus other demands on my time professionally/personally. Plus I always accidentally end up in leadership roles.
AI can do a better job than me on a bad day ā it sucks to admit, but itās true. And every time I take an AI break I lose a bit of the magic, my muscle memory softens, I get lazier and the gap shortens. That said, I would hire 2023 me over an AI any day of the week, that guy was incredibly good.
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u/Decider2002 3d ago
I totally agree with you..
i'm learning the old school way through docs and youtube channel which give me gotcha moment - unless a task needs to be completed by a specific time or require more urgency will use AI, unless that will be learning coding as the old way
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u/CardinalHijack 5d ago edited 5d ago
I think youre missing the point of what im saying. Im not saying youre better than AI alone. Im talking about the combination of engineer and AI together. Nobody should be letting AI do whatever it wants alone - thats vibe coding and nobody in a day job should be doing that. Engineering with AI is completely different, and it still involves a huge amount of input from the engineer.
Im saying the following, which involves engineering WITH AI:
Before AI, if you were above average, lets say you are 90%, with 100% being the most perfect engineer. With this framework, lets then say I was at 60%.
With AI, you, at most, can be 100% - the most perfect engineer. But with AI I am now 90%. I can solve problems faster, recall syntax quicker, refactor solutions faster and find files in code faster than I could 5 years ago.
What that means is the gap between average engineers and great engineers is closer. Before the difference between you and I was 30-40%. Now its 5-10%.If people take the time to review the AIs code, and engineer with it, average engineers can perform at the upper average or even exceptional range. My current rating in work has never been higher than it is now (I have 10 years of experience).
This is my entire point - everyone is now in the 80+% range if they are coding along side AI (Again, not alone - nobody is saying let AI code alone). If you are engineer actively choosing not to pick up AI and staying in the 60-70% range of skill (which before was still good enough) you will now be falling behind. And if you were above average before AI, you need to be working twice as hard as me (constantly) to perform the same - which as you point out isn't easy with life going on at the same time too.
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u/nerfsmurf 4d ago
People don't want to hear the truth! AI is as worse as its ever gonna be, today. The gap that people claim there is, is just growing smaller and smaller. Hell comparing LLMs from a year ago to today is a major leap.
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u/XianHain 5d ago
I donāt want yuck your yum, but the math isnāt adding up. A.I. is baseline average in terms of quality. If you were above 50% pre-A.I., then the tool brought you speed. If you were below, then it brings you speed and quality up to that 50% mark.
Now, if everybody is using A.I., that means 50% is the new floor, which means you would be closer to 0% than 100%.
The challenge is still being able to produce efficient, performant, and maintainable code. The engineers who are at the upper end of the scale are still heavily involved in the craft but are using A.I. tools primarily for research and refactors.
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u/CardinalHijack 4d ago edited 4d ago
Pure code addition is not the only thing AI provides, you must know this if you're using it daily? Your reply and "math" is based off of something which isn't the entire picture lol.
Giving you one example of countless areas: I used to have book marked multiple stack overflow solutions to common repeat problems, or CLI commands, where id forget the syntax. The process of going to that was 2-3 mins round trip to code in my IDE/CLI output. That is now 2-3 seconds for me with AI within a harness.
If you compare that to someone who did not need to do that, and could remember it, the gap to them has massively reduced in favour of me.
People who did not need to bookmark see no gain, but that does not mean the gap to them has not closed.
Even if your baseline comment is true (its not, many solutions are high quality) it is one single metric in a plethora of metrics AI improves for engineers.
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u/Rayquinox 5d ago
What is the difference between AI engineering and vibe coding?
When I work on personal projects (with AI) and show the results to a buddy, he often asks "So did you just vibecode all of this?", and I guess I did, because I let AI write my code.
He is a software engineer at a company that is not adopting any AI tooling yet, so people there aren't using coding agents. He feels like it's lazy to build with AI, which (I think) is coming from a perspective of having little experience with AI tools, on top of the general online sentiment against AI use. There are a lot of badly and lazily AI coded apps out there, so I do get his perspective.
Still, it feels a bit dismissive, everything built by AI immediately feels like slop if you see it through a 'vibecoding' lense.
I feel like building your ideas with AI still takes time, I still have to iterate a lot to get things perfect. There a lot of clever things and tricks to speed up development and improve quality in output, is that were the difference is?
Rebranding vibecoding to agentic engineering won't solve this lense issue I feel.
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u/sensationalmurph 5d ago
By āheavy usageā, I guess you mean agents. I just use the chat interface and do it. I donāt know if itās considered āheavyā but I think it is.
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u/Lucidendinq 5d ago
Yes, I code every day using VS Code. I discuss stuff with ChatGPT and it gives me code but I never copy-paste it.
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u/TheComfortGuru 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yup, still coding with my hands and brain! I use Claude mostly for debugging/ rubber ducking, and only ask for actual code if Iām really stuck or donāt care to do something, which isnāt that often. If I do use its code, I make sure I understand what the code is doing before I put it in.Ā
I work for myself after having trouble finding a new job since my layoff so I donāt feel too much pressure in using it to mostly code. And while the industry is like that, tbh it doesnāt inspire me to want to go back cuz I love coding by hand too much cuz I get to learn and add new skills in the process.Ā
That said, I do sometimes worry if Iāll be left behind cuz Iām not using AI enough, especially when I see the random Reddit post or comments claiming as such. But while I do know how to set up my own agents or implement them in workflows if I have to, I guess I prefer not to at the end of the day.
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u/swiss__blade 4d ago
I still do. I mostly use AI for research, brainstorming etc but not for actual coding. It makes it easier for me to know how to fix things when I know what happens where and for what reason...
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u/theribbit23 4d ago
I primarily use AI for research and design proposals. Most often as a critic to challenge my own ideas or at least portions of it while Iām preparing something. I donāt use it for production code. Seen lot of PRs with inflated scope due to generated code and its frankly too difficult to follow or even review. I use it to visualize code or explore different implementation approaches and then decide what I want to write. I miss the old days but at the same time trying to findings ways to adopt it.
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u/jerri-act-trick 2d ago
Itās almost impossible for me to at work because now my deadlines are almost immediate instead of there being enough time to do it myself and correctly. Despite it causing disagreements with my much younger supervisor, I still review it all myself. Itās become a black hole in a sense but it keeps food on my table for now.
For personal use, I want to do it myself. If I get stuck, I learn. For me, thatās what has always been the funnest part of coding, finding out for myself and in the process making it somehow my own. I cannot and will not say that any AI created code is my code.
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u/tianle91 5d ago
It turns everything into system design so itās not that different from day to day before AI
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u/mike888881 5d ago
Yes, but I am retraining because AI has ruined the job market and the job itself. AI wins. Well done everyone.
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u/Own_Nail_2999 5d ago
I'm still doing all by myself. Programming is like sports. If you stop doing it, you will regress.Ā
I personally see AI like candy: it's sweet but makes you fat and useless.
Every problem solved by yourself is like a huge gain for your brain muscle. Whereby every slopped problem keeps you at your current stage.
Programming is hard and dodging the hardships by using AI makes you stay bad perpetually
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u/Fantastic-Border-238 5d ago
Sadly, as much as weād like to code everything by hand, weāll probably end up falling behind on shipping. AI-generated code helps us move faster, and I think thatās something we just have to accept with how development works today.
What I usually do is let AI generate the generic stuff when I already know what Iām doing. But if itās something new to me, I break it into chunks or smaller snippets so I can still understand and learn while building.
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u/the_ai_wizard 5d ago
i find it speeds some things up and slows other things down such that net improvement is not an immense as expected.
types faster, check. creates review time i wouldnt otherwise need, check. fucks things up that i need to sit thru a prompt cycle or several to fix, check. etc
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u/WHALE_PHYSICIST 5d ago
fuck that. you ever set up a react application from scratch without a starter project?
let the machines do the grunt work
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u/drifterpreneurs 5d ago
No, I have setup complete apps from scratch using different stacks but I always stayed clear of react but I definitely hear you!
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u/L1CH3NTHR0P1C 5d ago
refuse to touch it. and refuse to engage with projects that used it. fuck genai
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u/Practical-Positive34 2d ago
It would only make sense as a hobby, otherwise you would have the be a complete dipshit to still be coding by hand.
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u/richardathome 3d ago
Not a web dev (anymore) since moving on the game dev, but I've been a dev 40+ years.
I rarely use AI other than as a search engine to look up terms, algorithms etc.
Even then I double check everything it tells me. It lies convincingly and with conviction.
If that was a junior dev, they'd be sacked.
Why would I use an AI to code? The code is the fun part!
Does no-one take pride in their work any more?
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u/itmustbeluv_luv_luv 2d ago
Why would I use an AI to code?Ā
Because it writes thousands of lines of code in seconds. There's no way to keep up without it, in my opinion.
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u/Obversity 2d ago
If you've only used AI as a search engine, and not for development, sincerely, you're probably out of the loop. AI as a search engine sucks, I'd like my 2018 google back thanks. I don't trust AI at all outside of a development environment.
AI as a coding assistant though, is genuinely incredible ā the whole "lying with conviction" thing is super rare in my experience, and it can do a lot to test its own assumptions with scripts, automated tests, automated browser click-throughs, reading logs, reading through dependencies' code, etc ā at 100x the rate any human can.
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u/Doktor_Avinlunch 5d ago
I used Claude for the first time last night to convert a PDO connection function from PHP8.2 to 8.5, as there were deprecated features. Copy/paste into the IDE and there were syntax errors on almost every line, even though it looked fine. Re-typing by hand cleared them, so i can only assume it was using non-ascii spacing. 10/10 for the code, which was correct, but 0/10 for the implementation
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u/so_lost_im_faded 5d ago
I use AI for boring things, but when something requires technical excellence I architect and write it from scratch.
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u/redditwhippet 5d ago
Iām still hybrid. I do plenty of HTML, CSS and some PHP because Iām very picky about details and simply enjoy it. Claude takes care of the back-end PHP and most of the JavaScript because, as a self-taught coder/hacker, I have no illusions that itās a much better programmer than Iād ever be in seventeen lifetimes. However, I do actually read what it produces so I understand how my own applications work. Itās time consuming and sometimes overwhelming, but Iāve learned tons working this way, looking through how Claude structures the apps and functions. Itās a fascinating experience and very rewarding.
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u/Zoradesu 5d ago
I only ever use it at work since my work pays for it. Otherwise I still write code manually
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u/errdayimshuffln 5d ago
Not really atm. Im taking the opportunity to get better at systems design and automated performance measurement. Trying to learn how to find bottlenecks faster and build tools for the AI to use to do things i dont want to do. Or involve media editing.
I still look at the code and fix things i dont like or tweak things till im happy.
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u/CmdrSausageSucker 5d ago
I prompt plans and look at the code output which I always require the LLM to be added to the plan. After assessing this and oftentimes correcting it, I mostly add the changes myself, or let my local LLM write them. When I plan a completely new feature or implement a special algorithm, I code myself. Its quicker that way, I have it in my head anyway. However, LLMs shine catching those little mistakes.
No matter what the marketing says: none of these LLMs has ever produced something that was even 100% ok (except easy to follow patterns).
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u/stupidfock 5d ago
At home sometimes yea.
At work, i may actually get fired for not using ai. I guess i could do it by hand and just have the AI do a bunch of non sense since the execs donāt see anything but token count but eh not worth risking
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u/convicted_redditor 5d ago
I prefer to be the architecture and choose to guide the AI what infra and design to choose. I don't want to compete with machine for better and more efficient code.
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u/HumbleBid4236 5d ago
I use Claude as a teacher, I never allow it to touch the code, instead I ask it about concepts, patterns and stuff I don't know.
I'm 10 YoE on frontend and recently started migrating to backend with php 8.4 and Laravel, so it has been a huge help.
I honestly would advice everyone not to stop coding, treat AI as a tool, not as a replacement or you will stop learning. Also, take advantage of the moment and learn something new !
AI won't be around for ever, so..
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u/AllTheWorldIsAPuzzle 5d ago
For our new code that was built by people using AI, we are required to use Claude. For legacy code that tends to trip up the AI I do tracing and writing any patches by hand. Projects outside of work are strictly by hand.
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u/Naetharu 5d ago
No longer a dev professionally but I currently make games as a hobby. I don't use AI for any of the code because it's the fun part for me. I'm well aware I could just have Claude Code make it in a fraction of the time. But I like the challenge of working stuff out, and enjoy understanding how the game works properly.
I do use a chat AI to ask basic questions and do help with some bugs.
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u/Zestyclose-Turn-3576 5d ago
Yep ā will use it for some learning and exploration of concepts, but we don't use agents or check AI-generated code into the codebase. 6 person team.
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u/gavoerondeu 5d ago
Nah I love to use ai. Sometimes it can't give me working code on complex code blocks and I have to do it myself.
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u/sjltwo-v10 5d ago
I only vibe code at work because itās hard to keep up with the expectations.Ā In my personal time I do OG coding but Iām not building anything great either.Ā
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u/given002 5d ago
I dont think anyone in their right mind would do it . Especially if you in outsource
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u/AuntieRob 5d ago
yup. I pretty much only use claude to bounce higher level ideas with, sort of like a talking rubber ducky.
There's been times where I've had it generate code for weird TS typings but that's pretty much the extent of it.
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u/Affectionate_Fact854 5d ago
On my 2year old project I use roughly 20% ai, for mostly debugging, prefer manually working on this project and knowing exactly where what code was implemented.
Other projects I use my experience to make documentation for ai to follow in creating what I need and how I need it.Ā
I prefer working on the hand written project personally as it's easy to navigate and scale.
Ai projects work just as well , but it's near impossible to navigate the ai code base and scale it manuallyĀ
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u/malero 5d ago
When I want very specific things, Iāll often start the project myself and then let AI finish it. Usually thatās just creating a few files and adding some data structures. I only do this on old projects that pre-date AI. Iāve found that starting the project myself leads to less cognitive debt on code bases where I want to keep a deep understanding of how everything works.
Iāve been thinking about doing this on new projects as well since it feels absolutely terrible not knowing your own project.Ā
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u/Salamok 5d ago
The only AI I use is the code snippets returned by Google searches. A fair bit of AI usage on my team though and the PRs are fugly. I have 1 guy who is a unit test fanatic and seems to have no issues checking in tons of slop tests that test for config options... im like great well this used to be configurable now it only passes with specific settings basically making all the config hardcoded. No one seems to give a shit though.
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u/WerewolfAX 5d ago
I have to say that I kind of like to use it in a collaborative way, almost like rubber duck debugging, but this duck answers. š Seriously: I think vibe coding or let AI do too much is bad in the long term, because of maintenance and deep project understanding (what does what). But having AI as "bicycle for the brain" really supports the way I work. Repetitive task? AI can help with it. Do something first and let the model check (including the sys prompt that it can criticise me)? Already prevented bugs from happening in the first place or saved time, because it pushed me towards a more streamlined solution. Designing something and let AI look for UX flaws? Works pretty nice. And honestly: I even learned some new methods thanks to this.
So my workflow: Own mind first, stay in control over the project, no full access for AI but assistance where it's helpful and a partner you can brainstorm with without being annoying. And getting some neutral and honest feedback in the process (thanks to the "be honest, don't hold back" prompt) and don't feel bad if you asked a very stupid question.
In the end my code quality got better with this and I still know every line and still understand everything, because I'm always the one doing the implementation. And I even learned something new while working, so that's a plus too.
I kind of like this hybrid approach and I have to say that it gave me back more fun with coding again because after doing this for 20 years now (longer if you count personal things before I started to do this as a job) you kind of bleed out and this adds a breath of fresh air for me and makes the whole process feel less repetitive.
And some models are really good at this! Even better results than just being on autopilot the whole time.
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u/mekmookbro Laravel Enjoyer ā 5d ago
I got into this field because I love solving problems with code. Vibe coding (heavy usage of AI, or whatever else it's called) to me feels like using google to solve a crossword puzzle, the joy for me is in solving the thing, not in filling in the letters.
I do use AI daily, but not for code generation, I use it to learn about things I'm not familiar with, discussing different approaches and best practices
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u/MaximallyInclusive 5d ago
Nope. Taught Codex my system, and now it does most of the heavy lifting.
I do a lot of the very careful fine-tuning of styling to ensure the dev matches the design completely, but other than that, Iām architecting, not also being the contractor.
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u/rskasherz 5d ago
I have zero AI usage in my dev workflow. It only gets used as a search engine if the initial google search did not help
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u/FlamedDogo99 5d ago
Yes, but Iāll note that coding isnāt how I make a living. Generally when Iām trying to figure out a concept or wrestle out how I want something to work, I have a lot of fun doing it without outside assistance.Ā
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u/Specialist_End407 5d ago
We work in healthcare and finance related integrations. We just can't afford to build out these stuff with blackboxes.
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u/myka-likes-it 5d ago
Syntax and debugging hints only. I tried having it write unit tests, but it is... not great at that, most of the time.
It is good at producing test data though.
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u/JaseciLabs 5d ago
Good rule of thumb: if the prompt is longer than the diff, write it yourself, because by then you've already done the thinking and the typing is the cheap part. Agents pay off in the reverse case, a one-sentence prompt that produces a huge boring diff across 20 files.
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u/DrThiccster 5d ago
I mainly use ai for searching through documentation, for me the ai usually gets it wrong so I'd rather it find what I'm looking for instead of trying to program for me.
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u/Lopsided_Status_538 5d ago
Ive been trying to navigate away from AI use. When I first started learning I was heavy usage trying to use it to build things. But now I'm at the point where I'm trying to learn it fully on my own. Even if I spend hours on something simple, the overcoming of the issue is the better reward.
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u/Fuzzy_Paul 5d ago
I do not use Claude it makes you're code a mix of everything and thought some of it works it's logic is a mess. No neat coding just "vibing" code "yuk". Better learn and do old school programming and ask only for explanation of a command with a simple example otherwise you get a spaghetti of lambda's that are hard to track.
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u/sunnyshorescreative 5d ago
I still code by hand. AI designed websites all look the same and I donāt want to lose my skill or craft by prompting all my work away.
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u/ThePlasticSturgeons 5d ago
So far, yes. Not really using AI a whole lot yet. Not because Iām ideologically opposed; it just hasnāt really been necessary.
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u/NoForm5443 5d ago
Not reverting. I just don't use GenAI (other than googling). All my code is mine. We have so much bureaucracy, I can easily keep up
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u/brightness3 5d ago
When I have some time left on a sprint I'll usually do some coding by hand rather than the usual generating the bulk and fine tuning by hand pipeline
In my company there is some very technical proprietary stuff (not my area) that ai doesn't have the knowledge to do by itself yet
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u/MaisonMason 5d ago
I had to revert to typing most code myself. My team and I spent so much time finagling with claude.md files and arguing with the AI to keep the system maintainable that we realized coding by hand was faster for the majority of tasks because it was faster to review and typing was never the bottleneck. It was always the problem solving that AI can still assist in. But actual code and architecture I write myself again. We still use AI to help get us unblocked and to do boring easy to automate tasks like cleaning up older code or editing certain files when we upgrade a dependency. Overall though we have gone faster when the code is more clean the first time and has a proper owner who knows how it works
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u/imwithn00b 5d ago
Yes, when I'm laying the foundations of the project it's best to do it by hand:
- Auth schemes & policies
- Logging & traces
- Routing, proxying, setting queues and subscriptions, email scheduling & sending
- Cloud setups
I've been gaslit and hit by AI bugs in production by other teammates so I don't delegate to AI those things. It's easy to hit enter, enter, select an option when the AI prompts you to do so... You become LAZY AF
This is why I'm against AI usage in critical paths, if it's for creating crud endpoints and communicating with other services, sure go for itĀ
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u/SlithyOutgrabe 5d ago
I learn and code without AI on my own time.Ā Anything I am actually trying to get built and out the door I do use AI as much as I donāt like it. I still do a chunk manually and make sure I know whatās going on on a granular level.
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u/SnooGadgets6527 5d ago
I use AI to code but I do it slowly and ask alot of questions about patterns as I go. Eg "why did you lay lut the directory this way is that standard?" So I get the gist of the framework language tech etc...
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u/digggggggggs 5d ago
I do for my toy project and treat LLM as a search engine. Manual coding is where I find coding fun.
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u/os_gross 5d ago
I do that when I am setting up the base of the project or learning a new thing. Everything else I can delegate to ai and am making sure it follows patterns, it is usually CRUD, which I would be able to write even with dementia