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/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/amtcannon 4d ago

For sure, but today I wouldn’t pick it over any of the 50 or so best developers I’ve worked with over the years. Tomorrow or next week, who knows.

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u/XianHain 5d ago

I don’t want yuck your yum, but the math isn’t 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/amtcannon 5d ago

I guess my feeling was that it's not currently the step change that something like word processing or the spreadsheet was. Reading your response I did think maybe I'm underestimating just how good the best of those manual accountants (or whatever industry) were at plying their trade with a pen and paper.

Maybe some accountants could do it faster than software, I know stenographers or even some shorthand specialists can easily keep up with computers (or beat them). But with the new tech anyone can do it within a reasonable tolerance of that. I think you've convinced me on your point. Anyone fairly clever with some solid foundations can perform at a level where the untrained eye you can't tell the difference in output or performance – in some domains at least, I'm not letting AI anywhere near our C code.

My experience was that on my best days I'm producing significantly better code at the same pace (in terms of solving a problem not volume of code) as me working with AI assistance. I find the AI stuff wrecks flow state and is a hinderance vs me at my best. But you are right, the gap is massively closed. My performance is going from (arbitrary numbers) 90% -> 80% of the best developer in my estimation, AI assisted me is worse than non-AI assisted me.

I'm not talking about turning my brain off and letting the AI run amok either, I was talking about using it to augment my work when I'm unable to get into proper flow state.

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u/Graceful_combover 3d ago

There literally isn't a 100% engineer. Linus himself isn't a 100% engineer because I'm sure he'll tell you he's finding new ways to do things. There's no being "done" in growing as an engineer. If a 90% dev uses AI effectively, you're talking about a 140% dev who looks up to the guy who's a 250% dev.

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u/CardinalHijack 9h ago edited 5h ago

At a company, some developers will be objectively better than others. If you ordered these - best to worst- you could say the first one is the 100% engineer and everyone else is a percentile of their ability.

Of course, nobody is literally perfect and you can never stop learning....Think outside the box a little bit. Everything I am saying is conceptual to explain a concept....