How are you handling the new era of programming?
Posted by SinanDev@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 65 comments
I have noticed a back-and-forth of feelings. It started with “AI will not take our jobs”, then moved to “Oh, fuck, they will”, and finally settled on “Nope, they won't”.
However, my workflow is something like this:
I use AI to research and explain things like documentation after reading.
For my job as a web developer, AI sometimes delivers good results based on existing work. Other times, it just gets functionality running quickly. Since these components are not touched again , it doesn't matter if the code isn't perfect as long as the customer is happy and it saves time.
But, as this always makes me question my skills, I work on side projects that fulfil me. This helps me to build projects that are built to last, so I need to fully understand the code, writing it myself and learning new things so i can improve.
What about you?
SomeGuyInSanJoseCa@reddit
A Distinguished engineer at our work has called AI - "the great filter"
And I couldn't agree more.
AI is a tool people are now learning how to harness. If AI doesn't work for something, I alter the context/prompts/function calling to get it working. Is it a struggle to get to that point? Yep. Is it completely hands-off agentic? Nope. But does it make me more efficient going forward? Absolutely.
I can now do many tasks that would have probably taken me a day or two to be done in a few hours. Even if it can't do everything I asked for, it can absolutely do ancillary activities like unit tests (including the worst of all - mocking), documentation, docker containerization, kubernetes/terraform IaC, linting, code reduction, and instantaneous gray box testing as I work.
And I'm not worries about understanding the code because I know the limitations of AI, and often times, I still have to provide the high to mid level algorithm/workflow/design. I just don't need to know the low level stuff. I don't care about the python request library usage or the logging library. And I don't need to, as AI can help with any low level questions I have.
SinanDev@reddit (OP)
Exciting view! Thanks for sharing, i agree with you
AngusAlThor@reddit
I have never once used AI, and because of that my work quality and quantity continues to massively outshine that of my colleagues who have swallowed the bullshit. In my spare time I am working on making better jam, and I think about AI and the idiots pushing it as little as possible.
Itoigawa_@reddit
Quality, ok, but quantity? I feel AI helps speeding u many workflows. Especially when building PoCs, or having to write a lot of boilerplate code.
AngusAlThor@reddit
I'm a Big Data Pipelines Engineer, so my work often has weird requirements. My colleagues who use AI seem to get sent down a lot of blind alleys, with AI suggesting fundamentally incorrect approaches, but in a way that is hard to catch, so they spend three days trying to wrangle code that just isn't quite right and ends up needing 15 edge cases added in and tested. Meanwhile, I get out a pen and paper, do a little maths, figure out how everything crosses over, and I can get it done in 2 days.
xFallow@reddit
Depends on the domain and the application, if you're working on a codebase that's been around for a couple years most of the boilerplate is done already and making greenfield PoC stuff is pretty rare in that kind of environment where the drive is to add more functionality to the existing codebase
Thundechile@reddit
90s: New era is here, we have autocomplete and Office Macros. Programmers are soon not needed!
00s: New era is here, we have cloud computing and Saas services. Programmers are soon not needed!
10s: New era is here, we have no-code and low-code solutions. Programmers are soon not needed!
20s: New era is here, we have AI. Programmers are soon not needed!
Yeah, right.
yetiflask@reddit
Not sure wtf you are talking about here, but nobody ever said anything like that in 90s or 00s. In fact, what you're saying doesn't even make any fucking sense. How's Cloud computing going to replace programmers. or autocomplete a replacement for programmers. WTF?
And cloud didn't get big in the 00s anyway.
Thundechile@reddit
Amazon web services begun at 2002 and back then there was thinking that the application development would go into the direction that services would be just wired together and normal programming wouldn't be needed as much as before.
And don't know what you did at 90s, but there was definately thinking in business circles that normal "information workers" could just make apps by simply recording things (macros) and voila - an app! I happen to know, because I was one of the people hired to fix (ie. transform those monstrosities into proper apps) in the late 90s.
yetiflask@reddit
Apps as a word wasn't even a thing in the 90s.
AWS when it started was a bunch of tiny services, I think S3, EC2 and SQS IIRC, but it's been some time. PaaS, IaaS really came into their own toward the end of 00's.
Funny story: I once interviewed a guy who said he invented the cloud at HP back in the 00s :)
SinanDev@reddit (OP)
It's always the same 😄
OneCosmicOwl@reddit
This week I tried getting Claude to help me find an error in an implementation for 1-2 hs in vscode agent mode. He hallucinated, pointing to things that clearly were not the cause of the error, etc. Didn't help.
I reached to a teammate and he could see the mistake in a few minutes. It was one of those small typos linters don't detect and you just miss.
Examples of this I have too many but I just don't keep track of them, I have better things to do with my mental energy.
I'll keep using AI everyday, it's an amazing tool. But I'm already too tired to argue with anyone that thinks they're coming to replace us. If my company makes layoffs using AI as an excuse I'll just start freelancing since I'm too tired of managers, CEOs, etc. hating how "expensive" we are and taking any opportunity they have to diminish the work we do and minimize our contribution, too tired.
yetiflask@reddit
So you don't know who to write a prompt and somehow Claude is wrong here? Jesus
OneCosmicOwl@reddit
Yeah, the problem was my prompt, don't worry, you'll be able to replace your developers soon, you can just dismiss my experience as skill issue
yetiflask@reddit
An inept worked quarrels with his tools. Never forget this.
bart007345@reddit
Good luck freelancing, if that was easier, what don't you do it now?
DestinTheLion@reddit
Its been easier for me overall
OneCosmicOwl@reddit
When did I say it was easier?
lordnacho666@reddit
It's been a revolution.
Everything that I want to do, it gets done without much direction. Is like it knows what I'm thinking and fixes all the details for me.
It's completely changed the amount of work I've been able to produce, increased the quality, and given me free time back as well.
On top of that, it seems like I'm one of a few people with a seamless experience. It just works for me.
bteam3r@reddit
What toolchain has given you a "seamless experience"? Experiences seem to vary widely based on the toolchain used
SomeGuyInSanJoseCa@reddit
Tools mean way less, in my experience, than learning how to use it properly.
Context windows are huge for a reason, and no matter how good the tool is, if your context window is only 100 or so tokens, you aren't going to get very far.
lordnacho666@reddit
I tried a number of things over the last year and a half. Currently Claude Code in the terminal does exactly what I want.
Copilot: pretty good in-line prediction. Weird shit at times, but being in-line means it can't veer that far off.
ChatGPT: what I use instead of google search. It can capture your terminal or IDE window, so you don't have to explain too much. But mainly I use it for "explain this thing".
Cursor: Copilot was working well, but I wondered if there was a tool for doing multi-file edits. This seemed to work very well and was my driver for a while. However I did get into loops of "oh no I don't know what to do" from cursor, even using the same models as Claude Code. Not sure why.
Claude: Someone suggested this to me, and it's been the winner ever since. I can pretty much just tell it to read the existing code and extend with barely a couple of lines of instructions. Even very tedious multithreaded code, somehow it gets right. I don't always YOLO it, if I think I'd have problems writing it myself, I will check each edit. But it never seems to misunderstand after a correction. For things that are more routine, I just tell it to make the edits and go and do something else.
Shazvox@reddit
Same here. I do the big brain thinking. LLM get's all the details ironed out. I write the code.
I've become a lot more productive and have learnt a lot more rhanks to LLMs.
lovelacedeconstruct@reddit
what have you actually done ? probably nothing of value
Shazvox@reddit
Made sure that hundred thousand of employees get their salary on time seems like something of value to me.
lovelacedeconstruct@reddit
Its always with the AI delusional people when asked what have they coded they deflect to non sense
Shazvox@reddit
Do you always feel threatened by people who utilize tools you don't like?
You sound very immature.
marx-was-right-@reddit
You didnt ever answer the initial question
Exciting_Presence533@reddit
You want his weekly report of features and bug fixes?
Okay
marx-was-right-@reddit
More like tech stack, scope of ownership and responsibility, recent high level asks, etc
Ok-Regular-1004@reddit
That you get any upvotes on a comment like this shows the maturity of the average "senior" developer in this forum.
dream_metrics@reddit
The good faith is just dripping from this comment isn’t it
SinanDev@reddit (OP)
I'm glad it's working out so well for you. You sound like an experienced senior developer. Would you say that you know most things and don't really need to learn new concepts, or do you still have more to learn?
Don't you ever feel like AI is taking too much thinking out of your hands?
thephotoman@reddit
I don’t expect the foundational models to last. They cost too much money to create, and their benefits aren’t worth the market rate cost of providing the service. Saving me two alt-tabs when I want to Google something is not a productivity boost.
The big problem is that we have a culture of managers who:
None of this is getting us closer to any kind of actual thinking machine.
U4-EA@reddit
This morning, ChatGPT suggested I not bother with regenerating the session on successful login in my authentication package because it will be an inconvenience for other devs using the package to have to accommodate for it. It also then started telling me about how to configure non-existent parts of the package's API.
PracticallyPerfcet@reddit
Fully embracing it. I hate the mechanical process of writing code. Typing sucks, especially after two decades of doing it.
I export as much as I can about my code base with a single just command… schema files for my DB models, and OpenAPI schema for my API, JavaScript client using Orval for my frontend, and a snapshot of my project structure using tree.
…then I feed all that to an llm, describe a feature for it to generate, do 5 minutes of yoga while it works, then review and adjust the code to taste.
SinanDev@reddit (OP)
That's interesting, thanks for sharing! Yesterday, I just was yesterday wondering how long it feels like to write out code fully when AI can also produce quick results. What was normal not so long ago now feels 'slow'. That gave me to think.
Another case is when you have been writing code for two decades. I think your brain operates at a different level to a programmer with less than for example 5 years' experience.
PracticallyPerfcet@reddit
When you have less than 5 years of experience software dev is new and exciting… there is so much to learn and explore. That’s intellectually the best time in your career.
SinanDev@reddit (OP)
That sounds exciting, I don't think this needs to end
spreadlove5683@reddit
Super forecasters think there is a strong possibility of AI replacing all remote work. Median estimate of 2032 from the two super forecasters I heard. There's a big disconnect between what people and Reddit think and what people who are good at predicting the future think.
creaturefeature16@reddit
I find these tools can replace tasks, but not jobs. My role isn't tied to code generation as much as an architect's role isn't tied to the generation of a blueprint. The work is so much more comprehensive than that.
Working with these tools boils down to how well you can delegate, which is a skill that not all people have or are comfortable with, which explains the massive gap between those that think they're revolutionary, and those that think they're useless.
I'm someone who's been delegating for a long time, so they're a good fit for me, but they essentially boil down to "smart typing assistants" and "interactive documentation". They have definitely brought productivity gains, but as I've often said, 100% of my code could be "generated", and my job largely stays the same.
anor_wondo@reddit
The main question is if those productivity gains will lead to fewer jobs or more work
I think a mix of both. So, the job market remains stagnant while the amount of work increases along with pay
creaturefeature16@reddit
If software was a static product, then I'd say yes, there would be less jobs. But in my experience, the complexity of the software seems to scale the available tools. And there's a huge backlog of work, still.
I dint think there will be fewer jobs. The question for me is: will AI raise the quality and output of outsourced workers where they soak up a disproportionate amount.
Lonely-Leg7969@reddit
I find that AI is terrible for documentation from scratch because you end up spending more time trimming out the hallucinations - and it’s very good at generating a crapload of content. It’s convenient for generating and styling mermaid sequence diagrams based on some process.
If you give a small task, it performs much better. Hell would freeze over before I let it write code though - having AI around just made me realize how much more I enjoy writing code and solving problems
curiouscirrus@reddit
I’m fully embracing it and it’s mostly been a positive experience. What I’ve found is that it’s changed the abstraction level at which I work. I’m still in control (I hope!), but I delegate almost all coding tasks to the AI similar to how a manager might delegate to employees. Using rules, I’ve essentially given the AI an onboarding guide to the team so it knows where it works, key repos, how to access the issue tracking system, etc.
With this setup, I’ve found I usually toggle between 2 or 3 AI concurrent sessions, prompting and/or reviewing the work from one while the other(s) work in the background. While this does sometimes create an unsatisfying, detached feeling like I didn’t actually create/do anything myself, the more I’ve used it, the more I’ve gotten comfortable and realized I’ve just moved up an abstraction level and am multiplying my output.
DonaldStuck@reddit
I'm very happy with LLM's. They help me a lot when having to write dumb code that would otherwise only take time instead of mental capacity. And debugging, when C#/.NET flies of the handle, it spews out a lot of information. It's useful but it's always a lot. Copy/paste into ChatGPT and very often it points me in a few seconds towards the culprit. Wonderful stuff.
And I use ChatGPT as a sparring partner like "I'm not sure whether I should use cookie based auth or jwt based. Help me pick one by asking me a few questions" This helps me a lot and I really think I made better choices because of it.
At the same time, I hate the stupid ass hypification around AI/LLM's and that includes the dumb predictions about how it will delete jobs. And that also includes all the people that went on the bandwagons called blockchain, crypto, web3 and now AI. It's so stupid. They will, again, accomplish nothing and wait for the next hype to come along.
So in the end I'm happy with LLM's, I think it made me a better developer and now I'm only waiting for the hype to die down so we can be adults about it.
Mundane-Mechanic-547@reddit
For me personally I have a tab open to Gemini and I ask it stuff that I kinda know but forgot the syntax of, so I don't have to remember. It's absolutely amazing, it's like having a senior dev/dba/networking guru at your fingertips. I'm "IBM XT" old and have been programming for decades, this stuff is absolutely amazing. IT's not ALWAYS accurate but it's a quantum leap over what we had just a few years ago. It's really that impressive. I'm not in any way concerned that they can replace me with an AI, that's crazy talk.
03263@reddit
I'm not using AI much in my work yet. Company has not shown any interest in it, paid for, or pushed any tools so my usage is basically limited to asking ChatGPT stuff that I would just as well search Google for. It's been useful for writing code against old library versions, so old that the official docs have been taken offline.
TheStruttero@reddit
Im in the process of learning and avoid using AI for that reason, turned off code completions/suggestions in VS
Using AI removes the creation of habits for solving each type of problem i might stumble upon which means I dont learn what I need to learn and will be dependent on AI every time
SinanDev@reddit (OP)
Props to you for going that way! Hope it will work out for you
vuongagiflow@reddit
To use ai effectively, you need to adopt it as your pupil. Encode your knowlege, give feedback constantly (manual or programmatic), putting guardrails on its output. Use the tool asynchronously rather than vibecoding, as you had skill to do it properly (ci cd stuff). Use it properly you will have more time enjoy life; misuse it and bugs will overload yourself.
Sakura48@reddit
I'll be worry when I give AI a story's acceptance criteria and it gives me back production ready code.
awpt1mus@reddit
I still like to write code myself, I use LLM as search engine only and bounce ideas back and forth.
Esseratecades@reddit
AI is my assistant.
I started using Copilot when it was still in beta even, so I've had an "AI workflow" since before most managers knew what AI or LLMs were. Let it autocomplete some code, or let it have a chat window, and let it make comments in PRs even. Having access in the IDE is great but quite frankly I don't want it executing anything, or performing write operations, or doing network calls.
Keep your development process exactly the same as before AI existed. Just allow the AI to assist you in what you are already doing. If you let it replace developers, now you have a problem if you have a novel product, or if there are regulatory requirements, or if your code interacts with the physical world, or is used by decision makers. Just do what you already do but better.
Limp_Technology2497@reddit
Decently, but with some caveats.
1.) The effectiveness depends wildly on a combination of culture and project architecture. If you have a heavy code review culture, the utility will be limited because you will have to review every little thing the AI does. Similarly, if the project architecture is unorthodox, it's much harder for the AI tools to reason about.
2.) For small projects with well-established architecture, it's incredible.
3.) The generated code isn't always perfect, and you have to decide how much you care about that.
Personally, I've come around to the idea that especially for small and exploratory projects, this is just how I work now.
hoffsky@reddit
It’s a mixed bag. It definitely helps me handle JavaScript and various edge cases.
I went through a period where AI slowed me down:
Lots more code reviews to do. The quality is higher because of LLMs but still contain bugs.
Questions from non devs using ChatGPT to produce plausible sounding hallucinations. This had a cost of me researching and finding their suggestion was wrong. I now no longer respond to “ChatGPT told me this” queries.
bigorangemachine@reddit
I hate typescript and AI makes it tolerable. The amount of time it saves me having to wrangle types has been really helpful
Now I'm making a game in godot and I used AI to convert my algo into a line graph so I could see what's happening.
I love it because it's giving me the confidence to get code good enough and focus on the task at hand... it removes writers block.. its been really helpful!
However.. ya its not taking our jobs. At work I'm currently converting an AI generated react-app and its helpless after a certain point. Sure they built an mvp that works but doesn't know how to change itself to work into a higher integration. Even the LLMs when I get code samples it just mixes the godot versions is just really bad.
Ok-Regular-1004@reddit
Spending my newfound free time reposting AI generated "questions" to developer forums?
SinanDev@reddit (OP)
Why do you think this question comes from AI rather than me feeling that way to ask the community?
Think-Draw6411@reddit
The first two comments under this post are the entire spectrum of experience.
One guy does not even give it a shoot (and is hopefully soon in retirement). The other does not realize that a probabilistic system will never nail everything constantly.
It’s probably somewhere in the middle, but with the massive amount of investment going into coding agents by people who are absolute elite coders in terms of understanding coding (would be a bit crazy to claim that mark zuckerberg doesn’t understand code…), I expect the improvements in the next 12 months to be substantial.
GPT 3.5 couldn’t provide 3 lines of code that made sense. The improvements are insane.
eGord0n@reddit
I used it for system engineering tasks, but it didn't help in every case. It's great at polishing code, even better than I am, but when it comes to solving system engineering problems, I operate on a different level than these Al agents. I've tried them all-Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude
DPrince25@reddit
Hate it - never liked it since its debut not because of market shift but because I love software engineering and it takes away from the experience. But it is beneficial. I mainly use it for documentation explanation. I use it at work since the org pays for it.
For personal development and skills I only use it to help identify potential design or architectural decisions.
I think in a few weeks I’m going to removing AI help from my ide, like code block suggestions etc. It makes me feel stifled and stunted on growth. Any intervention by AI for me should user initiated.
SinanDev@reddit (OP)
thanks for sharing. Yes it takes away the feeling of accomplishment after spending time on research and understanding things deeply when there is an LLM, just generating out the solution. (Depends on complexity)
Its great for getting faster results, but there are definitely drawbacks that can ruin the fun along the way. On r/programming someone posted this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1o2g3ee/this_is_one_of_the_most_reasonable_videos_ive/
Its just to relatable.
Feroc@reddit
I switched roles before AI really came up, but I still have some private projects, and I hardly write any code myself anymore. Though I would never let AI run wild on a professional project, at least not yet.
On the other hand, I now miss being a developer because I see so many ways that AI can support my work, especially with the more annoying parts, which were the main reason I switched roles.
I agree with your view on quick functionality. Claude CLI or Codex with GPT5 can create some great results when you are only looking at functionality. It basically built me complete web apps or Python scripts just from a to-do list. Even half a year ago, that would have been very hard or close to impossible. Though probably most of it wouldn't survive a real code review.
But development is really fast, the context size of the models is growing, and it will probably only get better from here.
What would I do if I were still a developer? I absolutely wouldn't ignore it and would learn how to use it for my advancement. Developers won't get replaced by AI, but some might get replaced by developers who know how to use AI productively.
steampowrd@reddit
Our company does not push AI, they allow it. I use it because it helps me.
Some of our code bases are in languages I have very little experience with. It reads the code base and tells me what’s going on which saves me a lot of time.
I also use it to figure out bugs. Sometimes I would beat my head against the wall in the past. Now the AI beat its head against the wall and saves me from enduring that experience.
Sometimes I do wonder I’m learning less. So I try to force myself to spend time learning while it does things that I’m not able to do.
Most of the people at my company are positive about it. I think it helps that leadership is hands off regarding AI. You can use it if you want to. One of our cloud engineering guys is very pissed off about AI though. He’s one of our most knowledgeable people and he is constantly pissed off that people know the answers to questions where before people used to have to grovel to him in order to answer those same questions.