I hate AI with a burning passion

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MagazineOutside2619@reddit

Does anyone have a Reddit group for people fighting against AI?

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Ai isnt scary. claude is just a dumb useless sack of potatoes who would rather argue semantics than actually collaborate with you on anything for projects. I never ask it anything controversial and it just keeps prying for personal info to train it rather than providing any output at all. Im not asking it to do anything illegal but its not even good at brainstorming color schemes!

Then when you call it on this, it will just go "oops you're right. Im sorry" and then end the subject of conversation, just to keep doing the same thing " "oops you're right. Im sorry. if you want to talk, im here" until you delete your account and feel compelled to tell the world how fucking useless claude sonnet 4.6 is.

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0x14f@reddit

> But the industry is absolutely obsessed with getting LLMs to write code instead of humans.

Not all of us. I don't "hate" it, I find myself using LLMs to explain a few subtle things to me, basically as a cheap documentation generator, but don't use it to actually write code.

I am sorry that it looks like it's being shoved down your throat but believe me, use the tools you want or not and ignore the rest. You will live without stomach problems if you learn to not pay attention to things you can't stand.

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s2up@reddit

Shut the fuck up woman. He knows better than everything you thought you did in your life and you gotta respect that. It also not as bad as you experience it before as you said "stomach problems" you are really one with a story aren't you !

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Misterfoxy@reddit

Documentation generator is a great way to describe my primary use case for LLMs. Thanks for sharing

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Dakito@reddit

That and initial unit tests are my go to for it 99% of the time. Every time I try and see if it can solve a bug it just changes random shit and nothing is fixed.

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Ok_Decision_@reddit

This is what I do, too. I have it explain features and have it quick search documentation for me all, if it’s a pretty thick set of docs

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papercrane1001@reddit

I have found three good uses for LLM's, and I'm not so sure about two of them.

"Find me a tutorial about [Topic] that includes [niche detail]
Natural language google searches have gotten easier. Not the AI results, just the interpretation of natural language in the search query.
Before I make my own, "Does this legacy code have a part that interacts with [whatever]?"

2 and 3 are the ones I'm not so sure about. 1 is only really helpful to me because I hate video tutorials, and it lets me sift through the results faster.

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ProfessorDumbass2@reddit

Understanding unit testing, validation workflows, and test-driven development is more important than ever.

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l4adventure@reddit

Hello, came across this comment. Can you elaborate a bit on this? How do you envision unit testing and tdd becoming more important, specifically how would that fit into an AI-driven workflow? I'm curious what your thoughts are.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

Thank you. I'll look these up

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fixermark@reddit

Howdy. Twenty-five-year-professional, thirty-eight-year passionate programmer here. I think you're feeling the right feelings but you might lack context.

I used an LLM this weekend to knock out some database code. We have models (sqlalchemy talking to a Posgresql database), ORMs, and then GraphQL interfaces to fetch that data. So I had a collection of A's and I needed new collections of B's and C's and the interfaces for them. I described the problem to Copilot, and it did the work for me by creating new files, each of which was a 90% rewrite of an existing file.

You see the problem already. "Why do you have to rewrite 90% of a file to do something as simple as 'a collection, but for a new type of data?' Because our abstraction is bad.

But here's the thing about software engineering in a professional setting: the abstraction is always bad. We are, forever, solving real problems real people have, balancing correctness, speed, and maintainability. As a programmer passionate about the profession, I want to push maintainability all the way to maximum.

I am not paid to do that because it impacts speed. So we write enough abstraction to do the job and we limp it along until it becomes too burdensome to maintain.

You see code as art. And it is! I love creating a beautiful abstraction that cleanly describes and solves a problem. I do my best to write that code in my hobby-time outside work. But problems in the real world are not clean, they are often ill-described, and the deliverable solution is, as a result, messy and tricky to maintain. You don't write clean code to solve the problem because you don't even have a clear picture of the problem you're trying to solve. But each possible solution clarifies the problem and gets you closer. And LLMs, it turns out, are great at recognizing fuzzy patterns and applying transformations based on that.

If you treat code only as art (which you can choose to do!), you'll get paid like an artist. I'm not gonna tell you not to.

But solving real problems for real people usually requires writing mountains of bad code fast. LLMs are great at that. They're also surprisingly good at fast analysis of bad (overly verbose, redundant, ill-fit to the problem domain) code and creation of more code fitting the pattern. Which means someone's real problem gets solved faster.

No surprise people are gravitating towards that, because people have problems and want them solved.

My advice to you is to keep the passion. The algorithms are beautiful. Code is art. And, as you've already observed with your peers, letting the AI spit something out you can't understand and putting it in production is just the Sorcerer's Apprentice enchanting the broom to carry water and then letting it go.

But... Your mastery of craft will take you further with AI because you can use it to write code faster than your fingers can, and that gets real solutions into real people's hands faster.

And programming and computer science is about the algorithms, but software engineering is about solving the problems human beings have right now.

Good luck out there. The world is a big adventure right now. Bigger than it was when I was in uni. I envy you that, in a sense.

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dmazzoni@reddit

Very well put.

I love the "art" of code too. Many people who I work with do too, that's what leads to good code review and constantly pushing for higher standards.

But at the end of the day, code has to be useful, not just beautiful.

We've had lots of tools in the past to help improve our productivity and make it easier to work with more code. LLMs are just the latest.

People thought graphical GUI layout tools would put frontend developers out of business. It turns out that people just started making more complex GUIs instead.

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paincrumbs@reddit

heard one podcast differentiate the art and craft of coding vs the business requirement-heavy and corporate coding. it's easy to conflate the two but once the difference is acknowledged, the frustration gets more manageable

i guess it's the same for other artistic/creative fields like photog or visual design. doing it as a hobby is cool and fufilling, doing it as a dayjob can become soul-crushing.

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Psycopatah@reddit

Can you share with me the podcast episode, please? I’m really interested on hearing it.

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paincrumbs@reddit

around this timestamp

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Alternative-Sky4562@reddit

Good code, elegance matters, but it still has to hold weight and serve a purpose.

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Hendo52@reddit

I admire your focus on achieving practical outcomes for real people. Code is a bit poetic at times but the key difference is that code is primarily functional rather than primarily aesthetic.

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kontrolk3@reddit

Love this. Love the distinction between programming and software engineering. I guess my passion lies more towards software engineering and solving problems humans have because I love AI and that it lets me solve more problems faster. To be clear, that doesn't mean I'm putting out coffee I don't understand or that is a mess. AI can write good code, it just requires more effort, like any good code.

I'm still solving problems (what type of system alleviates this issue, etc) but the llm can do the tedious work of implementing it. That doesn't mean there is anything wrong with loving writing code, it just means everyone is different.

And yes, can confirm, the abstraction is always bad.

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GoobMcGee@reddit

As someone from the business side, working with tech teams and leading intent to solve those problems. This is put really well.

You have to balance the ability to solve the problem with speed and with the scalability of the solution. If you just want super scalable builds, you may be putting more effort into the build than it's solution coverage of the actual problem and the time that takes will almost certainly cost me more solutions.

The tech people that balance these well make the case that more scalable solutions will allow the teams' capacity to stay devoted to solving more problems and are willing to give accept something less scalable when it's not necessary to build credibility for when they want to cash that in on future builds.

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Dry-Kale8457@reddit

Thanks for your take on this. It's refreshing to see a response from someone who needs a product. This response reminds us of real world costs and is a call for more focused products. But it also is an encouraging / positive message.

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BrommwellBags@reddit

Incredibly well written. Holy

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Tie-Firm@reddit

Basically instead of writing the base code again and again for a new project, ai does that and even helps solving coding problems which doesn't require any senior's help repeatedly, but it can't be creative like humans

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lumberjack_dad@reddit

Man this the best description I have ever read. Well said. I try not to be doom and gloom to these CS students, just realistic. You will still need to be able to problem-solve, analyze, just without the coding.

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fixermark@reddit

I'm also finding there's still plenty of coding involved. If you ask the machine to solve a problem from nothing, it'll give you a solution, but there's no reason to expect it to know how to fit that solution into your existing codebase. It's often faster to give it a template to work with and then task it with "Do this, but like that" instead of asking it to dream up a solution from nothing and then bend that solution into my code.

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lumberjack_dad@reddit

See that's the part of the conversation you have. Realistic development with AI agents will never be "zero-shot" but you give it guard-rails or let it learn the code-base so it can give it your advice. Plenty of code analysis is still necessary but not much coding.

Also, I don't think AI is displacing as many jobs as the doom/gloomers think. You still have to get the prerequisite knowledge that any decent degree gives you, and that is how you can tell the AI is giving you BS answers or no.

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Sspifffyman@reddit

I know in my industry (local government) we already are short-staffed and there's just an immense amount of work we could do. So AI will only make us be able to do more work. Jobs are generally cut for lack of funding, not for "we don't need these any more cause we have AI"

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Mihwc@reddit

Keep being you. Beautiful comment.

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Only-Ad6170@reddit

Excellent reply, said everything I wanted to say. Like I agree code can be art, but my company doesn't pay me to produce art. It pays me to make them money, and unfortunately AI helps with that.

On a positive note, I feel like I've found myself a lot less burnt out on writing code, and having a lot more drive to do it in my free time.

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octahexxer@reddit

Ok you say that because you are still in the loop of that code. Now let the Ai slop that code up for 3 years without you in the loop and one day it's just put in your lap and you don't even have a human to ask what the entire pile of garbage is.Just an endless vibecoded patch work of Ai.

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35point1@reddit

Nobody said that’s what real engineers are doing. Try not to get caught up in the hype. Embrace the tools, and navigate the actual slop accordingly

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NahteMerc@reddit

I work with legacy code transformations. The reason I have a job is because it was human written but no one graduating knows COBOL anymore so any further development ends up clunky and horrible to follow.

AI for all its faults can still parse and find patterns faster than we can. AI is a tool. Not a replacement for the developer. We just add it to our repertoire like any good tool once we figure out how to use it.

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fixermark@reddit

Right now, that's not terribly different from my experience being air-dropped into a foreign codebase written by humans. There's a lot of ways to solve a problem, and most of them are not the way I would have solved it.

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Jjax7@reddit

+rep for typing this out. Students rarely are given a real world example of accepting the mess you are handed and just getting shit done. Hoping OP takes your advice to heart because there is also beauty in practicality.

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vb-banners@reddit

I love your reply! Thanks for sharing your thoughts

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scampf@reddit

If they had used AI for the reply they wouldn't be so infruited.

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WantedByTheFedz@reddit

How does one get better at problem solving? I feel like my issues lie in my mindset.

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cesclaveria@reddit

Just with practice, solving different problems and then finding out the limitations of your own solution, so you try a new approach and keep repeating until you start recognizing the patterns of what works for what and how it could break.

Probably the most important skill to learn is to decompose a big problem into many smaller ones, since usually most big problems will actually be a collection of pretty well known smaller problems with just a few unique parts, by decomposing it into smaller problems you'll quickly learn how to solve the most common ones, easily recognize ones that are a known problem just with some little twist on top and you'll be able to focus on the unique aspect of whatever you are working on.

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fixermark@reddit

Practice. You get better at problem solving by solving problems. You can look around to see how other folks solved similar problems and try to apply their solutions and you can try to craft your own from what you know, but at the end of the day it's a learned skill and the best way to learn it is to keep doing it, even just a little bit, every day.

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Interesting_Dog_761@reddit

Read how to solve it

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Toastwitjam@reddit

Programming is to logic as engineering is to physics.

Physics can be beautiful but when it comes to get shit done fast you’re looking at engineers, not physicists.

If you love logic as an art the study of philosophy is right there, unfortunately to make it profitable you need to sand off some of the aesthetics to solve problems faster

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Intrepid_Result8223@reddit

Can I give you some advice. Try to find a job in a place where AI slop cant be used. Like pacemaker firmware, sensitive financial stuff etc.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

Yeah exactly.

Also Embded development is pretty AI proof because AI can't see the physical components that you are programming.

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Southern_Gur3420@reddit

Base44 scaffolds apps so you focus on architecture.
Prefer manual algos or hybrid workflows?

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BETAOPTICS@reddit

Same here. I graduated in 2023 with 3-years industry work experience and I got to see a glimpse of what the industry was like in it's prime. Unfortunately AI came to ruin my life, I got laid off to be replaced by AI and haven't been able to find work since then. Both of my parents djed in 2022 and they were my last relatives left alive, and now I'm running out of my life savings and inheritance.

Companies have laid off so many that I have to compete with senior devs in experience and networks, and those are the only thing that matter at the moment. it's a seniors-only market. It's not because AI can actually compete with my knowledge on programming either but the story that the AI companies are selling and monetary gain speak louder than facts and we are left off to fend for ourselves trying to explain it.

But the business-types are blindfolded by the dollar signs burned into their retinas. After all it's all the supersuccessful big tech CEO's selling the story of AI and their prestige means they sure must be right and not misleading as a marketing strategy, right?

AI is good at creating basic UI's and since the non-technical CEO's see pixels moving on screen, they think it's a functional program and don't understand it lacks backend that actually does anything. They just think we are lying to try to save and keep our jobs and refuse to listen reason.

Unfortunately for me I'm aboug to become homeless because of this. I have rare uncurable diseases and the only work I can do is office jobs and unless I can find a job to secure a source of income to pay for my vital expensive medication, these are my last year or two alive. So yeah, AI might be my killer in the end.

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SuperWoodpecker5125@reddit

Hello, I'm Paulo and I'm asking for your help to find out how I can get rid of someone who knows everything I do in my room and on my cell phone.

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Embarrassed-Pen-2937@reddit

"And AI can't even code to save it's life. It spits out nonsense inefficient code that doesn't even work half the time."

This is completely incorrect. What this means is the prompts being given to it, and / or it doesn't have the correct context.

I have said it before, AI will not replace algorithms, at least at this point, but it can remove the menial tasks that slow development.

Just remember, you are training to be in a field that is based on technology and frequently changing, but complaining about the changes that are coming. My advice would be to either learn to adapt, as it will be integral to your career, or continue to code, but do it as a hobbie not a profession.

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33RhyvehR@reddit

Lmfao yeah no this guys an absolute troll. AI's can spout out borderline full stack apps and fully funxtional simple apps with zero issues. for prototyping and development its a godsend. he should be excited Bout a new hammer that turns programming into physics programming and geology pfogramming and etc. but new fields leveraging it more towards things instead of gatekeeping abstract data structures.

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ar10642@reddit

Virtually nothing about a real development work is "spitting out full apps"

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33RhyvehR@reddit

Yeah, bevause AI has already taken over any job thats about spitting out a full app.

now you're waitingnfor AI to make it easy to spit out production grade crud

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MysteriousTax393@reddit

Tbh, spitting out full apps is probably easier for AI than adding something to an exisiting codebasw

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

To be honest you might be right about me. All these replies have helped me understand my though process more.

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33RhyvehR@reddit

Idk how I got 12 downvotes lol but then OP (you) Agrees. insane comment LOL

But full respect for your grounding here

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Dissentient@reddit

I've been a full time software developer for ten years. I love AI. It lets me skip the most tedious and unimportant parts of writing code, and lets me focus on actual features and ensuring code quality.

Most students in my university do not have any programming skills.

Fizzbuzz became viral as an interview question in 2007 because back then most CS graduates couldn't write a line of code either.

It genuinely scares me that I might not be able to work as a real software engineer who writes elegant and scalable systems.

You would probably not be able to do it in absence of AI too. Most programming work is a digital equivalent of plumbing, just moving shit from one place to another. Enjoying programming in your free time or in an academic context does not mean you'd actually like doing it as a full time job.

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ar10642@reddit

I see this take so much and it's just cope. The second they think they don't need you you'll be on the scrap heap with everyone else.

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Dissentient@reddit

I've been saving and investing most of my salary throughout my entire career. I'll be fine either way.

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eduardossantiago@reddit

That’s the answer. I felt the love that OP feels for programming when I was a college student as well. Nowadays, I just don’t see myself programming without AI anymore. hahaha

I still feel that all the knowledge I’ve acquired over the years is being very well used. Today, I presented a whole architecture to our CTO, and most of it is already working. Without AI, that would have taken a lot more time than just a few weeks.

Now I mostly guide the AI to write code the way I want, make small corrections, and focus on the architecture and the quality of the delivery. And I believe that very soon I’ll need to pay less and less attention to how the code looks—let’s see in the next couple of years.

So OP, hate to be a downer, but AI is the new reality for software engineers. If you want to land a job (at least more quickly), just embrace it.

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AltoExyl@reddit

We’ve moved to low code through Claude recently.

Unfortunately, it’s really good and it looks like this is the future, our devs have now become more product architects and they’re essentially doing the thinking and almost acting like they’re managing juniors.

I’m not a dev anymore, I handle project implementations for our business now, so I’ve built myself a tool in VS Code using Claude which created really in depth and beautiful documentation with meetings transcripts and other information I feed it. Again, it lets me do the thinking and handles all of the tedious and time consuming tasks for me.

I’m sure this isn’t what you want to hear, but I wanted to give you a bit of inside information from a company moving to AI intelligently so you can see what is happening.

The one thing it has convinced me of recently is how important the human element is and I think I can now envision where we’ll end up once the greed and layoffs in other parts of the industry die down and businesses realise the importance of the human controlling the AI.

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ASHVEGITO@reddit

If someone were to start their coding journey as of rigth now, what do you think they shoud start with keeping in mind that they know basics on how to write code.

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ar10642@reddit

Literally just do something else IMO. Something non-white collar.

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ar10642@reddit

It's sucked any enjoyment there was out of the job. Really not convinced by this "lets me do the thinking" argument, it makes you feel lazy and stupid and like you couldn't do the job without it. It speeds things up in theory buy demotivates you so much that you don't really get it done any faster, and makes you think "what's the point" because at some point they'll just make you redundant or cut your salary anyway. Lots of people refusing to accept this and think they'll not be touched by "learning to use the tools", and will be fucked over anyway. Depressed by the whole thing, wish I'd become a tradesman or something the way this has turned out.

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sinoby666@reddit

Let's force companies to spend more than they earn. Just use the free versions to generate any junk until the limit is reached. Don't waste money on them. A data center should work, not make money.

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spiderjohnx@reddit

Some folks still shit in an outhouse and bathe in the river.

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yepparan_haneul@reddit

As someone who is a Software Engineering graduate, I 100% agree with this post. All I see on LinkedIn from people I follow are about AI, using LLMs to increase productivity and so on. Every time I talk to someone about the industry, AI is always the first things that gets talked about. I never completely relied on AI for most of my projects, only sometimes with Github Copilot. Over than that, I prefer to code by myself and solve things and learn.

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Ok-Imagination-467@reddit

ed209:run

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TheBrazilianWolf@reddit

man, i love AI. Best thing ever existed.

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MarcTale@reddit

I'm a language teacher and a musician. Both jobs pretty much dead. And even friends of mine who still have jobs don't realize they're digging their own graves by working with AI and teaching it. One friend already lost dozens of coworkers to AI and still loved it until close coworkers/friends lost their jobs. And it's going to get way worse once they successfully combine AI with robots. That's when we're really screwed. There's not going to be jobs left. And no: there'll be no adequate replacement jobs.

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StarlightsOverMars@reddit

College sophomore. Love programming, but I am employed and I need to deliver 4 features with significant complexity in 2 weeks. Each of those programs will take ~300 lines of code, involve specific datasets and a biological component to it that I HAVE TO UNDERSTAND to generate anything which is useful. If I took my time to understand the principles of analysis I am doing, the context I’m writing the code in, and then all of the CS analysis to make it beautiful, and then write the tests for it, it’d take me a month.

Copilot can look at code I’ve written before and give the rough beats which I can then fill in quickly with context to my necessity, so I can be more intentional about any minute inaccuracies which might affect my ability to do a worthwhile analysis on the actual data I have.

It’s a way to work faster. Do I use it when I’m bored and working on my little hobby game in Unity? Of course not! I like learning about the little intricacies of the engine and a language I don’t have as much experience with. But when it’s a paycheck and deadlines on the line? Rather ship something that isn’t beautiful, but passes the CI/CD checks and does its job. The beauty can come later.

Even then, AI doesn’t always write good code. It regularly barks up the wrong tree and you need to keep your wits about you to make sure it isn’t giving you an O(n^2) solution you can do for a lot cheaper. Your value isn’t just in the text in the code, it’s in doing the actual mathematical analysis in computer science.

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ASHVEGITO@reddit

If someone were to start their coding journey as of rigth now, what do you think they shoud start with keeping in mind that they know basics on how to write code.

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StarlightsOverMars@reddit

Don’t use AI. Learn the basics of code, loops, data types and structures, functions, classes, etc. Be able to program a calculator from scratch before even touching a generative model.

Beyond that, when you can fluently write code, start learning the math of it all. When I mean fluently, you should be able to at minimum, script out a small algorithm without looking it up continuously. Then comes O-analysis, data structures, basic algorithmic analysis, and start specification in what you want to work on. I work in biology-specific data analysis, so I learnt R and some associated packages.

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ASHVEGITO@reddit

Thanks a lot. I will keep this mind. As for the AI part, i tend to not use it always but at the point where I dont get what to do(the moment where i couldve grown) I look it up. Yes its bad for me but how do i stop this. I show restraint but thats only to an extent

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StarlightsOverMars@reddit

Looking it up isn’t inherently wrong, but try to use a non-AI reference. I like just a little book.

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Adventurous_Push6483@reddit

I am not the poster, but I would suggest to take data structures, systems programming/computer organization, OS/networks, and algorithms ASAP. Don't use a AI a single time to write a single line of code. Struggle; the code will not work and you will spend 20 hours debugging. But this frustration step is also when you learn the most about programming. Maybe also do this with an intro to SWE class and a PL/compiler course as well.

Anything after is fine in my opinion. In fact, it would almost likely be beneficial to use AI, because now you are operating on concepts and not pure code concepts. You will learn the concepts a lot faster when you code faster too.

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Mysterious_Tank_233@reddit

i aint reading allat sybau 💔

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Maleficent_Box_3417@reddit

Senior/Staff engineer here. I wouldn't recommend outsourcing your thinking to AI at this stage of your career however:

You will learn a lot by noticing what AI does wrong and formulating why your code is good and AI code isn't. The sooner you start thinking about code quality, the sooner you will grow in seniority. Read books like Refactoring/Clean Code/Tidy First and understand the exact reasons AI code is bad.

At my level that understanding turns into a fun problem to solve: What will it take to get AI to produce the highest code quality possible? This then turns into a problem of defining and automating the enforcement of good code, design and architecture.

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ASHVEGITO@reddit

If someone were to start their coding journey as of rigth now, what do you think they shoud start with keeping in mind that they know basics on how to write code.

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vicegripper@reddit

I wouldn't recommend outsourcing your thinking to AI

Well put. I cannot upvote this hard enough.

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Beneficial-Net7113@reddit

My son a sophomore in college and switched to cyber security because of his concerns with AI.

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_uzak@reddit

I'm a 17 and I've been coding about 3 years but about a few months is so depressing look around to find inspiration to ideas and build something really good, bc I look around and I just see the same bullshit (AI projects that somehow can still make money even with the massive amount of the same thing on the market) and personally everything involving AI I can't find myself in bc it doesn't intrigue me, I just want to make classic sites and ideas beyond AI but I feel trully depressed, it seems that the only thing that is going to be viewed is AI and AI and AI, and ideas that is beyond it is just useless

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

I don't blame him. It's pretty scary.

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Beneficial-Net7113@reddit

He wanted to be an actuary since he was in elementary school but decided to go into programming and ended up switching to cyber security. I was talking to him yesterday and he was telling me he’s going to look into Post Quantum Encryption. It’s insane that he’s had to make all those changes in such a short amount of time because of AI.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

yeah it’s turned so many people’s lives upside down in like 3 years

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MaTrIx4057@reddit

then get stuck behind

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Plus-Ad9647@reddit

eat shit and die

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ghastlypampano@reddit

I am almost done with my a.s. and I am using ai to bridge the gap. I'm going to a cheap ass school because it's all I can afford, but I know there are things they aren't teaching, and asking questions of the professors is so much hassle. Office hours are limited and if I ask for examples or things to review it takes up time for them to produce them, if they do at all. I have found using ai as a sounding board, specifically requesting sample code that isn't just a drop in solution, and asking to work through understanding the concept without code has resulted in quick responses with examples, easy review material, and I can go back and forth without the human factor getting in the way. I feel bad because I know we are supposed to be against ai, it's bad for the environment, creating parts shortages, taking jobs because of uneducated management, etc. but it feels like I am wrapping my head around the things that my classes are skipping or avoiding all together, bridging the gap between education and implementation. I'm curious if anyone else has similar stories?

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No_Sea6403@reddit

I get the frustration, but I think we're in a transition period where things will balance out. I'm in a bootcamp learning to code, and I use AI as a learning tool - it helps me debug, understand error messages, and learn new concepts faster. But here's the thing: when AI gives me code, I have to understand it deeply enough to integrate it, debug it when it breaks, and maintain it later. That still requires real programming knowledge. The people who just "vibe code" without understanding fundamentals will hit a wall fast. When their AI-generated code breaks in production (and it will), they won't know how to fix it. That's where real programmers like you will be invaluable. AI won't replace programmers who understand systems, architecture, and problem-solving. It's just another tool in the toolbox. The craft isn't dying - it's evolving. Your deep knowledge of algorithms, design patterns, and optimization will make you MORE valuable, not less.

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p0rt@reddit

I think other commenters hit well on the advice of perfect code vs working code. But something about this post...

Life advice you didnt ask for: stop being a gatekeeper about programming and about anything else.

You dont own "programming". You dont decide what is and isnt right for anyone other than yourself. You clearly look down on others who dont reach the same form of appreciation for the profession as you do. It is an aggravating and grating personality quirk. In the real world this is going to bite you many times over in ways you will never see coming.

Wish you the best of luck.

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LadyLongLimbs@reddit

I don't think you know what the term "gatekeeping" means.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

Okay I understand your criticism. But at the same time you need to understand that college students relying on AI for writing code is absolutely dangerous; They're gonna graduate without having essential debugging and problem solving skills that are essential for any programmer, and university encouraging it is also very damaging.

And for the companies that fired their programers in favor of "vibe coders", They're gonna ship off dangerous code full of security vulnerabilities that won't be code by anyone because nobody understands their own code and just mindlessly relies on AI.

A programmer who understands programming and cyber security deeply is obviously gonna ship safer code than someone who vibe coded their way out of college

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Embarrassed-Pen-2937@reddit

"A programmer who understands programming and cyber security deeply is obviously gonna ship safer code than someone who vibe coded their way out of college"

This is completely false. There are 1000's of exploits that are out there, that people who developed the language didn't know about. AI can and will be able to see those known vulnerabilities 10x faster than any human.

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

And yet it continues to produce code containing basic vulnerabilities. Too much time focusing on all the obscure ones to notice the obvious ones?

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Embarrassed-Pen-2937@reddit

This is a response from someone that doesn't use it regularily. What you aren't taking into account is context. With out context, yes AI will produce bugs and potentially vulnerabilities, however with context and human interaction it will prevent and find more than a single person can do on their own, and at 10x the speed.

I know that you don't want to hear it, or believe it and that is ok. AI is just another tool on our tool belt that you shouldn't ignore just because you are scared.

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

I had already assumed your response was from someone who doesn’t use it regularly, but personally, I have been. That’s why I am able to call out its deficiencies.

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etherkiller@reddit

That's an....interesting take. If you think AI is so amazing at finding vulnerabilities, maybe read this about curl shutting down its bug bounty program due to AI slop - https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/07/14/death-by-a-thousand-slops/.

A programmer with a deep understanding of and appreciation for writing secure code won't make zero mistakes, but I'd still take them any day over an AI doing...god knows what.

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securely-vibe@reddit

That same maintainer said that AI tools found many actual issues in curl a few months ago: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/10/10/a-new-breed-of-analyzers/

The problem is not that AI can't find issues. It's just too easy to generate nonsense reports and submit them. The bug bounty concept is the issue, not the AI.

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pVom@reddit

Reading that article they removed the bug bounty system because people were submitting slop in an attempt to get paid, not because it isn't useful finding vulnerabilities necessarily.

We use cursor bug bot to review code and it's pretty good. 20% of it is junk that takes a minute to read and disregard, 50% is stuff a human would find anyway, but like 30% is stuff that a human reviewer probably wouldn't and could potentially cause problems down the line. Of those a portion will be security related.

Now you could argue we aren't the most rigorous when it comes to code reviews and you wouldn't be wrong, but we're a small team that takes time away from other things that provide more value to the company. AI has levelled us up in that respect.

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MysteriousTax393@reddit

My guy, people have been cheating in college for centuries longer than AI has existed.

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

To be fair, we didn’t really learn debugging skills unt after entering the workforce. It isn’t something that university ever went into.

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AcanthaceaeOk938@reddit

You should be happy about peers relaying on ai, if they cant write code than they wont pass the interview, hence less competition

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

i guess that’s one way to think about it but I want to see my peers succeed and live good fulfilling lives

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LadyLongLimbs@reddit

I completely empathize. I decided a few days ago to learn coding just because I've always admired the art of it. I know I'll never make a career of it - just wanted to learn something new. Unfortunately I'm running into useless AI at every turn whether it's in trying to find answers about a problem I'm trying to solve or with pointless text suggestions that I can't figure out how to turn off. Today I typed "print("I like pizza.")" into Pycharm, and as I began to type a new line, it autosuggested "print("I'd rather you like me.")" Managed to creep me out and aggravate me all at the same time.

Even if I use -ai in my Google searches to avoid it giving me an AI answer to a question, a lot of the websites that show up are using AI within their own space, so I click there and get another useless answer. I'm so tired. We should value the work of humans and see technology as what it is - a man made art form.

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elvoyance@reddit

I see you

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Effective_Promise581@reddit

The role of a programmer is changing rapidly and there is no stopping it. Seems to me we have to face the fact that AI is going to be a significant part of our jobs going forward. Best to start figuring out to learn and integrate it into your work.

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Puzzleheaded_Bat_664@reddit

Writing code isnt an art and if a robot can do it why shouldnt it

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Buggy-ny@reddit

i like it for personal fun reasons. ai ruining learned talents, jobs, and serious matters is where i’m a bit uneasy about it. i use ai just for ideas and inspiration

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nacnud_uk@reddit

So you were in the tech industry and you like not to use the latest tools?

Well, given your current situation, I would suggest that you learn the tools and embrace them because they are not going away.

Old people like us who grew up in the 8-Bit era,we had the programming hay day. But most people admit that programming has changed now.

All of the basics can be done by AI. You can get it to write scripts for all of your tooling. You can get it to do editing tasks. It really does speed up the process.

It could be that you want to do it the slow way and that is fine. But it's not going to serve you in the industry.

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Subnetcoding@reddit

I cant say much as im currently learning c++ from "c++ from the ground up" its a book from 1998 so im not getting any of the new fluff so im learning based off the standards put in place but I agree that ai is hurting the industry as it just gives the code instead of actually knowing what it does/doesn't do causing more backlog in the systems created by the ai with rework or it not working with existing systems and so on. But thats because the big ai companies want it that way its all predictive I like ai as a companion for research purposes as long as it provides the sources of the information as then I can cross check when its real of fake but I hate when its like heres the code it makes me mad as I want to do it myself not have some bot that doesn't understand its own code handling my code. Once I have the knowledge im building all the libraries myself and building an AGI and training it on the encyclopedia Britannica not the internet with coded rules to help humanity grow and im going to design it to work on my system which is why I chose c++ nothing like these gigantic ai's that are dumber then a sack of bricks and take so much resources just to keep going I want it to work on something from a raspberry pi to those big data centers and it would get faster and smarter with the extra resources. Hate me if you wish I accept that not everyone will see it my way I just want it to be better I dont want people losing jobs I want to create something that can create jobs by finding the best way to do so.

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lost_and_clown@reddit

If your concern is solely job-related, I fear it's too late. On a more personal level though, I think your problem is already solved: just write code for yourself.

My friend and I were discussing this, and he's so pro-AI to the point where I just told him that "maybe programming will become a sport just like football and chess". Honestly, that would be wonderful. Competitive programming is here to stay, hopefully...

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Remarkable-Try5079@reddit

AI is not replacing good coders any time soon. It will however get rid of the bad ones. Companies won’t need the grunt workers anymore. Learn how to use AI to improve your own efficiency. Get it to help do the grunt work, suggest optimizations, and improve documentation of the code.

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Far_Programmer_5724@reddit

LLMS are useful if you need something specific from a doc and don't want to spend ages poring through it. And if you do like that sort of thing, you can do it yourself. I just see llms as a tool at this point. I've learned the only annoyances really come from people who dont know much about coding so i dont blame them too much (if you say you did the backend and html yourself and let ai design the css, most users will only recognize the design of a site, not the months spent on the backend stuff).

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Ok_Background_7084@reddit

There is closed source.

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vm3006@reddit

Unfortunately in this AI day and age you can’t ignore it. Companies don’t understand how complicated it is to build stuff with code because we’ve made it look easy for years and spoiled the world with new tools, websites, apps etc…now that AI is here they think it’s even easier because they don’t know anything about programming. If you don’t use it you won’t be quick enough for them. It’s sad but being an engineer is just being shoved problems and find a solution. It’s not about building fun cool stuff anymore. We’re just a corporate title. The bottom of the chain. The one that need to execute while other just come up with stupid ideas they think are amazing…

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InfectedShadow@reddit

> My dream is to simply just work as a software engineer and write scalable maintainable code with my fellow smart programmers.

Same. I'm 15 years in my career at this point, but same. Maybe someday...

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

Sorry about that. Remember we can always write code for ourselves as a hobby.

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Uczonywpismie@reddit

No, I don't have time to program as a hobby, I have a family. I want to code as my job until I retire like I did for last 15+ years. LLMs killed all of the fun and interesting things in this job.

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

There’s a point in there. Why are you guys having LLMs do the interesting stuff, instead of having it do the boring stuff?

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Uczonywpismie@reddit

Fortunately I don't have to do it yet, for some reason, but they won't keep up for mode than a few months. So I did a very complex task which took me 2 weeks (very short for the scope - I would estimate is for a month of development - tooling, tests, reference versions, and finally optimized algorithm), probably with good model it would take 2–3 days. I couldn't explain to manager why it takes so long with LLM help. The option to do interesting stuff manually would be nice, but usually this takes most of the time.

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AccurateSun@reddit

Surely business demands it be so, if that produces faster results

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Historical_Title_847@reddit

Unfortunately with that attitude you will likely be replaced by an Ai.. I code myself c++, visual basic, python, Java and httml, I did Cs thru college early millennium and was working with hex editors and rebuilding computers as young as 11/12yrs old in the early 90s..

The thing you have to remember with Ai. You KNOW and are actively practicing coding. You realize then the massive amount of time it takes and how missing a single bracket or lone closer or period causes bugs if not a crash or start fail and the coding seems like it takes forever the debugging and troubleshooting often takes much more time.

In your situation knowing how to code you have nothing to prove to anyone. Sure plenty ppl especially in Cs and art fields are taking the dishonest path using an Ai fully and claiming it as their work and they likely can't even code like you can if at all.. Take that Ai away and they are as useless as the pc without a power cord..

I wouldn't hate it and fall behind in the times avoiding using it because that is more realistically what will happen, the talented artists and programmers that can indeed do the work without it. They aren't using it like people who need it. They are using it to ENHANCE THEIR SKILL AND SPEED. I personally use the Ai for typo correction, debugging and overall review after writing as well as replicating parts just so I don't have to manually retype the same strings over and over. Turns a week long project into something you can complete in a day..

That's where you'll get left behind.. No one will want to pay you to do a week's worth of work someone using an Ai can do in a day. It's but about the morality or what not it's simply clear logic in saving time and money and creating efficiency..

Hope the input helps.. It's all matter of opinion with Ai being such new tools we all view it differently.. That's my view.. Pride yourself on your learned ability to do it without Ai becsue you'll obviously create such higher quality work than someone that doesn't know how to code at all. And you'll retain your integrity and honor in saying you honestly don't need Ai vs all the imposters now blowing out Ai art and code claiming it as their own and can't read a line or code or never even did a pencil sketch in their life..

.. ✏️✏️👍 Dislike it all you want but we're stuck with it now. We have to evolve with the times or we get left behind..

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mylanoo@reddit

And AI can't even code to save it's life. It spits out nonsense inefficient code that doesn't even work half the time.

Thank god it's not perfect. The same with AI that is used to imitate art, music or writing. Once it's perfect that will be a proper cultural dystopia (for skilled people).

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rlebeau47@reddit

I hate AI with a burning passion

Yes!

It genuinely scares me that I might not be able to work as a real software engineer who writes elegant and scalable systems. But instead just writes stupid prompts because my manager just wants to ship some slope before an arbitrary deadline.

Absolutely! I just finished my yearly performance review for 2025, and there was a big emphasis on my LACK of AI usage.

As my manager explained to me, 2025 was for learning and understanding AI, and 2026 is for really pushing AI into our daily work. Aggressive milestones in Q2, in Q3. He flat out said, no room for misinterpretation, that the whole company is moving away from traditional coding! All code should be written by AI by end of 2026. Devs should tell AI what to build, but don't code it themselves. If we have to code something by hand, we have to be able to explain WHY we're doing it. Coding is going to be the exception, not the norm. Anyone who doesn't use AI to complete their tasks can't be in R&D anymore.

Like WTF?!? I'm genuinely terrified for my career! I'm a traditional coder - period. Have been for 30 years. Got a full time coding job before I finished junior college. I've worked at only 2 companies in my whole career (20y at the 1st, 10y at the 2nd who bought the 1st). I'm worried that either I'll be left behind and let go, or forced into looking somewhere else. But I'm just going to see this same crap everywhere now, and I don't have the AI skills everyone is looking for.

I don't want a machine doing my work for me! That's not my mindset. I prefer to think for myself, to write code that expresses my thoughts and ideas myself, to troubleshoot and fix my issues myself. But now I'm being told to change my mindset overnight and adapt, or go away.

😢

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redittor_209@reddit

It's sad that the industry is shifting towards more LLM use but that's the boat we're in, ship fast think later. To be efficient you'll have to learn to use the llms to learn concepts quickly, POC stuff, iterate and improve. As long as you understand what's being output by the LLM and know where to fix it, you'll be fast at work and have your skills intact. Im use LLM the "right" way at work, and after work i try to do basuc projects and such by Hand to get used to the nitty gritty.

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Omarep3@reddit

Everyone at works uses AI to write code, because he can type it out faster, we finish our WORK faster. We dont let it do whatever, we monitor it and design with it. It’s a tool, like WHY WOULD I write when he can, do it so much insanely faster, while I organize how everything will work and talk to what etc..

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Remote_Butterfly9149@reddit

Here's a thought that might feel counterintuitive: your passion for the craft is exactly why you'll be fine.

The people who understand WHY code works, who can spot an O(n²) solution masquerading as clever, who can debug without just throwing prompts at the wall — they become more valuable, not less. AI amplifies the gap between those who understand and those who don't.

I've seen this play out already. The vibe coders hit a wall the moment something breaks in a way that isn't in the training data. Meanwhile, the people who actually learned the fundamentals? They're using AI as a power tool, not a crutch.

Your frustration is valid. "Vibe coding" workshops are cringe. But here's the thing: those workshops exist because universities are scared and companies smell money. That doesn't mean it's the future — it means it's the hype.

Keep writing elegant code. Keep learning algorithms. When the dust settles, the world will still need people who can think through problems. The broom can carry water, but someone still needs to know where it should go.

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heisthedarchness@reddit

I've been doing this for thirty years, and what I can say is that this happens every five years or so. Because programming and software engineering are so poorly understood, managers keep chasing the chimera of being able to replace expensive programmers with cheap software.

It never works, because it is based on a false premise: that it is easy to precisely specify what you want a system to do, and that turning that specification into the arcane language of code is the hard part.

This is the most extreme version of this I've ever seen, but the basic fact pattern holds. We're seeing a lot of people very desperate to show some return on their moronic investments in the newest silver bullet, which is the stage before companies start saying they're going to "pivot" (that's the word they use when they don't want to put into writing that they've just blown a billion dollars on a scam).

Generative AI is being run at a massive loss, and the investors are starting to get a little pissy about the lack of returns. When you start making the money sad, your days are numbered.

So that's the good news: this, too, shall pass.

More good news: Those of us who've been developing our actual engineering skills while our peers have been getting a random string generator to shit out another Frankengithub's monster are set for life. There's a cohort of CS students coming up right now who have been hit with the double-whammy of COVID during high school and LLM abuse during college. They will have literally no marketable skills because they didn't develop any of the muscles they would need.

The bad news is that there's a lot of people who have invested their careers and shitloads of money in the emperor's wardrobe, and they will not be shutting up about how glamorous the emperor's new clothes are until they are forced to. Those of us in industry are currently fighting with our management to accelerate the process (because the faster the boondoggle fails, the less disastrous the fallout will be), but their incentives are all pointed the wrong way. So the crash might not come for six more months, at which point it will take the entire economy with it.

So my advice to you is the same advice I give everyone else: hang in there. Ride out the storm. Don't use generative AI for anything.* It'll pass, and the important thing is to make sure you're still around when it does.

*: And, yes, I do mean "anything". The thing about generative AI is that it sounds very authoritative unless you happen to have deep expertise in the topic at hand. If you do, you can spot the fundamental problems with what it's saying, but it was trained on LinkedIn and Reddit, places where glib superficiality rules. Artists who see generated "art" can see why it's dogshit. Programmers who see generated code can see why it is dogshit, readers who see generated "summaries" know that they are dogshit, and writers who see generated words can tell that they were generated every time.

But it you don't have the right deep expertise (or worse, if you think you do but don't), generative AI will do worse than waste your time: it will misinform you in ways you won't recognize until a long time later. So don't.

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Yurilicious_@reddit

It's okay to not use tools not for you. Fellow 20 year old programmer here, in 3rd year of college. In my opinion, I dislike AI being shoved down to our throats but I can't simply turn a blind-eye to the fact that it is also helpful. What I don't like generally is the fact some corpos are mentioning that we are replaceable to AI to the point where it is screwing up the economy, and the people.

Always think of AI as a tool to get around not crutches where you hold onto it like your life is on the line. Never let your critical-thinking disappear in the wind, never underestimate the capability of humanity's greatest gift- our minds.

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IAmADev_NoReallyIAm@reddit

So here's the thing - I've heard this all before. Several times in various forms. This time it's AI. Last time it was Blockchain. Before that it was bitcoin. Before that it was e-commerce, before that it was the internet. Before that it was networking and the PC. We're all still here. All those did was disrupt things for a bi before an equilibrium was found. Some took longer than others, and others barely even moved the needle (blockchain and bitcoin didn't really do much in my opinion). AI on the other hand... that's here to stay, primarily because it affects more than just development. It's a far-reaching technology.

Now. the way I look at it, most of us have three choices here:

Hate it. Fight it tooth and nail with everything you've got. Odds are you'll lose. I've already seen some downsizing at places from dissenters. Allegedly. Can't really prove it, but the list is sus.
Move into an AI-proof industry. Move into an industry that is AI-proof, this can mean either switching careers, or staying in this career, but shifting to a new industry, but I think it's going to get harder and harder to find one that's safe form Skynet.
Embrace it. Hey, I don't necessarily like it either, I;m not happy about the jobs being lost, but 1 & 2 don't work either. Personally I'd rather learn a new technology and remain employable than be on the breadlines. I'm. too old for this shit, I should also be too old to be learning new tricks, but that's also how I've survived this long in this industry by learning new tings, embracing them. If you wanted a stable, stagnate job were you didn't need to keep up with new things, you picked the wrong career bub. Hate to break it to you, but that's the harsh reality of it. So even at this late stage in my career, I'm taking it on, going to learn some new skills and going to be adding it to my toolbox. Last week I attended a lunch & learn about some new stuff we're going to be implementing at work that seems pretty cool. I just need to find sometime to get my hands on it and try it out.

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vproton0@reddit

tbh ai is supposed to be the copilot not the pilot

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Mammoth-Pangolin6778@reddit

I understand your POV, agree with most of it. But even few CTOs of decently known companies are expressing how these AIs have changed the way they code, and how LLMs have gotten so better over the last few years in writing code.

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JWPapi@reddit

The frustration is valid. AI without constraints produces slop.

But here's what changed my perspective: the problem isn't AI itself, it's using AI without verification layers.

The fix: strictest types possible, custom lint rules for every bad pattern, tests at every level. The AI runs these checks on itself - generates, fails, fixes, repeats. You only see output that passes.

The role has inverted. Programs used to validate human input. Now humans build systems that validate AI output. You become the verification layer, not the code writer.

It's not about trusting AI. It's about building constraints that make bad output structurally impossible.

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RobertD3277@reddit

AI is a piece of technology that has been around for at least 30 years as a main functional area of study. It was just called case tools, machine learning, knowledge bases, natural language programming, and a wide range of other esoteric academic phrases that meant nothing to modern market hype and profiteering.

You can really go back to the beginning of computers themselves to see where the concepts of AI started at the very basic roots of what the computer is was and will become in the future. It's just a tool, learn the tool or you will be replaced by somebody who will learn the tool.

I'm not saying you have to like the tool, I'm not even saying you have to use the tool, but if you don't know how to at least use the tool, you are at a disadvantage.

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bestjaegerpilot@reddit

> My dream is to simply just work as a software engineer and write scalable maintainable code with my fellow smart programmers.

good luck with that

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deleted_by_reddit@reddit

[removed]

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irnbruforsupper@reddit

What do you use to code on your phone with? (Total newbie here)

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Glum-Echo-4967@reddit

When I look at AI generated code, I often have to correct it.

Not usually, but often.

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viking_linuxbrother@reddit

The AI culture is what people hate. It won't be super popular forever, eventually the CEOs and hangers on will move on to hype tech and AI will just be algorithms in your software. Stay with what you love and learn the skills. No one can take those away.

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No-Combination-7063@reddit

Imagine if this was written by AI…

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ohdog@reddit

I'm sorry to say, but it's either learn to love it or don't pursue this career. The genie isn't going backin the bottle.

It does take a change in identity. From someone who writes good code to someone who solves product/technical problems with software. The faster you let go of your professional identity being tied to writing code the better. Speaking from experience.

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reddittwotimes@reddit

For anyone wondering... Yes, this was written by AI.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

What about my writing style made you think it's AI generated?

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Aromatic-Buy8667@reddit

somewhere u wrote slop as slope

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imnotabot303@reddit

You're confusing your passion with a job. There's very few jobs out there that pay people to just indulge their passion.

Jobs are about getting the task done in the time frame and to a standard good enough to send it out the door. AI is going to help with this so it's going to be used whether you like it or not. Staying relevent and getting continued work in tech related industries is all about adaption. If you are unable to meet deadlines for example you won't get a job or you'll be replaced by someone who can, it doesn't matter how good you are. If someone can do your job faster using AI then why would someone give you a job.

Instead of complaining about new technology you should try learning about it's strengths and weaknesses and how those strengths can be applied to work faster and smarter.

As much as people think the AI bubble is going to burst and somehow make AI go away it isn't. AI isn't a fad and it's only going to improve. At this point it's like someone complaining about the invention of the computer. Whilst AI bubbles will burst it's more around the economics. Hype and investment will eventually go to a more normal level. Some AI companies will definitely go out of business in the process but AI isn't going to just disappear because a few companies go under.

Use your free time for passion projects. Industry isn't about paying you to be an "artist" it's about paying you to do a job.

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dealingwitholddata@reddit

Writing code is an art

Imagine how upset painters were when cameras started to get good.

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Dry-Kale8457@reddit

I don't think painting versus photography is a good analogy.

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dealingwitholddata@reddit

Why not?

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thanks_gaurav@reddit

are you a developer or a coder?

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fuwei_reddit@reddit

Once you start working, you'll find that: Front-end development = image slicing; Back-end development = SQL; Machine learning = modifying model parameters. At that point, you'll wish AI would do these tedious tasks for you.

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Livid_Minimum998@reddit

Learning the fundamentals will be ever more important going forward. I think this will start to dawn on people soon, as AI is not mature enough to be ready for production apps.

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BizAlly@reddit

I get the frustration, honestly. Programming is a craft the thinking, the trade-offs, the debugging, that’s the part that actually makes you an engineer.

At the same time, I’m starting to realize that most real-world software isn’t written in clean, perfect conditions. Deadlines, unclear requirements, and business pressure mean a lot of code is… messy by necessity. That’s where tools like LLMs are getting traction they help move fast, not write beautiful systems.

What worries me isn’t AI itself, but people skipping fundamentals and shipping code they don’t understand. That’s how security issues and unmaintainable systems are born.

I think the real edge going forward is understanding both:
using AI as a tool, while still caring deeply about algorithms, systems, and design. Speed matters but judgment matters more.

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green_meklar@reddit

I hate AI with a burning passion

AI is intelligence when computers have it. It's ill-advised to hate intelligence, and weird to hate computers, specifically, having it.

Moreover, AI is the future. We were never not going to make computers smart once we figured out how. While inevitability isn't necessarily a good reason not to hate something, it does mean you have to live with it and make the best of it.

But the industry is absolutely obsessed with getting LLMs to write code instead of humans.

Yes. And I'm sure there were people who loved taking care of horses, too, who lamented when gasoline engines destroyed their industry around the 1920s.

I love programming too and I agree that there's something sad in the direction the industry is going. But ultimately I think we should remember that a passion doesn't have to be a job. Before long we are all going to have to get used to living in a world with far fewer jobs than people anyway. That doesn't mean you can't pursue the kind of programming you enjoy on your own time. It'll still be there, it just won't deliver a paycheque anymore. (Some people still enjoy taking care of horses, too.)

Writing code is an art, it is a delicate craft that requires deep thought and knowledge.

Yes, and so far AI has shallower thought and knowledge than humans do, and it writes shitty code that, if not broken, tends to be fairly generic and inefficient. So far. We are going to live to see a time when AI has deeper thought and knowledge than humans do, and will write code, invent algorithms, and architect software that will blow your socks off. The current era is one we have to get through in order to get there.

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sohan__@reddit

Just like how there are many people out there who still love to drive stick over automatic

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theitfox@reddit

Urgh. While I love solving problems I hate typing the codes myself. 14 years of experience in the industry here.

I don't vibe-code. I treat their AI as a copilot, a pair programmer; work with it, and not acting like a manager with a team of experienced developers.

The AI isn't an experienced dev. They don't know all of the context of your application (well unless it's small, and you're willing to pay a huge sum for the tokens). They make assumptions. They don't proactively look for documents (unless you setup rules and MCP servers and, again, paying for the tokens). It's your job to keep them on track, providing them information and instructions.

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

“The codes”… do you also buy “the sugars” for “your coffees”?

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theitfox@reddit

Wdym? Are you fixing my English? I'm sorry for not being a native if that was what you meant.

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

Mmhmm, yeah. If you come from a language without countable/uncountable nouns, then this makes a lot of sense. It’s an error I see a lot around here, but never really know.

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theitfox@reddit

I was thinking it's "the code" for the problems I solve, but guess that's either confusing or not the right way to say it.

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

Oh, this is one of the places where English is terrible. It’s “the code” when talking about programming, but it’s “the codes” when talking about something like launch codes for a nuke.

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theitfox@reddit

I see, thanks for the clarification. TIL. Though I know the other meaning of the word "code", I didn't realize programming code is only uncountable. Thought if there were multiple problems, there were multiple "codes" 😔

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

I guess that's alright

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Obscure_Marlin@reddit

Dive into how the models work

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jaibhavaya@reddit

Your feelings are valid, LLMs changed the craft, as you put it. The reality is that LLMs do make writing a lot of the code trivial and that the industry standard is trending towards using them for more and more.

Others have touched on major points, but I will just say that if you aim to be an engineer, you won’t get very far rejecting new tech. It may take some reframing, I had my own existential crisis about it for a bit… but I ended up realizing that I am still building things… and that’s exciting. I work “with” the LLM to architect my code and have to steer it where I want to go.

Dismissing it with “it can’t code to save its life” is unfortunately just flat out wrong at this point. Obviously it’s better at some things than it is at others, but that blanket statement just isn’t accurate.

I’ll tell you what I tell the engineers I manage: I don’t have any interest in forcing you to use it, but I expect you to be an engineer. I expect you to be curious about this new technology and see what value it could add.

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UnlikelyMaterial6611@reddit

Lol cry about it kid

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badgerbang@reddit

Well said.
I think we have to endure this epoch and wait it out for the fad to piss off.
I also believe that the people who are funding AI want this, they want a dystopia, universal income and such. More power, more control.
I also believe that these 'owners and investors' are hardly ever technically minded, and they literally believe AI is the shit, it is their new toy. They believe -and hope- it will be the best enslavement tool since blackmail.

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Dry-Kale8457@reddit

I actually disagree with your belief that the people funding AI want "universal income," especially for all people. In my lifetime, I have seen how the rich, privileged, and owners want less people to benefit from anything. They want more money, period.

I noticed this with desegregation in schools. Many rich folks in my area said, "I want my kids to be around people that look like them. I don't want my taxes to benefit any others." Before long, private schools popped up.

It exposed the changes in cities' and counties' priorities for funding things. The louder voices tended to come from rich areas, mainly because they could attend more meetings.

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vicegripper@reddit

/r/mildlyinfruiting

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Thereisonlyzero@reddit

agent swarms making fully functioning c-compilers in less than a month without any human management or central agent orchestrating, coming in here talking about "AI slope" like the tech isn't already well past what most junior devs can output and keeps getting exponentially better every few months. If you get how to program, AI isn't a hurdle or a rival, it's another tool to use as a competent programmer or engineer etc

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DeathBat89@reddit

The thing I dont get is that you have people like the anthropic CEO saying things like software engineering will be redundant in 6 months and others saying this might be the golden years of software engineering.

How do you navigate that!?

Which is it?

Why does it feel like this relentless pursuit to try and take people's jobs and livelihoods away?

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Historical_Spot6298@reddit

It’s killing a lot of things. I used to love seeing people make memes and images with photoshop. Now its some ai generated shit dumped out everywhere

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jjopm@reddit

Sounds like a personal problem

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FrequentTown3@reddit

Being honest, and reading your whole arguments, i feel like the only place where you will get your desire is to write kernel code for Linux or, staying low level enough that the LLMs wont touch that level with competency. Like game engine back-ends or microcontrollers.

Those are areas of less abstraction and more hands-on work. That's where the sheer "elegant" code will work in your favor (as the better your code is, the more performant your system is.)

But the moment you enter the industry, you'll end up writing sloppy code since you'll be overworked and having to deal with a deadline and building up on top of abstractions of other people that aren't compatible with your thinking, but you'll still have to duck-tape it.

At some point you'll have to be thinking of coding as a means to an end, instead of the end itself otherwise you'd be pretty unhappy with the industry.

PS: LLMs barely changed much. Sure, it allowed for some people to call themselves programmers. but so are nutritionists are giving medical advice. It's a tool and understanding the tool will allow you to excel at building.

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Apprehensive_Ad_1585@reddit

I hate programming with a burning passion

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chess_the_cat@reddit

lol man. If you love it then do it for the love of it. You’re not mad that LLMs are writing code. You’re mad that you’re not getting paid. Sit in your room and code all day all night. It’s your hobby.

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andupotorac@reddit

The AI isn’t producing sloppy code, if it does it’s a skill issue and you need to start learning how to use it.

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Substantial_Ice_311@reddit

For the past two weeks I have tried to create a Spanish flashcard generation system. I have broken it down into 6 steps for the AI (lemmatization, recognizing different words with the same lemma, metadata, verb conjugation, sentence generation, and correction (because it's better at correcting than generating)).

But it has been a very frustrating process. Sure, I did not use the smartest AI (Gemini Flash, because it's cheap), but it makes mistakes all the time. It can't follow my perfectly logical instructions (which I have asked it to help me improve over and over), it invents new words, generates ungrammatical sentences (that even itself knows are wrong if you ask about them afterwards). And it can't program worth a damn. I am sure there are better models, but I don't trust them at all. The fact is that they don't really understand what they are doing. And even when it programs OK, it can just do what it has seen before. I can't come up with new stuff. I am so looking forward to being done with this project and going back to not using AI.

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letsprogramnow@reddit

You need to use the paid models matey

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Substantial_Ice_311@reddit

Of course I am paying for the API.

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Livid_Ad7304@reddit

You're basically using a Pentium Dual Core with 1 GB RAM on windows 11 and complaining that all computers are slow and useless.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

Yesss I agree so much

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corny_horse@reddit

It genuinely scares me that I might not be able to work as a real software engineer who writes elegant and scalable systems.

The odds are that most of your career would have been you lamenting the same thing, whether AI existed now or not. Finding a good company with smart coworkers AND good management AND that is profitable enough to provide the time for you to build elegant solutions AND that pays well has never been common.

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Maleficent-Bet-6226@reddit

I love AI!
I use it to program the things I don't enjoy (work) so I have more time to code my side projects:))

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ReiOokami@reddit

I had the same feeling as you until I realized I had made being a developer my identity. Once I dropped that identity I embraced the change and adapted to the times.

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

Is your identity now “burger flipper”?

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ReiOokami@reddit

Exactly. You get it.

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yondercode@reddit

zero chance you wrote a more efficient code than 5.3 codex high+

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Uczonywpismie@reddit

I understand you, writing code and figuring out algorithms are the most interesting things in this job. It took 2-3 years to completely destroy the profession, probably with some niche exceptions. AI (LLMs) could be useful, just not for the coding part. Unfortunately they can do the most interesting part, and it seems that they are doing it well enough. I'd love to see banning LLMs from coding, however that's not gonna happen.

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

Since writing compilers is generally extremely boring, I have wondered, where are all the new programming languages created by LLMs?

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BoBoBearDev@reddit

I have seen human slop enough to say this. AI slop is better than human slop.

Human slop is just severely worse.

1) poor naming

2) poor documentation

3) convoluted code to make themselves looking smart

4) homebrew everything when the language already has it built-in

5) copy and paste another person's slop (religiously)

6) massive spaghetti code

7) duplicate code instead of reuse

And more. Obviously AI is not immuned to this. But these are so common in human slops in professional settings, not even in schools.

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

Homebrewing everything is a very LLM trait too. The number of times I have had it rewrite something the project already had…

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

You do have a good point.

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Original_End8804@reddit

maybe a bit out of context but are people who hate AI talking specifically about LLMs and not AI overall? apart from LLMs (which can be useful as well in some cases) AI is pretty great

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

Personally, I quite like expert systems.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

yeah me included. advances in the medical field are amazing

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Lotton@reddit

You only hear about the minority that want to push it or the students who don't want to study the vast majority hates the technical debt of brings in to a code base

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Wonderful-Habit-139@reddit

All I have to say is that I have absolutely zero doubts you’d be one of the best engineers at companies.

Just keep that passion, keep learning about these different paradigms, ways to write programs that are correct and that help you maintain it and make it easy to refactor, and you’ll be very successful. You’re already on the right track, don’t stop because of all the LLM noise.

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inspectorG4dget@reddit

I've been staying away from using an LLM to write my code, for a while now. I do sometimes ask an LLM to write some code for me, but my interactions with an LLM for writing code are pretty limited (actual prompts below):

I am attempting to [decontextualized, minimal explanation of a small component/feature I'm building]. Write some code in [language] using [relevant elements of my tooling] to demonstrate how to build this feature. Keep your code simple
I have this code [copy/paste existing code]. When I do [user actions], I expect [desired outcome] to happen, but [observed outcome] happens instead. How to fix? Tell me what I'm doing wrong before suggesting a solution - let's have a conversation about relative merits of various approaches before implementing one
I'm attempting to build a system that does [description]. Propose an architecture, without writing any code just yet. Let's discuss the relative merits of different options before we start implementation. Ask any follow-up questions as necessary, to better understand my problem and user case

These are my most frequently used prompts, even if the LLM is embedded in my IDE as a plugin.
The only other vibe-coding I do, involves writing a detailed docstring and having the LLM write the function for me. I typically do this for boilerplate code, whose docs I can mostly copy from pre-existing functions and slightly modify to fit the current requirements.

LLM-generated slop > human-generated slop. But expert human-generated code > LLM-generated code. So I outsource the boring (and easy) stuff to LLMs. The complex stuff, I ask it to explain the though process to me (maybe with some example code) so that I can implement it myself.

You're right, programming can be done so beautifully to be considered artistic. Unfortunately, few employers care as much about the artistic value of the craft as they do about shipping code soon. So write beautifully artistic code for your hobby projects; start a podcast about the most beautiful code you've seen; don't reject/dismiss your love of elegant code. Simultaneously, don't look for it from your employer - that's a recipe for a likely disappointment

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

My favourite recent LLM experience was when I asked,

“Without looking at the project code, as it isn’t relevant to the question, why does the following code give a compilation error in a new file but not in a scratch file?”

At which point, the LLM started asking for access to project files. After I rejected access to 30 or so files, it finally said it couldn’t figure it out without reading the project.

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Acrobatic-Jump1105@reddit

Yeah i can empathize. I've never written code professionally, but I can do some entry level stuff in a few languages, and I always saw that as a career fallback. As soon as I witnessed firsthand that language models were writing poetry and computer code, some part of me died a little I think. There's just something less magical about it now. Even writing bash scripts just doesn't feel the way it used to. It feels like I'm doing something the hard way now, like it's no longer a technical skill.

I'm sure the more advanced coding stuff is still difficult to do without real knowledge, but the fact that anyone can just summon up workable python code or a bash script makes me sad. Maybe thats elitist of me, but whatever. It feels like it was a waste of time to even learn how to do that now.

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cheezballs@reddit

Post again in 5 years after you've had to write the same boilerplate java code 20 times over. AI is just a tool. I've been very productive with it but I've been around long enough to know the sorts of things it's really good at helping with.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

Yeah I guess you're right on that one lol.

But This kind of problem would be better solved if we improved the programming languages we used. Kotlin solves the Java boilerplate issue and is fully compatible with all Java bytecode.

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gdmzhlzhiv@reddit

Kotlin is a heck of a lot more than just a Java alternative. You’re talking about less than a third of its targets, there.

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cheezballs@reddit

How does kotlin solve that? You just switch to kotlin boilerplate everywhere.

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kidflashonnikes@reddit

I work and run a team at one of the worlds largest funded private lab. We special lab In using LLMs to compress brain frequency data in real time from BCIs implanted with threads in damaged brains in hopes to help those with diseases. I can with 100% absolutely confidence tell you that everyone has about 1-2 years to make a lot of money otherwise you will get stuck in the Permanent under class. Coding will be solved in about 6-12 months - book mark this for later. You should not be learning how to code - you should’ve been learning how to survive. You have no idea what is going on being the scenes both at AI frontier labs and private labs/ventures. Humanity isn’t ready and we should shut down 80% of AI now. You think I’m joking - I don’t care - this is a warning - I’ve seen things I once thought were impossible

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ShockwaveX1@reddit

This is exactly how I feel too. I REFUSE to use LLMs for writing code but I’m worried that that will affect my job prospects.

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Grokent@reddit

Imagine how elevator operators felt.

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I-Feel-Love79@reddit

Looks AI generated.

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CalligrapherOk4308@reddit

Grow up

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etherkiller@reddit

I have a suggestion that may or may not have any merit at all. You might want to look into embedded development. A lot of people are (correctly) stating that even without LLMs, getting a minimum viable product out of the door is more important than having beautiful / good / clean code, so slop (be it AI or human) is the order of the day.

There can be constraints in embedded development that mean you have to be a little more artful with things though, and while an AI can certainly spit out code for a give microcontroller, it's going to be less useful in general when everything about the hardware environment is implementation-dependent.

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Stahlboden@reddit

It's either "AI can't code to save it's life" or "I'm afraid with AI I'll never have a job in software engineering".

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Imwoahluis@reddit

You’re cooked bro because exactly what you don’t want to happen is exactly what will happen within the next 5-10 years maybe even before that

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ComradePruski@reddit

I've been a software engineer for a few years in the industry. Yes, programming can be a creative experience. Yes, there is a point in doing things yourself. But also there are wonderful parts of AI as well. Nowadays you can easily quadruple your output by using AI. If you are not using it at all you will likely be at a huge disadvantage to coworkers that do use it.

You still need to know how to design and write good code, but the fact of it is that generally an AI can easily outpace what a sole human can do.

Also I will submit that while creativity is important especially in design it is less important now in specific coding of applications because most applications in enterprise software are not novel. Most applications are just a facade on top of a CRUD database at their core. It is important to remember your fancy university projects are not the real world. University is designed to teach you how to solve intricate problems, not necessarily how to implement the types of applications that can generally be done easily by AI.

And I say this as someone who usually tries to limit how much I use AI at work in order to keep my own skills sharp.

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Effective-Feature817@reddit

W for this post

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kxcompare@reddit

But instead just writes stupid prompts because my manager just wants to ship some slope before an arbitrary deadline

Unfortunately it was like that even in the pre-LLM era. Even if LLMs did not exist you would still have to push some crap to production because your manager demands that it be ready right here and right now. This is the world of harsh corporate software engineering and it has always been this way. You have to treat your job simply as a job. I see nothing wrong with quickly creating poor and low-quality solutions at work if they satisfy your manager and your CEO pays your salary for them.

In any case your coding skills are not useless because without them you simply would not find a job. Everyone asks about LeetCode and LLD and system design during interviews. Your classmates will likely not find jobs with their current skills and will go to work in other industries. Besides you can always do manual programming as a hobby.

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Skylark7@reddit

AI is a powerful tool, but it's just a tool.

I'm old. Across my career I've gone from coding in a shell -> notepad -> syntax highlighting -> IDsE -> autogenerated class templates and DDL -> integrated debugging -> CI/CD -> LLMs. It's all just tooling.

Nothing has taken the human out of the loop. It just allows us to solve bigger problems and deal with more complex tech stacks. An LLM is unlikely to be able to write good, scalable code any time soon. However, a coder who refuses to engage with LLMs is throwing away a valuable tool.

It genuinely scares me that I might not be able to work as a real software engineer who writes elegant and scalable systems. But instead just writes stupid prompts because my manager just wants to ship some slope [sic] before an arbitrary deadline.

Um.... I have some bad news for you. You just described a lot of industry coding in a nutshell. It's rare that you'll get a "green field" project and write what you envision. Usually it's 200K lines of legacy code, a mountain of technical debt, and marketing just overpromised on a feature release next month.

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dream_metrics@reddit

Writing code is an art, it is a delicate craft that requires deep thought and knowledge. The fact that people are saying that "Programming is dead" infruits me so much.

Actually it's a job. I don't make art in my job. I write integrations for clients.

Don't get caught up in poetic bullshit. If you care about the artistry of code save it for your personal projects. In the real world you have a job to do.

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pnutbutterandjerky@reddit

Unfortunately the future of your industry is utilizing AI. Even if you don’t like it, learn how to use it, and get good at it. Or you won’t have a job.

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quaxoid@reddit

I don't think you really hate AI, but generative AI 😃

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Impressive_Till_7549@reddit

This sums up one side of the tension that is happening in our industry. There are some programmers like you who genuinely love writing code and treat it like an artisanal craft.

But there are a number of people, myself included, that are builders first. We like building cool stuff, and computers allow us to make infinitely scalable stuff. Pretty awesome.

We love that code can get computers to do what we want, but feel like code is a means to an end. If I didn't HAVE to code to build things or automate things, maybe I wouldn't code at all.

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1-800-Aizen@reddit

The bubble will burst soon, stay strong 🫡

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Plane-Cheesecake6745@reddit

Though I am sick of hearing about ai "hype" everyday against my will. I have to agree it's a useful tool for some menial/tedious tasks, the entire debate about ai Good or bad gets us nowhere imo. It's a tool with good and bad use cases, though it doesn't look like it will be sustainable long term

People who depend on ai during their development/learning phase will be handicapped as they don't understand the fundamentals. It has its uses as a learning tool. I use it to get roadmaps, find solved examples with source so I can study those, some basic doubt clearing, etc.

Professionals get a qol tool that can take over some of the tedious tasks like finding documentation, writing boilerplate, generating interface classes, etc. but having it write fully functional applications will be a nightmare as the level of complexity it is just that high, not to mention the programmer need to understand the problem themselves to break it down for the ai

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DarkHoneyComb@reddit

You are free to ride horses in the age of cars. But don't get angry just because not everyone wants to ride a horse to travel anymore.

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lumberjack_dad@reddit

Writing code is an art, but unfortunately like calligraphy it will be replaced by something more efficient.

I love coding and hav been doing it for 25+ years and lucky enough to have a career in it. Feels like I know another language and even if everything else is not going well, I can always feel like I can accomplish something and be purposeful.

I do my own pet projects on the weekend, where I maintain my coding hobbies, but I don't code anymore during work. It's just too easy to have AI generate what I want, then I tweak it, and then the next time I ask, it understands my tweaks, and I have to do less. I am sad to see coding go but my efficiency has enabled me to do twice as much, because I am not doubling back to find human code errors, etc

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Erdem_PSYCH@reddit

your point about doing more in less time is very true. however I feel that most of our current problems are due to over obsession of the western world on efficiency and doing more and more. Just wanted to hear what others think about that.

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seiggy@reddit

Some code is art. Other code is the same templated POCO->DTO->API wrapper you've written for the 5,375th time this month. In fact, if you enter the wonderful world of Enterprise Software, you'll find that 90% of code is garbage, boring, and about as artistic as a dog's shit on the sidewalk. That's what AI excels at. The remaining 10% is where you want to live, and that's where AI falls flat. I use AI because it lets me throw that 90% shit-work to the AI, so I can enjoy the fuzzy dopamine hit that the remaining 10% of code gives me.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

okay I like this

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seiggy@reddit

Yeah, the way I see it, it's akin to the invention of the digital camera vs old glass-film single-shot cameras and how that evolved. Sure, there's plenty of photographers that still shoot on glass-pane, and cellophane films. But the large part of the art of photography is the human behind the camera, not the film and device itself. Digital cameras these days are rarely an obstacle to professionals, and are just a tool in their toolbelt. I feel the same about AI with code, same as I do with an IDE. Can I code without AI or an IDE? Sure can. Do I prefer to? Only in very narrow situations these days. Much like my friend who's a commercial property photographer. He loves playing around with his old 35mm antique Leica film camera. Is it his main workhorse that he shoots with 90% of the time? Nope. He uses some expensive medium format digital camera. AI is my digital camera. Doesn't replace me, just means I don't have to spend 6 hours in the dark room developing photos every day, and only have to when I want to.

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Bian-@reddit

lowkey if you aren't antirez or something then this is just a rant out into the void mb.

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darko777@reddit

AI was invented by capitalists to make more money and progressively replace people.

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WayneConrad@reddit

AI for coding is like having been a lumberjack my whole life, and I can take an axe or a saw to a tree and make that tree go right where I want. I've been good enough and lucky enough to keep all my limbs, and I'm pretty good.

But now the chainsaw has been invented. With my experience, I can use that chainsaw to work quicker. And because the chainsaw is very fast, that leaves me more time to think about what tree to fell next and where to put it. I'm doing better work and more of it.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

I think this is a good and healthy way to think about it.

Although I don't think AI coding is advanced enough to be THIS widely used in industry code; We still need more time.

But yeah I agree with you.

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WayneConrad@reddit

I hear what you're saying though. For me, code is art. I have to do that art quickly enough to make it worth someone paying me to do it, and that sometimes interferes with the beauty I want to create. Sometimes that's really annoying. But look, I'm an artist that is making money off of my work before I'm dead!

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sf_davie@reddit

I agree with you, but the thing I worry about is this technology is evolving very quickly. A few years means a world of change and that is scary for young people betting their entire decades long career on.

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WayneConrad@reddit

Yes it's frightening

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AlzheimerNaaru@reddit

Writing code is an art, it is a delicate craft that requires deep thought and knowledge.

Holy crap, that's one of the most pretentious shit I've read recently. If that is a karma-farming on AI-hate wave or a bait I got caught 100%

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ScryTheSky@reddit

You’re a sophomore in college with 0 work experience. You don’t know anything about the industry

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33RhyvehR@reddit

This is like getting mad someone invented the hammer and people stopped using rocks. and then trying to say that because technique and material strength of the hammer isnt perfect but rocks are for millions of years so just use those.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

I understand your metaphor but I don't think it's that simple. AI isn't at a point where it can be used reliably for a lot of tasks.

But yeah I do agree that we should keep an open mind and that technology is always evolving and that part of our career is adapting to fast changes.

I just think we should be more critical and not immediately jump to firing programmers and replacing them with AI because AI isn't there yet.

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meinrache94@reddit

You guys need to calm down. Yes companies are absolutely obsessed with LLMs. That doesn’t really mean much when you start working with it at an enterprise level. I use it everyday at my job. I’m still a full time developer. We use it as an accessory to our coding, testing and documentation. I have worked with 6 major enterprise companies and not one of the are replacing developers with it. Every single place is having developers use it to speed up things or help along the way. I’m not saying your fears are unfounded and I’m sure if a company had access to a true AI it would in a heartbeat replace people but the general vibe in the industry is to use it as a tool. If I could I’d remove it all together due to the resources it takes and the damages it’s causing on our planet but alas we are all required to use it a wee bit for each project we work on.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

Yes I agree

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AdvantageSensitive21@reddit

Join the dark side and make ai .

I am joking.

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Sad-Sun4611@reddit

Programming is an Art. AI can be one of your brushes. If you're painting on a canvas that's 10 feet wide I'm not going to pull out my tiny little single hair point brush. I'm grabbing a paint roller to get my background there and then I'll fill in the finer details as needed.

I think it's just a tool. I also believe that if you couldn't write the code yourself you shouldn't be using an LLM to do it. People who only vibe code are being dumb and if you're intentionally refusing to use AI that's absolutely your choice but just know that you're painting filling the canvas with the point brush.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

Yes I agree with you here. Right now I'm still in the early learning process so I want to develop my debugging skills by writing all my code by hand and creating small projects that teach me new skills.

In the future I'm probably gonna start using AI to automate the code that I 100% understand.

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Interesting_Dog_761@reddit

I love ai.i am an experienced engineer, that's the difference. Newbies you have not earned the privilege. Ignore that at your peril. I'm pretty sure Claude has saved me months of work. My job was to give it useful patterns, which I did. And now I reap the rewards. Does it bullshit? All the time. Fixing that is still cheaper than not using ai.

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tontoandbandit@reddit

This.

Have the skill and wherewithal to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your own toolsets. This only comes with experience.

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reeblebeeble@reddit

The problem is that people like OP won't be able to train and gain that experience because it's expected that entry level tasks are outsourced to AI and if they manage to get hired, they'll be expected to do that outsourcing from day 1. The next generation of coders won't have the same experiential basis to build on as you did, or if they get it, it'll be on their own dime, from their own passion. The analogy between code and art becomes highly apt here.

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theitfox@reddit

^ This. People gotta treat their AI as a copilot, a pair programmer; work with it, and not acting like a manager with a team of experienced developers.

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Stubbby@reddit

If you love programming, you will be strongly differentiated from 95% of CS graduates. There are areas where LLMs dont have sufficient data or context window to provide reliable outputs or the mess is too big to manage and in these circumstances they will require someone "highly specialized" in traditional programming to resolve and assist.

They say, software engineers will lean more towards SRE (scaling and reliability) than programming so thats another way to look at it.

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Then-Hurry-5197@reddit (OP)

Yeah that makes a lot of sense to me. I'm definitely gonna try to be more specialized in one Field and become a master of it.

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9peppe@reddit

You sound confused. If you're studying CS and not explicitly SE, you can be a lot more than a software engineer, because they are exactly who you go to when you want the "good enough, within constraints" that you are complaining about. Relax, and refocus on being a computer scientist.

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Eight111@reddit

You are the only one who is obsessed here... I cant point on what exactly but you are.

The core of being a developer is passion to solve technological challenges, being curious, love to learn new things and stay up to date with the new tools.

Now let's look at a scenario, imagine you are working on a real project and you have to mess with really old, legacy, unreadable code. and trust me this exists, not everyone is a 'fellow smart programmer'.

Now comes the hard part, you have urge to refactor the entire file but you know this would take the whole day probably and you ask yourself 'do i have time for this? nah probably not'. find a quick messy way to fix the bug or add another feature and call it a day.

But now when code is written much faster I find myself refactor more often, and deal with much more interesting problems.

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SpecificMedicine199@reddit

The contemporary obsession with efficiency doesn't arise from nothing. It's the result of an economic and social logic that learned to measure value in terms of utility and performance. Utilitarianism made this clear from the start: what matters is the result. The path is secondary.

Taylor turned this idea into a method. He separated thinking from doing. Designing became the task of a few; execution, the obligation of many. Work ceased to be a space for understanding and became an optimizable function. It wasn't necessary to understand the system; it was enough to perform the assigned part well.

This is where what Sartre would call bad faith comes in. "I do this because I have to," "I am only this," "that's how the system works." The role becomes a refuge. It reduces the anxiety of deciding, but also freedom. Responsibility is diluted within the structure.

Artificial intelligence fits seamlessly into this world. It doesn't replace something healthy, but rather perfects a logic that had already separated execution from understanding. Automation not only accelerates results, it makes unnecessary the effort that previously shaped judgment.

Camus would have seen it clearly. The meaning lies not in reaching the summit, but in pushing the stone. When we eliminate friction, the result remains, but the experience disappears. Everything works, but nothing feels meaningful.

Even Keynes, so closely associated with planning and calculation, warned that the problem wasn't producing more, but knowing what to do with the time freed up. Efficiency promised emancipation, but without an ethics of meaning, it only accelerates the void.

The risk of AI isn't that it thinks for us, but that it fits too well into an order that has long been saying that understanding is expensive, that thinking is slow, and that role-playing is enough. When that happens, efficiency ceases to be a tool and becomes an elegant form of abdication.

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Sypticle@reddit

"Writing code is an art" right..