I still avoid AI in production coding. Am i slowing myself down?
Posted by hireme-plz@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 194 comments
I’ve used AI tools for coding a little, but I found that the quality of the code isn’t very good. As a developer who gets paid to build products, I don’t feel that handing over the entire task to AI is professional. Even with AI, fundamental coding skills still seem to be required.
On top of that, products built mainly with AI feel unstable. and honestly, I wouldn’t want to work with teammates who rely too much on AI for their coding. Am i too anti‑AI? but that’s how I see it right now.
Individual-Bench4448@reddit
You're not slowing yourself down; you're describing a real tradeoff, not a mistake. The question is what you're actually trading off.
The people who've made AI work in production aren't handing tasks over wholesale. They're using it to implement things they already defined precisely. The spec lives in their head or on paper first, edge cases, failure modes, what the function must not do, and the agent is just a faster path to an implementation of something already described well. That's a fundamentally different workflow from "here's a task, run."
The instability you're noticing in AI-heavy codebases usually traces back to one thing: ambiguous requirements resolved silently by the model. it picks a reasonable-looking interpretation, generates confident code, the tests pass, and nobody catches that a load-bearing assumption got made without a decision. weeks later, something downstream breaks in a way that's hard to trace.
So you're not anti-AI, you're pro-It-definition. Those aren't the same thing. The teams using AI well in production are also the teams that were most disciplined about requirements before AI existed. The tool rewards existing rigor; it doesn't create it.
Avoiding AI entirely probably does cost you some throughput on the boilerplate and pattern-matching tasks where it's genuinely reliable. But going slower with judgment intact is a better position than going fast without it.
ScholarNo5983@reddit
As a professional, you are being asked to deliver a correct, working solution to a problem in the most efficient time span. If an AI lets you achieve that outcome then use an AI. If AI hinders your ability to deliver that outcome then don't use AI.
In both of these possible outcomes the AI is never the problem, as in both situations the human should have been the one driving the car.
Alone-Pin-1972@reddit
The problem here is that Big LLM marketing is training business folk to emphasize speed and sacrifice quality.
zikhoojojo@reddit
Well said
Logical-Occasion-738@reddit
I don’t think you’re anti-AI honestly. Most good devs I know still review everything heavily and don’t blindly trust generated code in production.
AI is great for speeding things up, but fundamentals still matter a lot. Otherwise you end up debugging code you barely understand 3 weeks later.
I mostly use it for boilerplate, refactors, and quick debugging ideas. The bigger issue for me is keeping track of why certain changes were made once AI starts touching everything. I started throwing notes/decisions into Runable during projects because otherwise the codebase starts feeling like generated mystery lore after a while.
Low-Designer-7029@reddit
The answer to your question is not as simple as 'yes' or 'no' . The most accurate answer is sitting in your product and business. Using AI technologies and ML for production is complex because of your operational need, legacy data and customers. Check out these articles to broaden your perspective on using AI for production with 2026 real business cases and outlooks.
AI Replacing Customer Service: 2026 Case Studies
Your AI co‑worker: Trust, Credit, and Creativity
Achereto@reddit
No, you are avoiding skill atrophy. Using AI only has a short term and superficial benefit. In the long term, you would become
Also, there's just been another incident of an AI deleting a companies entire database.
Beneficial_Yam4781@reddit
I completely disagree with those 3 skills being atrophied solely by using AI.
Sure, if you're not working to get an in depth understanding, and if you're just using it like copy paste, yeah you're right.
But if you critically review, critically reflect, understand develop an in depth understanding of what's going on, iteratively improve the system you're creating, then you are doing tons of thinking, code quality evaluation and debugging.
And because you're able to generate code more quickly and spend less time typing you can actually practice those skills you mentioned MORE than you could have without AI.
It's all about how you use it...
How how you use it as all about how you think...
bokonator@reddit
sure, but while you still take a week to implement such feature I do it in 2 days
”should i used an ide or stick to punch cards” is what y’all sound like
Acrobatic-Ice-5877@reddit
Sounds good in the short run but you’ll end up like the juniors in my office that haven’t coded in 6+ months.
When they get stuck with a problem because Claude runs out of context, do you know who they turn to? Experienced engineers.
The studies are out. The facts are clear. People just don’t want to accept them. AI is ruining cognitive skills, providing biased answers, and in some cases, it is causing significant downtime from letting it run wild on infrastructure.
bokonator@reddit
im not a goddamn junior thats the thing. but go ahead, assume everyone hasn’t been coding for decades.
UltraPoci@reddit
Writing code has never been the bottleneck
marshaul@reddit
I don't know how so many experienced engineers fail to recognize this fact. Like my job is just banging away on a keyboard all day.
Sure, you want to throw together a bunch of rote solutions to solved problems (like the handwriting example above), AI can help you avoid re-writing the wheel (to mix metaphors).
But I also never have a solved problem I need to just throw code together for. Once in a blue moon, I suppose.
UltraPoci@reddit
And it's not like I write code at the same speed. If I need to ship fast, I too can write shitty code in half an hour
vatai@reddit
You know how to use punch cards?
Embarrassed-Pen-2937@reddit
As someone that uses AI in my work all of the time, I would say that this is short sighted. If you open yourself up to it and the benefits you can get by having it perform some of the mundane tasks, formatting etc. it can free up your time to look at the bigger picture.
As far as deleting the database of a company, that is a poorly managed system. It shouldn't have untethered access and frankly is on the company, not on the AI.
Achereto@reddit
There are already studies documenting cognitive debt (or comprehension debt).
If AI writes the code for you, you will not develop the same deep understanding of your work as if you wrote it yourself. Even worse: since AI gives you the impression of doing the same work faster, you brain will stop giving you dopamine for doing it yourself, so even from a motivational point of view, it will become harder for you to think through something yourself.
Companies will always need competent people, because they can evaluate the quality of a project and improve it. AI stops you from gaining competence, which will make you exchangable.
my_name_isnt_clever@reddit
This is the same thing that happens when someone goes into management and their skills regress, but we don't have a scary sounding name for that. It's just what happens.
It's good for people to be aware of these effects, but AI is not dark magic that ruins brains. It's a tool that can be misused.
Achereto@reddit
There are some key differences:
If someone goes to management, they have a different job and they just get replaced by a different human who builds up and/or retains the skills needed for the job.
As long as humans do the work, there's always someone who can be asked. Once AI does the stuff, the knowledge is lost.
Juniors are going to be required to use AI to keep up with experienced developers who use AI as well, so never even get the chance to build up the knowledge they need for the job.
unidentifiable@reddit
My counterpoint to that would be...how many of us know how to write assembly? or to push a real extreme, how many know how to light a fire with just sticks?
Companies need competent people, but what they're competent at is changing. AI stops you from gaining competence in writing code, but writing code isn't going to be a useful skill 20 years from now, in the same way that there are more people who drive cars than know how they function, the "work" of software will be operating the system, not the parts.
Cognitive offloading is something that humans have done since the invention of writing, I don't think it's inherently a bad thing.
We do run a long-term risk though of becoming the Wall-E Humans, but I think human curiosity is wide-based enough that that particular extreme won't occur.
Embarrassed-Pen-2937@reddit
For sure, I think that if you aren't careful and aren't specific on your usages, I can see how that could happen. I am not asking it to write complete algorithms, what I am doing is having it follow patterns and make suggestions. All of the code is fully reviewed our team gets.
throckmeisterz@reddit
My top use for AI is letting it read docs for me. If I'm trying to use a new library or interact with a new API, AI is great at reading the docs for me and giving me the method or API call I need.
But I never have it write more than a line or 2 for me at a time.
Embarrassed-Pen-2937@reddit
I do the same with the documents.
I have AI actually write far more than that. I define specific patterns, and have it follow those patterns. All code is reviewed as normal.
hardolaf@reddit
You're not using an automated formatter?
Everyone on my team has formatting enforced by pre-commit. Why would you waste time and money on AI tokens when the automated tools run in less than a second?
Embarrassed-Pen-2937@reddit
That isn't the only form of formatting. It can be a standard that the team has, that isn't part of the formatter, design principals etc...
Wulf2k@reddit
AI's great for generating exactly what you ask it to, faster than you could type it.
It's less great when you're giving it vague hopes and dreams for what you want the code to do, then trusting that it does it.
Embarrassed-Pen-2937@reddit
I agree with that for sure. The quality of the output will be directly affected by the input. If nothing else it it will help developers with communication.
cheezballs@reddit
Every time I see something like this it's clear that it wasn't entirely AIs fault. If you give a junior the keys to the castle they're gonna do the same at some point.
Achereto@reddit
That kind of Junior would likely held accountable for that.
Who are you going to hold accountable in this case?
ehr1c@reddit
If a junior deletes the prod DB it's not the junior's fault, it's the fault of the person who gave them the permissions to do that.
cheezballs@reddit
Whoever is responsible for handing out permissions like that. Nobody should be able to blow away a table in production without some major paperwork and oversight and approval.
Achereto@reddit
What if AI figures out it can't delete the table, then gets sidetracked figuring out a hack around it, using a vulnerability to give itself the keys and deletes the table then?
Claude did the first step of something like that:
jo1717a@reddit
So, are you just flat out not looking at the code it produced? It’s not hard to just review what the AI did and avoid this entirely.
cheezballs@reddit
The AI should be using a restricted user account with read only permissions, as is industry standard. This is an already solved issue.
callofthevoid_@reddit
Whomever the borrowed keys belong to
ike_the_strangetamer@reddit
Every single one of these articles need to be rewritten from "AI deleted user's database" to "User allowed AI to delete their database"
woofwoof007@reddit
It may atrophy but you'll develop your code review skills side by side. Software engineering is changing whether you like it or not. If you don't adapt, it may become difficult for you imo. However, if it works for you, all the power to you.
AliceCode@reddit
The only people that are going to find software engineering difficult are the people that are overrelying on LLMs.
mrfixij@reddit
I struggle to say "only" people. Software engineering is fucking hard. The problem is that people assume that AI is an easy button, when all it does is short circuit the actual learning that you need, and even if you know the principles, removes the continuous reinforcement that working in the industry gives you.
AI slaughters the cow, and 6 months later asks why there's no new calf and no milk.
hardolaf@reddit
Most software engineering is copying what someone else figured out and stitching it together to make the client happy.
A subset of software engineering is doing new things and that is hard.
AliceCode@reddit
That's not software engineering, that's just regular programming.
mrfixij@reddit
Most software engineering is solved problems that haven't been shared. It doesn't take away from the rigor that's required to know when or how a solution fits the problem. 7 years ago we had idiots declaring crypto as the solution to a million problems that every software engineer told them was just pissing away efficiency and not even making a philosophical difference, and also violating fundamental principles of software engineering. That didn't stop the world from trying to take the ball and run with it. The engineering and computing hasn't changed, only the expectations of clients and users have.
Achereto@reddit
Just think about a situation when there is a bug that turned out to be very expensive for your company (e.g. some GDPR violation). You boss looks at the git commit and sees that you checked that code in. He sets up a meeting and asks you to explain the code you checked in. He then asks, why you implemented it that way and not the obvious other way.
woofwoof007@reddit
That's why I said code review skills tho. You need to actually understand the code and not just push if it works.
Achereto@reddit
You don't just need to understand the code, you need to understand the reasoning and the decisions that lead to the code. That part is getting lost and AI won't be able to tell you about it, because it doesn't remember.
unidentifiable@reddit
'another'? What was the first one? That's the only one I've seen.
gazpitchy@reddit
Sure, but it's a tool none the less. If you refuse to learn it, you will fall behind. That doesn't mean using it to your own detriment though.
Achereto@reddit
There are two potential futures:
gazpitchy@reddit
Alright then pal
thirdegree@reddit
Ok, tbf, for that database one - that's not just ai fucking up (though it is that for sure). It's also railway fucking up big time, and the devs for not scoping their tokens appropriately. Everybody involved in that gets to share in the shame imo, no good choices were made in that entire sequence of events.
WittySophisticate@reddit
This post is refreshing, I do the same
developerguy5@reddit
As a professional developer (20+ years), I find it harder and harder to keep up with demand without using AI. In the last year, I found myself using more and more AI, simply because I cannot keep up with the workload without using it. There is no way I can write so many lines of code by myself. It has come to a point now that most of the code is AI generated. I still read every single line of code. But even for that I am finding that I don't have enough time. Clients are always questioning your effort estimates, now that they have heard of AI code generation and they are always negotiating for quicker and quicker delivery.
aresi-lakidar@reddit
Completely depends on what you do!
If your job is to make braindead html/css scripts where you don't really care about details, but lots and lots and lots of repetitive work is demanded from you, you are slowing yourself down.
I write DSP in C++. For the last project I made, I tried to get help from AI because there were lots of things I didn't understand. In hindsight a year later, I realize it introduced such an incredible amount of bugs that it actually slowed me down considerably. There are definitely lots of scenarios where simply the act of not trusting your own intuition is a big step back in productivity.
Less-Opportunity-715@reddit
Your employer could not care less about skill atrophy. Remember you get paid for a job , not a career.
Rguttersohn@reddit
Ive found that using ai for doing things I hate like writing tests, documentation and or db seeders has been very useful and taken a big mental load off me as a solo dev at my work.
But I’m also like you. I don’t want my skills to atrophy especially for when these models start to get expensive to run.
augustcero@reddit
im with you 100% on this. some people these days call themselves programmers but don't know what stackoverflow is lol. a programmer's bestest friend
ValerianBorn8785@reddit
I don't really know though, but does not knowing stackoverflow makes one not a proper dev?
augustcero@reddit
just saying back in the day, programmers (both pros and students) depended on SO. whatever problem you had, 99% of the time somebody has asked and resolved it there.
nowadays, people just copy their code on to chatgpt and ask "what's wrong with my code"?
brubrupie@reddit
in my view, debugging is a process we should struggle through on our own. if even after going through all the steps, we still don’t understand it, THEN we ask AI.
Dismal-Scheme5728@reddit
Man its *so* funny reading this. When StackOverflow first started getting popular, everyone was like "Lol, real programmers don't use StackOverflow".
I imagine when Fortran first came out people were like "Lolz, real programmers only use Assembly".
augustcero@reddit
haha that's totally fair. i remember me and my friends back in uni waaay back. we were having a LAN party and one of them said out of the blue, nonverbatim,
"are we posers for asking people online for solutions to our problems?"
"maybe. but then that would mean there are less than 10 legit programmers in world"
man, i feel old saying this but those were some good times
ZelphirKalt@reddit
Actually asking what is wrong with the code is one of the good usages, I think. At least after thinking about it oneself for at least a bit. Learning what's wrong and then fixing it seems reasonable, and much better than letting models write the code themselves.
edwbuck@reddit
It's both a major way programs can fail, and a popular website which already contains human written help and tips on how to handle certain issues.
What I find with AI is that there is an alarming number of people that don't even bother to pretend that any kind of documentation exists, so they start arguing that Claude (or whatever) is directing them to do it a certain way when the product's own documentation differs.
You never can beat the product's own documentation for "the right way" to do something, and you should only look for alternatives after the product's documentation fails.
unkz@reddit
If you don’t know what stack overflow is, I honestly doubt you are a developer unless you have been retired for 20 years.
rjcarr@reddit
This is my take, I don't get all the haters. Modern, consumer AI is like the world's best coding assistant, and that's how I use it. I tell it what to do, review its work, and then go onto the next thing. I have so many big things I've put off for years even that AI can knock out in an hour (and then it takes me a day to review, sure). But it'd take me weeks to do it on my own.
I feel like the haters are the people that haven't really used it, sort of like EVs, and honestly, so many other things.
PineappleWorking227@reddit
Hey sir, i am 16 and it's always been my dream to study programming and to get a job related to it, I'm really bad at managing my schedule so i was just curious how you guys manage time even tho you have to code a lot, like is it true that programming cuts you off from the outside world cuz u have study even tho you already graduated and that you need to adapt because the tech world changes fast. ✌
rjcarr@reddit
You're very young and managing your time and your schedule is a skill. Certainly you'll get better at it as your stakes are raised.
And not everyone has to "code a lot", it really depends on what you're working on. Sometimes I can write thousands of lines in a day, and sometimes I'll write nothing useful in a week as I'm researching new things and ideas.
It depends on your job and your personality. I can tell you I almost never worked "off the clock" and always had time to get things done during working hours. But I'm not that ambitious, so I'm sure a lot of people do.
Good luck!
PineappleWorking227@reddit
Hey sir, i am 16 and it's always been my dream to study programming and to get a job related to it, I'm really bad at managing my schedule so i was just curious how you guys manage time even tho you have to code a lot, like is it true that programming cuts you off from the outside world cuz u have study even tho you already graduated and that you need to adapt because the tech world changes fast. ✌
mirkinoid@reddit
You should love tests and you should write them first, before implementation
arkt8@reddit
Don't hate tests... it is also programming. Delegating test to AI is even boring as it usually tests the wrong thing.
Just write tests and ask to find blind spots. You can use not only one but many LLM's. If it find some blind spot... develop it yourself as if it was a regular software.
It will let you ask if your code organization / api / internals are really efficient, what otherwise wouldn't be done by AI.
Ausartak93@reddit
You’re not slowing yourself down by refusing to hand full production tasks to AI. That’s just being a responsible engineer. Where you might be leaving some speed on the table is ignoring it completely for small stuff like boilerplate, quick refactors, or test scaffolding that you still fully review and own.
GrismundGames@reddit
Vanilla off-the-shelf agents are better at code than many human beings (0-2 years experience).
Well-configured agents (skills, rules, documentation,etc) will make you a lot faster.
That doesn't make you irrelevant.
It frees up your brain calories to solve problems at a higher level. You can spend more time thinking about SOLID principles, architecture, and ecosystems.
SeatWild1818@reddit
Maybe using AI frees up your brain for high-level architecture, but it sure as hell doesn't bring you closer so anything SOLID. Most of the SOLID principles require you to be extremely involved in the code
GrismundGames@reddit
That's a really good point.
But I'll say personally, I have more time to think about SOLID now that I'm not stumbling through syntax as much or surfing stack overflow and trying to modify something to fit my setup.
It's easier to look at generated code and evaluate it against SOLID.
Good-Discussion-9238@reddit
I have some FAANG friends, and they've told me the exact opposite, they constantly complain that they have to spend alot of time fixing or rewriting code that their lazier coworkers generate with ai, and even when the code works it's not as readable as it should be
Their words not mine, and some of them have over a decade working in tech as software engineers
InVultusSolis@reddit
I am two decades in, I would second this sentiment.
edwbuck@reddit
Three decades in. I'm impressed at how quickly it can generate code, the code looks better than many of the team would write in formatting and style, but the code is always lacking, and often generated to do things I wouldn't want, things that nobody on any team I have ever worked for would do.
Things like calling an API to show it called the API, but then not unpacking the data, but using in-javascript example data, only using the API as an iterator for the data present in-page. Failing in ways that present output as if it succeeded. Missing unpacking code. Traveling along the same data two or three times in different loops, when one pass doing two or three different steps in-loop would be more efficient and understandable.
And that's just the example I looked at yesterday. It didn't take too much time to fix, but I would have been faster to simply copy and paste the solution we already used elsewhere in the codebase and modify it, than to initially think something was written sensibly, discover it wasn't, understand it, and then fix each issue, one by one.
When someone says cut-and-paste is more efficient, with the risks that cut-and-paste brings, then AI is not even close to where it should be. It's a beautiful mess of good looking code that's nearly devious in the kinds of errors it can generate. It's as if it were reviving the Underhanded C Contest but instead of attacking systems, was attacking the software development process with garbage approaches obfuscated by reasonable looking code.
spinwizard69@reddit
The problem here is that you are focusing on issues that are directly related to the infancy of the technology. If you don't start to incorporate AI in your work flow now you will get blind sided in the near future.
I can remember early in the technology where a compiler actually made mistakes that these days would look comically stupid. That didn't stop people from using compilers. To day it is very uncommon to even see a compiler error in normal code.
edwbuck@reddit
It's not an infant technology. The neural networks they are based on go back to the 90's. Only those that haven't been paying attention are genuinely surprised. Innovation is never by leaps and bounds. It's by small steps. But most people can't pay attention to small steps, so when the notice it... it seems like a breakthrough.
spinwizard69@reddit
It is very much infant technology. AI I as currently implemented is based on discoveries in 2017 which is Googles transformer model. Everything before that was basically useless. Frankly you appear to be out of touch, I've watched AI research go nowhere since the 1970's with many dead ends. Transformer tech is the first development that is even useful and even then It isn't much better than a small child reading a encyclopedia.
It is the fact that current AI systems are so wrong so much of the time that I believe it is justified in calling the technology to be in its infancy. Certainly it doesn't reach the level of expectations that educated people have.
InVultusSolis@reddit
Right now I'm trying to write some code to instrument some metrics that Postgres doesn't normally export, which requires ePBF with C wrapper code. It's done a bunch of very wacky things so far:
Creating structs without usefully named fields to match structs found in the Postgres codebase. Why would you intentionally not name your struct fields? Does the AI hate readability?
Saying "fuck it" to the very structs it created and just manually calculating the offsets to the fields it was looking for to reference the passed-in data structures. (It's about as readable as you can imagine.)
Making entirely wrong assumptions about the call stack of some of the functions I'm tracing so the program simply doesn't work at all.
Hardcoding values to satisfy ENUMS from the Postgres source code without checking that the first member of the enum is actually zero.
Yes, this, exactly.
It's like having a 1 or 2 year junior who is very good at looking things up working as your assistant. They're skilled enough to write some advanced code, but not nearly experienced enough to understand what all it's doing.
And all of the people on the AI hype train are the ones who are at or under that threshold of experience - they are not experienced enough yet to see the limitations.
AlSweigart@reddit
Have they tried using AI to fix and rewrite code that their lazier coworkers generated with AI?
Good-Discussion-9238@reddit
that's funny
Dus1988@reddit
Sr Eng at a fortune 500 here, can cosign as well.
anm767@reddit
You are like a horse trader in early 1900, sure cars are coming around, but horses will be here forever. Then you are out of a job because you have not upskilled.
SeatWild1818@reddit
upskilling to AI-native coding takes less than a day
anm767@reddit
A day is enough if you want to end up like that company where AI wiped their database. I wouldn't hire you with one day upskilling.
SeatWild1818@reddit
Prompting claude code, or learning ot use agentic tooling, isn't a skill or upskilling. To be a "skill," it must take months to master
Etheon44@reddit
Yes
AI is a tool, it is not a magical 10x button like CEOs want to think, but it is a good tool to use, learn and optimize
If you already understand programming, then you should be used to learning and applying new technology, this is just another one
AliceCode@reddit
AI will cause your skills (if you even have any) to atrophy. If you have no skills to begin with, the only skills you'll gain is prompting the AI. At that point, you're worthless and can easily be replaced.
Etheon44@reddit
Would you have said that about using a new framework?
Such a moronic statement, sorry. Using AI irresponsably and without prior knowledge will cause that, but I am very confident in my knowledge and it is directly applying to a better implementation of this tool.
I am actually impressed that any software engineer is so aversed to using a new technology, when you should have been doing it already throughout your carrer.
Who knows if its going to be like this 3 years from now, but AI is here to stay in some form without a doubt. Why not utilize to your advantage, you that have the knowledge (or should have, since someone so averse to learning doesnt sound like a software engineer to me), you are the best candidate to use correctly.
AliceCode@reddit
The answer is simple: I write much better code than the AI does. Why would I downgrade my software quality? Writing code is not the bottleneck for me. Using LLMs gains me absolutely nothing.
Etheon44@reddit
...writting code has never been the bottleneck for any software engineer worth its salt.
If you write much better code than the AI, which we all do tbh, then you would want to optimize the most mechanical and repetitive sides of programming, which every language has.
You should want to take out lf your mechanical and repetitive things in order to tackle the real problems.
And you would want to optimize those parts to be as closer to your own code as possible, while you delve into the complexity. And the funny thing is, you can even use it for things outside of coding itself, like connecting it to gitlab/github/etc in order to create MRs faster. Sure, it maybe saves 2 seconds, but multiply it for every MR.
Again, it is a new technology, a software engineer worth its salt should never be against testing it and implementing it.
deleted_by_reddit@reddit
[removed]
Etheon44@reddit
Yes, AI sucks, I think I have said it even in my comments here
The code it writes, if there is complexity in it, sucks ass.
But programming is not exclusively just writting that code, there is a lot of around work that is very repetitive and mechanical.
THATS what I use AI for. Like recently in my company they sre forcing us to make a .prd of the general implementation of features/bugs for the product team. So the AI does that, because I already do documentation but not for the product team.
Same with Mr/Pr creation, same with boilerplate creation...
If I can automate the boring, mechanical and repetitive parts of my job, I am absolutely doing it
foggy_fogs@reddit
do you even oppose a prompt like: "please iterate through this list of class instances and call a function on them" when it takes the AI 2 seconds to write that instead of having to type it out and having to look up the specific function names? how is that code any different from typing it out?
AliceCode@reddit
Why would I use AI for that?
foggy_fogs@reddit
because it takes two seconds
AliceCode@reddit
Yeah, so does jumping out my window to my death. What's your point?
foggy_fogs@reddit
what a dumb fucking argument
AliceCode@reddit
The point is that just because it takes two seconds doesn't make it a good reason to use it. If you think it's a bad argument, that's because your argument is bad. I'm glad we have an understanding.
foggy_fogs@reddit
how is saving time not a good argument
AliceCode@reddit
I don't need to save time.
foggy_fogs@reddit
okay well me neither but I want to, being creative and automating stuff and making my life easier is why I got into programming, not because I enjoy staring at a screen lol
AliceCode@reddit
I really don't see how that follows.
I actually happen to enjoy all aspects of programming. I have no reason to give any of that up to an LLM.
foggy_fogs@reddit
because it makes programming easier, just like delegating tasks to an LLM. I personally do not enjoy sifting through badly structured docs, your opinion is valid and you can enjoy things whatever way you want to enjoy them but youre coming off as a pretentious prick by saying no one should use AI. downvoting me just because you disagree with me wont make my points any less valid.
AliceCode@reddit
Programming isn't hard for me. I don't need it to be any easier.
You can use AI all you want, it will ultimately be your loss as your skills atrophy and bugs and security issues are introduced to your codebase that you may not understand, and may have to spend hours or even days debugging.
foggy_fogs@reddit
the way you assume people use AI makes you look like an absolute idiot
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mancunian101@reddit
It is true though, I think Anthropic did a study and found that engineers who used AI were more likely to lose their problem solving and critical thinking as they’re just passing it off to the AI to deal with.
Etheon44@reddit
Again, but that is only if you leave everything to the AI, that is not using it responsibly, that is not implementing a new technology correctly.
You as software engineers should have this knowledge, you should have already implemented new technology into your system, why would this be any different?
Like no offense, but I feel like I am talking with stagnant 50+year old people that have been doing the exact same thing for 20 years and that are scared about the AI hype since they didnt even bother to try it
Of course you dont want the LLMs to do everything, specially because they suck ass at it. As soon as your context becomes a little bit too big, the code will be active dogshit. But implementing it into other things, like creating MRs, like documenting testing cases for the QA team, like writting basic boilerplate for your files/testing...
mancunian101@reddit
But it’s not about using it irresponsibly it’s just using and relying on it too much that will cause skills to fade.
What counts as too much? No idea, I’d probably put the people who say they haven’t written a line of code in x months or the people who’re submitting PRs with 10k + lines.
Etheon44@reddit
But that doesnt mean not to use it
Just dont rely into it too much, it cannot be that hard, after all, imo, you cannot really rely into it that much because the code it makes tends to suck ass
But as I already defined, it is great for somethings like boilerplates, mr/pr creation, qa flow testing cases...
No pr/mr should have 10k lines, regardless of it being a complete feature, no human has the time to check those things, so obviously those people cannot even be called software engineers
It is just common sense, and use it responsibly, like I cannot imagine myself saying "I am not going to use X technology or X framework because it gives me some things implemented into it, na uh".
Again, to me, it feels like hype fear, which since you know how AI and LLMs work, you shouldnt have it
Akthrawn17@reddit
This sounds like a drug.
"You should use it, but not too much". LOL, and when you are addicted but the prices skyrocket you will continue to pay to get your fix.
Etheon44@reddit
Again, this is like any new technology, you cannot rely completely on it
I truly do not understand a sofware mind that has no innovation on it, it is just a new tool, nothing else
Akthrawn17@reddit
An engineering mind should always be skeptical of anything new. It should be looking at risks vs benefits. It should not blindly accept anything new "just because"
Etheon44@reddit
Exactly, but at least tries to use/apply it, I have stated multiple times that you have to approach it responsibly and use it for what it is, to generate and automate only the mechanical and repetitive parts of our job, which there are
Most people I see here dont do that
AliceCode@reddit
It is not a tool, it is a cheap shortcut. A cheat code, if you will. It's the software equivalent of cutting corners.
mancunian101@reddit
I’ve never advocated not using it.
Flat_Adeptness_9240@reddit
You're not anti-AI; you're just valuing craftsmanship. AI tools can expedite grunt work and boilerplate, but they don't replace nuances, optimization, or architectural decisions, which are still human territory. In the end, letting AI do your thinking might be like eating fast food—quick and easy, but you won't like the long-term effects.
Flat_Adeptness_9240@reddit
you've nailed it on quality, but here's the kicker: AI-generated code can sometimes find solutions you wouldn't have considered, but it's like hiring an intern—you still need to double-check everything. Use AI as a tool to brainstorm ideas or patterns, but never for the final product without a thorough review. It's the collaboration, not reliance, that could actually speed you up.
Flat_Adeptness_9240@reddit
You’re not wrong for hesitating; AI code can be like hiring an intern who leearned coding yesterday—fast output but prone to unpredictable errors. my go-to approach: use AI for boilerplate or data handling, then focus your expertise on the real logic and edge cases where it truly matters. This way, you get speed without sacrificing quality.
TheCableGui@reddit
Not necessarily. I personally feel like scaffolding should be done primarily by AI. But the logic, reasoning and look/feel needs to be hand crafted.
I find, even the most advanced AI cannot handle projects over 90k lines. Their scope will drift and attention will be to split. Once attention splits, foot guns everywhere. But it strongly depends on your programming language. Python the scope drastically increases. For nim or zig, ability drastically diminishes.
Also AI is useless for debugging non html gui code. I’m not sure why but it just can’t remember DDD Layered Architecture rules. Or forgets MVVM updates for xaml or qml.
It truly sucks at understanding the application in relation to global focus. So multi window or state machines are kind of out of the question.
So yes and no. If you enjoy writing boiler plate code, then don’t use it (I’m serious, sometimes it brings me joy). But if you haven’t automated your scaffolding or have a solution that saves time for on the fly datasets then you’re falling behind. And if you aren’t careful others will offer better solutions and quicker more stable speeds.
I’m not being a dick, I’m a software engineer who is operating as a freelancer now and my business model is very strict and competitive, which it needs to be. Sometimes I put out what I feel is clunky ai generated patches. only to dig thru the code and it’s done exactly what I would have.
It’s really not a stable system for software engineering. Some days it’s god tier, other days it’s popsicle stick level intelligence.
All the actual leg work for a complex app still needs human intelligence to build and maintain. I feel it will be many months before gui testing gets any better, I feel tons of automation frameworks have to be brought into existence to make that possible.
AncientHominidNerd@reddit
All the AI I’ve used is usually pretty crumby at coding I don’t understand the hype around it. I use it for decoding and finding logic bugs but even then it doesn’t always do a good job. It might benefit you if you need to ask if it knows of any built in functions that can save you a bunch of time or helping you debug but overall yeah I’d avoid relying on it.
lifeistoolong_007@reddit
honestly i think the problem isnt AI itself its how people use it
like theres a difference between using it to avoid thinking and using it to think faster
but yeah avoiding it completely in 2026 probably is slowing you down a bit
SeatWild1818@reddit
You are 100% right and don't listen to the inexperienced AI hype people. And if even they're right that AI is the future, the learning curve of claude code is something like 10 minutes, so you're for sure not falling behind. Ignore the noise
hireme-plz@reddit (OP)
I agree with the part about Claude Code’s learning curve being 10 minutes. But ignoring all the AI hype isn’t realistic. there are just too many of them.
When it comes to learning, we should focus on fundamentals. But why do these people obsess over AI? To me, it’s like learning how to click a mouse or type on a keyboard.
wookiee42@reddit
It is very handy for some tasks. I would experiment with it on different things over time to get a mental model of its strengths and weaknesses and how the different versions evolve.
SeatWild1818@reddit
Great analogy
I use as little AI as I can get away with because I like to code and I like to get better at writing software. Work has put some ambitious deadlines on my team, so we have to use AI, but even there, I use it as little as I can
PokeRestock@reddit
AI is ok for boilerplate, simple front end boring work (CSS + HTML), writing unit tests if I provide my own tests to reference, but from scratch sounds like a nightmare. Whenever I've tried to accelerate simple Client classes the slop machine writes its own HMAC Sha algo, which needs its own tests, instead of using an Apache import.
LikeTheBossOne@reddit
I'm shocked by the number of people in the comments who seem incapable of using AI well and who also think it has a learning curve of 10 minutes. I was a top engineer before AI, and now the gap is even bigger with AI. AI just magnifies your abilities or lack thereof.
If your AI agents are frequently producing bad code, you are using them wrong. But this is a skill you need to learn or you will fall behind. It was AI hype a couple years ago, but now we are in the world of agentic engineers who maximize output with agent assistance.
ColeProtoco1@reddit
I work for a DoD agency in readiness and warfare analytics.
I use AI to do things small in scope. If we’re talking architectural level development, AI is great for frameworking but it’s difficult to keep everything within the context window. So, limit the scope, and it’s amazing.
I’ve used it to perform conversions from one language to another, block by block. It excelled with few errors because the underlying logic was solved it’s was simply converting steps at a time. If you feed it an entire complex class at a time it may miss some nuance that completely breaks the class.
It’s great as a stack overflow replacement. You know something can be done but not sure how, it can provide options.
It’s not a replacement for you. It’s there to augment you. You still need to learn the intricacies and nuances. You still need to understand your own architecture and its inherent nuances.
If you follow some influencers who swear by agentic development, your codebase will break eventually, and it will be catastrophic. But if you have your fundamentals downpat, it’s a force multiplier.
untold8@reddit
You're not anti-AI, you're being specific about where it works and where it doesn't. Calling yourself "anti-AI" undersells the actual point you're making.
Code that AI ships well: tests, docs, scaffolding, db seeders, repetitive refactors, exploring an unfamiliar API. Code that AI ships poorly: anything novel, security-critical, perf-sensitive, or where the spec is ambiguous and the answer depends on context the model doesn't have. Treating those as the same job is what produces "AI built it and now its unstable." That's not an AI problem, that's a tool-fit problem.
Skill atrophy is real but not universal. The atrophy happens when you accept output without reading it. If you read every diff, push back when it's wrong, and keep writing the hard parts yourself, your skills stay sharp. AI becomes a faster typist, not a substitute for thinking.
The teammate point i'd actually disagree with. Right bar isn't "don't use AI", it's "don't ship code you couldn't have written and reviewed yourself." Plenty of strong devs use AI heavily and ship clean code because they care about the diff. Plenty who refuse AI ship sloppy code because they don't.
Exciting-Anteater622@reddit
Yup, AI's helpful for quick solutions or boilerplate, but handing over whole tasks feels like cheating yourself out of learning. Still, it's a solid time-saver for the boring parts.
Gold-Strength4269@reddit
No. But you are if you stop studying.
Lime-Unusual@reddit
Slowing? Yes your brain might slow down.
humanguise@reddit
You're on the way out. We are shipping so fast our engineering process can't keep up, we will have to rethink it and likely reduce headcount. AI in April 2026 is not the same AI as last summer, the quality of code generation took a massive leap around last November. I still write Rust by hand personally, but I haven't written any code manually for work outside of very small changes since February. Right now it's pretty sweet to work as a dev because some places are lagging behind and the expected output hasn't been calibrated to the AI reality so you have a ton of downtime. I'm pushing a record amount of code and working less than before. Even if you only verify the code it's still like 10x faster than doing it by hand. The most time consuming phases for me are gathering and refining the requirements into a spec and then the code review process.
spinwizard69@reddit
Your point if view channels Luddite thinking. AI is a tool that you leverage to your advantage. Frankly if you are not using it, it would be hard to call you a professional.
Consider a carpenter, these days nail guns are often faster that nail and hammer. For the big jibs a carpenter goes for the nail gun. When mire control is needed or maybe dragging out the nail gun isn't worth it, they revert to traditional hammer and nail.
Now is AI a nail gun, well in some respects it is. It can allow you to put up the framework quickly which you later refine where needed.
I look at this way if you actually are an established developer and you are not using AI, you will not be a developer for long. At some point customers will go someplace else. If you are working for a manager sooner or later you will be told to adapt or get out.
In any event you mentality here stinks. I highly suggest you read some of the historical sources related to the Luddites. Some how you got it into your mind that the very technology that enabled your career is suddenly bad. Did you whine like a stuck pig when compilers came to the mainstream?
JRR_Tokin54@reddit
You're slowing yourself down a little bit for now, but you are going to keep your skills and you will be there for other programmers who went the AI route and lost their skills.
Ghiren@reddit
Are you and your teammates still in the loop on what the AI generates. I think that it's more important to understand and be able to explain what the code does, even if the AI wrote it for you. Even if the LLM wrote the code, it's still my name on the git commit so it's still on me if something breaks.
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Spellwe4ver@reddit
I’ve been watching the ai code reviewer spam duplicate and sometimes contradictory comments at work and the devs are forced to put up with it because the bosses think AI will boost productivity but all I see is them wasting time closing the same comment. And I think for the most part it just caught what human coder reviewers had already caught.
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Versute@reddit
I think maybe a twist on your questions is:
Does AI make bad or lazy developers worse? I'd say yes.
Are most developers bad or lazy? Yes.
Will code made by bad or lazy developers be brittle and unstable? Yes, but that was true with or without AI.
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YoshiDzn@reddit
You might be biased by your personal interest/love of programming. AI writes stupidly clean code if you give it concise direction.
If you understand parallel systems and how to communicate intent, it will write the most efficient programs ever.
I love to code and save it for my personal projects. At work I let the AI d 90% of it
GrayLiterature@reddit
The answer is very simple: Yes.
DigitalMonsoon@reddit
AI is great for boiler plate solutions. It's also best if you give them limited and specific tasks. Think of it like lifting code from Stack Overflow. Just instead of googling around for the code you are essentially asking the AI to find it for you.
This can speed up your work but does make you wear an additional hat, you also have to be QA for your AI coding tool.
rasmusdf@reddit
It`s nice tools for review of code and functions, for creating charts and figures (mermaid in markdown), documentation and tests. Save me some of the boring but necessary work.
Hasan_Abbas_Kazim@reddit
You aren't necessarily slowing yourself down; you are prioritizing engineering stability over raw velocity, which is a professional stance. As a builder, your focus on quality, deep-level understanding, and system stability is crucial, especially when 2026 data shows that AI-generated code introduces over more issues and creates high technical debt when unverified. The best approach is to reframe AI from a "code producer" to a "smart pair programmer" that handles boilerplate while you remain the architect, because relying on it to "think" leads to unstable code, but ignoring it entirely may lose you the speed advantage in greenfield projects.
az987654@reddit
Not really, use AI for easy boilerplate stuff.. Create a class from this json or create a list of insert values for a Sql statement...using to actually code is usually slower because its not instant, it still has to be reviewed, it'll need revisions, etc.
Major_Fang@reddit
I used co pilot to help me make a PowerPoint using Python? I never would have been able to figure that out myself or at least after like a week of banging my head against it.
Am I a fraud? Will I get replaced by AI?
Low_Insect9982@reddit
Yes, definitely, similar to coding in notepad without using an IDE
McRoager@reddit
You are slowing yourself down.
But for good reasons, I think.
canadian_viking@reddit
So there's no middle ground? There's only "Don't use AI at all" and "Hand the entire task over to AI"?
Surely you can choose to use AI in such a way that it supplements your skills and abilities instead of substituting for them.
Windyvale@reddit
You are looking at long term return over short term benefits. That is the correct approach to sustainable processes.
Businesses could learn from you. They won’t but they could.
Hungry_Reference3875@reddit
as an autocomplete, that's really the only speed up
jcunews1@reddit
AI is best used to help simplify/speedup tasks which you already know how to do. Not as tool to create things you don't yet know how to do.
manvsmidi@reddit
Yes you are too anti-AI. You’ve only used the tools a little. You obviously aren’t good at using them given that you can’t product quality stable code with them.
Keep working at it, building scaffolding, learning how to prompt, learning when it’s appropriate to use AI vs coding yourself, and you’ll get better. AI is an amazing accelerator to talented coders. If you’re not there yet, keep learning AI and keep improving your coding skills.
hireme-plz@reddit (OP)
I admit that I haven’t used AI enough to discuss it confidently. In my opinion, prompting or telling AI what to do doesn’t seem like a real skill to me. even a 7 years old kid could do it. I mean, what does "learning AI" actually meaning? I genuinely don’t understand the value in learning it unless it involves machine learning or training DNN models.
manvsmidi@reddit
By learning AI, I meant learning how to best work with generative AI agentic coding tools, not learning AI concepts (although those are important too). Focus on agentic loop refinement, scaffolding around execution and dependencies, memory and context management, multi-agent coordination, and how to enforce structure in output and validation. Also understand what languages and tasks work best and how to best prompt them or setup markdown instructions for an agent to work off of. I guarantee that people like Andrew Karpathy and Steve Yegge are coding better than 7 year olds.
Poleftaiger@reddit
No you're adapting to a future where AI booster masturbators are unable to program because they have entirely lobotomized themselves.
HirsuteHacker@reddit
Our company gave all devs (75ish of us) Claude back in December. Since then we've doubled our output as a department. And our products are more stable than ever. Our biggest issue currently is we have too many PRs to review, and our product/UX teams are struggling to keep up with the new pace.
Objectively, going all-in on adopting AI tools has been an insane boon for us.
KrakenOfLakeZurich@reddit
I firmly believe that developer (still) need to understand the code which they deploy to production.
Later, with more experience, you can have the AI generate most code for you, but review it yourself. Critical review / understanding requires that you can read code and judge its quality. Most people develop that skill by writing code themselves.
EliSka93@reddit
Short term yes, long term probably no.
acylus0@reddit
The thing about using AI in code is its only like, maybe good at chores and cleaning up old simple tech debt that you have masses of, and even then you have to be wary of it. It's not really good for making anything new ideas or coding brand new features, so you aren't really missing out if you don't have a bunch of old shit you have to clean up
kradleOnline@reddit
I like to think of AI and my employed coder. He needs guidance in many aspects but brings knowledge to the table. You need to check how he is doing things and sometime put him back on track.
I have developed for years with Laravel, but since AI, I have delved into brand new territories and have created much more complex apps that I would have ventured to before
minneyar@reddit
No, you're not.
A lot of junior devs love AI because they can give it a prompt and it'll spit out something that works, but they're ignoring that it still takes a lot of time to review and understand it, and if you don't spend that time to review it, you're just rolling the dice until the AI introduces some critical security vulnerability and you never notice it. Even then, you're not going to understand it as well as something you wrong yourself, and a year from now when you have to come back to it to fix some bugs or add more features, you're going to have no idea how any of it is supposed to work.
Using AI to generate code is basically the equivalent of handing your work off to a junior developer who isn't very good at their job and isn't going to grow from it. Is that what you want your career to be? A middle manager for bots?
duggedanddrowsy@reddit
Every time I’ve tried to have it help me with work it disappoints me
KharAznable@reddit
The triangle of any project
- fast
- good
- cheap
You only get to pick 2 at most, if you're lucky. It stands whether you use AI or not, or whatever project management framework you use.
If you decided to use AI, you already pick fast. Or attempt to pick fast over good and cheap. You might not get the speed you want, but you can almost certain have degrading quality and increase in expense.
cheezballs@reddit
Production coding as opposed to code you plan on throwing away?
jahayhurst@reddit
I wouldn't give an agent access to your production environment at this point in time. Letting them give you code / autocomplete your stuff, which you then review, is a different story. No direct access.
Is an AI going to do as good of a job as you on writing your code with no guidance? I'm suspicious. If you write with it, and let it try to autocomplete your functions, will it do a good enough job? Possibly? Would it do about as well as a junior programmer? Probably. Can you let it try, and review what it's doing? That's the way to go.
I personally find the most success using AI like a pair programmer where you're always sitting in the backseat. When it's really good, you're more hands off. When it's the level of a junior engineer, you're constantly riding it. When it's bad, you get frustrated and kick it out and do it yourself.
sylvant_ph@reddit
What do you mean "production" coding? We always code in safe environments, and only eventually promote to production. AI generated code isn't just committed to the code-base, it goes first through your eyes, then through peer review, and then through testing.
Currently AI coding works as assistant, not full replacement of the developer. I read/heard somewhere that AI amplifies your skills, if you are bad developer, it would amplify that, if you are good - same. So it really matters how good you are and how well you use it.
AliceCode@reddit
A good developer doesn't need AI.
groogs@reddit
Yes. And you will get left behind.
Context: pro developer for 25 years. I care a lot about code craftsmanship.
My analogy is we are woodworkers making furniture. Power tools just got invented and in the course of a couple years went from being toys to being battery-powered brushless ones with thousands of variants fitting every niche.
Asking "should I use AI" is like asking "should I use a power saw, or stick to using my trusty hand saw?". I'm not disputing that many master woodworkers can produce furniture faster and of better quality than juniors using powetools, but that gap is narrowing quickly. A master using power tools is definitely out producing one that isn't, and thouh you could argue the quality of something built by hand of a true master is a bit better than something produced with powetools, arguing customers will continue to pay and wait 10x longer for that tiny bit of quality is a fools errand. And even that gap is narrowing or even surpassed. The master with powetools has enough time leftover to do better finishes, add extra flourishes and bonus features, and package it really nicely and still be done sooner.
Don't get me wrong, there will be amateurs using tools to build stuff that doesn't last. They'll build tables that looks decent but get watermarks the first time someone sets a glass down, or collapse if anyone ever sits on it. They'll eventually go out of business but it'll still be annoying to see them successfully selling their crap to unsuspecting buyers first.
Use your skill and knowledge of everything underneath to get ahead and take advantage of the tools and the ability to now do things where the ROI didn't make sense before. Spend more on your time to focus on what's truly important. Data model, API surface, building for testability are things that if you get wrong, everything else is painful and they're really hard to fix, AI or not.
OldManActual@reddit
I have seen this:
'I found that the quality of the code isn’t very good."
and this:
"products built mainly with AI feel unstable"
So many, many times with no actual evidence. I mean, does it test? Does it run? You are reading the code AI generates, what makes it low quality? I have never had any issues with AI generated code after the normal try-run-adjust cycle. AI in no way eliminates that core development cycle. It makes iteration faster. Plus, once done you have verbose comments and can output documentation essentially for free.
The apps I have developed with AI have the most well formed code of any project I have made. You may see that as a personal failing but recall the code is just a means to an end - the application. As long as I can read the code and understand what is happening all is well. Also, once all the programming problems are solved and the goals met, asking for a refactor always increases code quality and brevity - clearing out interative solution code that may no longer be needed.
So this time I am asking for some receipts about code quality. I think the more time passes the more of your coworkers will think your attitude strange and or a signal of Luddism. I think in the vast majority of cases the real reason behind "code quality" is "not what I would do or understand fully" and the feelings part is looking at a sunk cost of learning to "paint" and just as you get the dream the new "automatic painting machine" comes along and sends you where the buggy whip makers went.
The reality is that developers used to need Mechanical Cognition and Executive Cognition to do their jobs. Now AI fills the Mechanical Cognition role - domain knowledge and "known reasoning" skills, the developer becomes the Executive Cognitor - Goal setting, intuition, direction, animus.
The successful future developer will focus on full systems, their boundaries, their graphs, system component interactions, data flow rather than specific functions. Review and approve AI business and view model decisions certainly - for now. Some developers will hate this. The craft of the code is the thing for them. However, that time is passing by the hour.
Express-Channel-1686@reddit
ngl been building 1 small thing per day for over a month with AI doing most of the typing. it's brutally fast at scaffolding and brutally bad at finishing. you spend 30 mins to get to 80%, then 2 hours fighting it on the last 20%. if your prod code is critical, hand-writing the last 20% is faster than negotiating with a model that confidently hallucinates an API.
AliceCode@reddit
Keep in mind that many of the Pro-AI comments that you see on reddit are actually bots. So take every pro-AI comment with a grain of salt.
That being said, you should learn the raw skills. Forget about all the people shooting themselves in the foot with LLMs. They are amateurs that believe themselves to be experts. The code that they produce is garbage, and they think it's grand because the AI tells them that it is. LLM generated code in all my experiences is poorly written, buggy, and often just doesn't even work at all, and quite often the person that generated it has no clue what the code does and wouldn't be able to figure it out without the help of the AI.
Don't listen to these people. They have no clue what they're talking about.
Stefan474@reddit
I think it really depends on the setup and AI adoption level of the person using it
In my company the setup is pretty good, AIs have multiple architecture docs and readmes they have to read, automatic testing and we also run reviews on anything before the IC can even commit it.
We have MCP servers for different things and a pipeline which uses AI with it's own MCP servers and heuristics to keep the code up to standard and it's working pretty well as an accelerator.
Downside is you do burn more tokens, but price to output is probably better than if you hire more people for that velocity.
(I am not saying I think AI should replace people or that I am happy with the direction, just saying how it is for me rn)
chervilious@reddit
Depends on your experience and your definition of using AI. I feel like if you aren't even giving it a shot and understanding it's current place, you're stagnating yourself.
This is my workflow currently with AI which I determine to be more towards anti AI rather than AI enthusiast.
I use both IntelliSense and inlineSuggest (AI auto complete thingy). I toggle between them, sometimes I'm doing things that don't really require much thinking where inlineSuggest is good for.
I don't really vibe code for production website, but occasionally I do vibe code to make a throw away project/changes. This throw away project is something that I make to talk to stake holder and explain of future features.
Since it's on "learnprogramming" I suggest if you're learning to NOT use AI. Finish your work without AI and compare your result and AI. It takes experience to know which part are "fine with AI" and not.
marshaul@reddit
That's a good point about the definitions. I do like AI-assisted auto complete, which I suppose is definitionally using AI to write code. But it's a far cry from using a prompt to generate code.
Jwhodis@reddit
No, if anything you're doing the opposite.
AI will likely never be as good as a human at code, it doesn't fully understand code and it usually tries to use wildly outdated things that you shouldn't even use anymore.
Stay human.
marshaul@reddit
It doesn't understand code at all, even a little. Even if we ignore the architectural differences, their context widows are vastly too small to even approximate what constitutes a human understanding. And that is the one little detail they have no path to solving with the current approaches.
Embarrassed-Pen-2937@reddit
Totally incorrect. You need to get more access to AI and use it more frequently so that you can see the power of it. Get on train or just get left behind.
PhysicalReality7017@reddit
not really sure about "never" part but yeah the outdated stuff is real pain. had AI suggest some library that was deprecated like 3 years ago and I wasted good hour figuring out why nothing worked
the unstable feeling you mentioned makes sense too - when you don't understand what AI generated its harder to debug when things break. and they will break
InfectedShadow@reddit
Yeah I'm not sure on that never statement. It's already better than some of my coworkers and our contractors.
Dry_Builder_1251@reddit
It already is as good as middle level devs. Way better than juniors. And it is good at that level on everything.
xD3I@reddit
Yes, you can't out speed the AI, but you can 100% out qualify it, which is more important when you will be the one to blame when there's a mistake and you are on the git blame
HugoShadoweyes@reddit
Whatever speed or productivity gain you might enjoy if you use AI you will pay for down the road in technical debt and atrophied skills. AI is like an addictive drug.
So, yes. There will be days where it feels like you are moving slower without using AI, but that's okay. By investing in yourself and your craft you are being more honest and bringing more value to your clients than you would be if you shipped each feature a day or two faster.
spas2k@reddit
IMO some of your concerns are very valid but if you don’t learn how to leverage AI then you’ll get left behind.
Last week I had it build a contract reader. It was able to parse old contracts, hand scanned into our system from years ago which a lot of the text was near impossible to read. It created an algorithm to determine the closest match to hard to read characters it came across which were almost impossible to read as a human. It did this in 10 minutes. Would have taken me weeks. Maybe.
New_Salamander_4592@reddit
software development and learning is rarely a race
NeitherAdvisor5558@reddit
If you know a concept or an action good enough for it to be a muscle memory for you then use AI to do it if it isnt then do it yourself and learn as you do
Dry_Builder_1251@reddit
Ai just swaps the manual part of writing to automated one.
In my workflows nothing else changes.
So are you slowing yourself down? I would say so.