Software Developers Say AI Is Rotting Their Brains
Posted by creaturefeature16@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 20 comments
Posted by creaturefeature16@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 20 comments
programming-ModTeam@reddit
r/programming is not a place to share generic AI content.
prshaw2u@reddit
I wonder how many of them are real software developers writing C code in Notepad.
None of this IDE stuff with a language that hides everything from the keyboard jockey and makes sure they don't have to track memory usage or number sizes.
Yes their brain is rotting, it is just that it is rotting more and they are not (and haven't been) real software developers for a decade or two at least.
parallel-pages@reddit
do you live in the 80s or something? a “real software engineer” understands how to use their tools to write good software. it’d be ridiculous to constrain yourself to writing in a text editor. Why would i want to open files manually to see a reference when i could just click through to a definition in an IDE
prshaw2u@reddit
Started in the 80s, using IDEs now.
But using your logic why would they not use the AI tool to do their work as well? It is just another tool to use that eliminates part of what was done before.
npisnotp@reddit
The big difference is that using AI to write most of the code can make your code writing and understanding abilities to fade out over time, much like stopping writing code for some months.
Using an auto-complete to finish a function name is very different that letting it write the whole implementation.
EveryQuantityEver@reddit
No. That is not a good faith argument.
dangerbird2@reddit
I'm not sure how this is different than a software dev getting into management and mentorship roles and getting and losing your edge as a coder. Like you've gotta keep your skills in shape whether you have clankers or meatbags working for you
KerPop42@reddit
Yeah, I've gone from coding in my free time to do stuff I want to being sick of writing code in my work hours, back to writing code in my free time just to keep up the skills.
Part of the fear is that prices are going to do something like dectuple, and the whole industry is going to lose skill.
dangerbird2@reddit
prices rising probably isn't going to affect the industry as a whole, since even if claude prices go up x10, it's still going to be a hell of a lot cheaper than real developers. It'll be more of a problem for hobbyists and people looking for a job, in which case they'll have to go back to coding by hand lol
popcapdogeater@reddit
I think you are SEVERELY underestimating the desire for number go up and corporate greed.
Because think of it, these AI companies will develop institutional knowledge of the code base that will become impossible to recover because you don't own the AI agents, and once the pool of human coders becomes weak due to AI, these AI companies will have their users in the palms of their hands. There won't be much of a choice but to keep paying no matter how much the price hike goes
EveryQuantityEver@reddit
Yes, it will, especially given how much the industry is spending on this stuff.
No, because you still need a real developer to make use of it.
EveryQuantityEver@reddit
When you get into management, your primary responsibilities no longer involve writing code, though.
FantasticYam4916@reddit
I had to fix one line of code the other day but my ai IDE integration wasn't working and I spent the whole day fixing that to fix one line.
I'm dependent but not like I care I don't like coding anymore anyway. It's just seems too tedious now to read docs and trial and error testing and manually adding test coverage etc when all this can be automatic
EC36339@reddit
Most bugs are caused by one line of code. Spending days to find one bug is nothing unusual.
phillipcarter2@reddit
Being forced to sit in ever more "alignment" meetings that cut away from time to actually think deeply about stuff rots my brain more than anything else.
In my spare time, all my personal projects are deeply AI-assisted. I intentionally review the code less because I want to try to figure out how to make things like my own custom email client work well where most of the code is treated as a hot-swappable implementation detail. To do that, I need to actually think pretty damn hard about all the behaviors I want to exhibit, how to best track and encode that in a way an agent can pick it up correctly, what good functional tests look like, good instrumentation/logging so I don't throw spaghetti at the wall when something is weird in prod, etc. It's very different from "normal" software development where the code is the ultimate source of truth.
Also, if you value pain in your life, build your own custom email client and learn about all the happy horse shit people do in fucking emails that need to somehow render well, my god.
darchangel@reddit
Soft paywall/registration wall. No thanks.
dangerbird2@reddit
404 is very much worth subscribing to, OP gave an archive in the meantime
creaturefeature16@reddit (OP)
Thanks for the reminder! Archive link: https://archive.is/2vjJm
404mediaco@reddit
“We're being told to use [AI] agents for broad changes across our codebase. There's no way to evaluate whether that much code is well-written or secure—especially when hundreds of other programmers in the company are doing the same,” a UX designer at a midsized tech company told me. 404 granted all the developers we talked to for this story anonymity because they signed non-disclosure agreements or because they fear retribution from their employers. “We're building a rat's nest of tech debt that will be impossible to untangle when these models become prohibitively expensive (any minute now...).
Tech company executives love to brag about how much of the code at their company is AI-generated. In April, Google said that three quarters of new code at the company was generated by AI. Last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said up to 30 percent of the company’s code was generated by AI. Microsoft’s CTO Kevin Scott said he expects 95 percent of all code at the company to be AI-generated by 2030. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg said last year he expects AI to write most of the code improving AI within 12-18 months. Anthropic says 90 percent of the code written by most if its team is AI generated. Tech companies have also been bragging about their “tokenmaxxing,” or how much money they’re spending on AI tools instead of human employees.
Predictably, the huge spike in productivity that these companies claim their own AI products have enabled hasn’t resulted in more or better products, shorter work weeks, or better consumer experiences. Mostly, AI implementation in tech companies has been used to justify multiple massive rounds of layoffs. To name just a few examples where tech companies said they reduced headcount because of AI use, more recently, Meta said it would cut 10 percent of its workforce (around 8,000 people), Microsoft said it would offer voluntary retirement to 7 percent of its American workforce (around 125,000 people). Snapchat said it would lay off 16 percent of its full-time staffers (about 1,000 people).
Read now: https://www.404media.co/software-developers-say-ai-is-rotting-their-brains/
creaturefeature16@reddit (OP)
Non-Paywall/Archive Link: https://archive.is/2vjJm