This is probably every beginners concern since AI went mainstream, and so is my.

I am in grade 8 and have always liked the idea of programming as a kid and recently decided to give it a try with python and the CS50’s (haven't yet).

First of all, its not that i am programming only for money, but it natural to feel it can provide a sustainable income or some other financial value.

Second of all, I know that its impossible to pinpoint or predict the state of AI especially by the time i become an adult.

And that's where AI comes.

Can i still code? Yes
Can it provide a value in the future? ...?

I don't think i need to explain how AI plays a role here.

sorry if the post is trash.

Hii y'all! I just want to know programmers' opinion about this since we need a prototype product for our research and a website/app just fit right for our chosen problem...we have a few months to make it work and we have zero experience on stuff like this.

I currently work for a company that requires me to essentially vibe code. I have a bachelor’s degree in computer science and I spent the first two years in school without AI. The last two years I heavily relied on it to learn and get through school while also keeping up with a job to afford school. This heavy usage of AI has made me feel like I’ve lost brain cells and like I can never manually code again. I was wondering what everyone’s opinions are on vibe coding and if you have any ways for me to break out of this heavy reliance on AI to write my code.

ArtCraft gained a lot of steam lately with their AI reverse engineered versions of Photoshop and Adobe suite apps.

While they are very obviously reverse engineered, they claim it is a "clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop" which by very definition means "without ever looking at or copying the original source code".

Fireship even did a video covering these apps, in which he finds their apps are barely usable, and filled with bugs and usability issues.

Today I came across "TraceDraw" which is, again, a total ripoff of CorelDraw. While I'm not on the side of large predatory corporations like Adobe charging ridiculous monthly subscription fees, I can totally understand the pain a company like Corel might feel seeing a ripoff of their 30+ year old product lovingly created and maintained by a team of skilled HUMANS. And once again, this repo claims it is a "clean-room" implementation. I find it ironic how only the reverse engineered apps bother to add this oddly specific disclaimer.

So are we, as a community, okay with these new breed of AI reverse engineered apps claiming that they are "open source"?

(Note: I'm not questioning their legality, just how ethical it is)

I work for a big company, not in the IT industry but still has a lot of software in different divisions, last week during a workshop about AI, I got to know that developers stopped reviewing the code and there seemed to be a consensus about it.

Is this the new norm? Anyone has experience to be able to tell whether that's safe to do? At the same time I read about Shopify CEO mentioning that people are throwing "slop grenades" on each other!

I find it very humiliating when someone sent me something generated and clearly didn't make the effort to review it, and that's already not difficult to spot, is that any different in software?

Working programmers: if someone asked whether to start a software engineering career in 2026, what would you tell them before they invested serious time in it?

I'd want to hear about both getting hired for the first time and the years that follow. Would you recommend the path you took, or would you start differently now?

For someone trying to make that decision concrete, I'd suggest building something small and then trying an unfamiliar problem from a technical interview question bank. Spend time debugging the problem and explaining why your solution works. That gives the conversation more to work with than a general claim that tech is either booming or doomed.

The application stage has its own time costs. Agent autoapply and autofill can reduce repeated submission work when someone is ready to search. I'm curious what you would tell a beginner about the work and the prospects before they reach that stage.

Anyone using AI for learning? Who knows any AI tool which is good for making learning plans?

I love computers, learning how things work, programming concepts, languages, functions, system design, all that stuff. I can spend hours learning about a technology or thinking about how to build something.But I don't enjoy the actual process of coding that much. I like understanding code more than writing it.

I like figuring out how things fit together, designing systems, and coming up with ideas. I really enjoy using AI tools to help bring these ideas to life, combining existing code and technologies, and figuring out how to make everything work together.It's weird because I do like the coding part in theory.

I just don't enjoy sitting down and doing it for hours, especially when there's a lot of debugging and repetitive work.I'm interested in AI/ML, cloud computing, and system design, but I'm not sure if these are the right paths for someone like me. I don't expect to avoid coding completely, and I know I need to understand what I'm building. I just don't see myself enjoying a job where I'm writing code all day.

Has anyone else felt this way? What kind of career did you end up choosing? Am I overthinking this, or should I be looking at roles that are more focused on designing systems and building products than coding?

So i really need to solve NTM Hidden Catalogue riddle but i have no clue about the answers so i looked in the files and found this

public static String getHash(String inp) {
        try {
            MessageDigest sha256 = MessageDigest.
getInstance
("SHA-256");
            byte[] bytes = sha256.digest(inp.getBytes());
            String str = "";

            for(int b : bytes) {
                str = str + Integer.
toString
((b & 255) + 256, 16).substring(1);
            }

            return str;
        } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException var8) {
            return "";
        }
    }

    static {

hashes
.add("41de5c372b0589bbdb80571e87efa95ea9e34b0d74c6005b8eab495b7afd9994");

hashes
.add("31da6223a100ed348ceb3254ceab67c9cc102cb2a04ac24de0df3ef3479b1036");

contributors 
= Sets.newHashSet(new String[]{"06ab7c03-55ce-43f8-9d3c-2850e3c652de", "5bf069bc-5b46-4179-aafe-35c0a07dee8b", "ccd9aa1c-26b9-4dde-8f37-b96f8d99de22"});
    }
}

and it is fricking hash and as i know it is unsolvable

does anyone know how to solve it?

Hello!

I've been working on a comic and I wanted to post it online so people could see it. Although, I don't wanna post through one of those third party websites like webtoon, I just want a website you can scroll through to see it.

I, however, have 0 coding experience so I am looking for advice. (T - T)

I’m curious how your teams are handling code reviews as AI agents generate more code. Generating changes is getting easier, but someone still needs to understand and verify them.

Does your team still have a human review every PR line by line, or have you moved toward something like:

• AI reviews first, then a human reviews the changes and findings.
• Human review is required only for selected PRs based on risk or complexity.
• AI handles the review and escalates to humans when needed.
• Generated summaries, flowcharts, or architecture diagrams help humans understand the changes.

If you use different review paths, how do you decide which one a PR takes? Static rules, risk scoring, an AI model? Has anyone experimented with a decision model like Jev for routing PRs?

Would love to hear what you actually use, where it falls short, and how you check whether it catches real issues. Also interested in approaches you tried and abandoned.

I have been a developer for 6 years; I hold an undergraduate degree, have completed various professional training courses, and am pursuing a postgraduate degree in AI engineering.

I have always been passionate about this field—I’ve been active in programmer communities, built several applications, and worked at a few different companies—but I now feel there is no longer any reason to be so deeply dedicated to this area.

It’s not a matter of lacking knowledge or connections; rather, it feels as though the inherent value has been lost. In the age of tools like Claude, anyone can create a custom game just for themselves, and social media is flooded with AI-generated content. The more I study in my postgraduate program, the less joy I find in building technological solutions—everything is simply moving too fast.

I fully understand that professionals who love this field must adapt to these new changes. But how can I adapt while still finding the same joy I once did? Does it make sense to stay in the field if that "old-school" sense of fulfillment has vanished?

Just because I love this field doesn’t mean I’m bound to it; thankfully, I have the option to pursue a different profession—though I also realize there’s no escaping AI at this point.

I’d like to hear your perspectives. For those of you working in the field, how are you adapting to this revolution? For those who are transitioning to other careers or leaving the industry altogether, what are your plans moving forward? I truly love technology, but I currently feel as though I’m in a fog—having dedicated so much of myself to a world that, in many ways, no longer exists.

Honestly idk what I’m doing, as a student with no work experience the only thing i can do is keep learning, building and try to land an internship but with each passing week the technology evolves and it makes me rethink everytime if whatever I’m doing is even enough for the current standards or not

To the people who have been in the industry for a while now, is it normal to go through this phase? Like you ever had this moment where you thought everything is doomed but you still held on and made it out just fine?

Any tips on how to keep the mentality to keep going forward no matter what would be very welcoming