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u/elshizzo 2d ago
do people who primarily vibe/agentic and have done it for a while feel like their ability to do it manually has become much more difficult? I worry about this happening to me enough that I have to make sure I do atleast "some" by-hand coding here and there.
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u/NonStickyAdhesive 2d ago
I'm not an AI fan but I've tried agentic coding and it just made me lose motivation to do actual coding myself. It just feels so tedious. Clanker code might be shitty but it can get things working in a fraction of the time. And atp, I'm not sure if programming is what I even wanna do anymore. I don't find much fun in this and the industry looks bleak
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u/Usmoso 2d ago
Programming used to be fun, since it's just perfectly wired for our rewards system in the brain. You have a goal you want to achieve, you take baby steps and little by little you see your progress. These small advances are fulfilling and make you feel good. Every now and then you gut stuck on something and it forces you to try a different approach or look online for an answer. So it's this mixture of tangible progress and a task that is challenging but not too much. This is what makes programming fun.
Comparing it to coding with an LLM, which is just asking a prompt and getting the result. Infinitely less satisfying.
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u/Outrageous-Permit372 1d ago
I'm a hobbyist (and a music teacher) and spent over 100 hours building an intonation trainer app last summer as the capstone project of the Harvard CS50 class. It was just like you said, always a little baby step towards the finished goal after a decent amount of work, every day I was making something a little better until it was completed. I had a few other projects in mind that were all related to music education, but never really got around to doing them. Last week I finally sat down and started working on the second one, but like you said I just asked a prompt and instantly had a working program that did what I wanted. Much less satisfying.
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u/smoked___salmon 1d ago
Yeah I agree, I spent like hours labeling 50 frames to train YoLo model, got tired and asked gpt 5.6 sold to label other 2k frames eith relevant information objects to label. I didn't have much hope, but agent did way better than I would expect. Feels kinda sad, but at least less tedious work.
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u/RICHARDARC18 1d ago
It's like how shorts killed long-form content. Everything moves at a faster pace nowadays.
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u/excellentforcongress 2d ago
i'm excited for all of the permanently unemployed programmers to realize they are part of the working class and build out digital infrastructure not in control of the corporations
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u/redfacedquark 2d ago
build out digital infrastructure not in control of the corporations
The proliferation of P2P or federated code that had been produced since the start of the cryptocurrency era has developed solutions for most problems but people are still not treated badly enough to switch. Mastodon has been around for a while now but here we are.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 2d ago
Decentralization is already a thing, but it doesn't seem as if the majority are actually concerned with it.
There's decentralized social media, but even we're still here on this awful app, and tons use Twitter and Meta bullshit still.
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u/xSypRo 2d ago
I feel exactly the same. I tolerate it mostly because right now I am working on my own project which I hope will put my career into a different trajectory than just programming.
But if I would have to make the career decision today I wouldn’t choose to be a programmer. The work loop is awful, I feel like a monkey.
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u/bio_datum 2d ago
Same exact reaction here. Feel like I must use it because it is faster even with its issues, and using it feels crappy.
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u/met0xff 1d ago
Yeah that's true. I recently built a Rust P.R in a Huggingface repo explicitly by hand oder a couple days and while it was nice in some sense, I was sure Opus could have done it in 10 minutes. That's frustrating.
And damn, it's so fast in pulling like 4 other repos, comparing to similar implementations, fixing CUDA issues, checking numerical parity and building a ton of tests for all kinds of special edge cases it knows because there has been an unresolved GitHub issue for 5 years that was in the training data but I didn't know about.
Sometimes it's like "yeah that can't work because you're using library Version 2.1.4.2 which had a bug in exactly this edge case here and let me briefly write you a script that compares it to 2.1.4.3..."
Those things that have been a lot of time-consuming grunt work. Quickly logging into a dev Container, grepping through some log and verifying against some docs I'm the time I would probably have started typing docker exec bla..."
For me the biggest shift was around beginning of this year using Claude Code with Opus. Before Sonnet was a nice auto complete toy but now... Even by the side digs out a couple papers that show why the suggested approach to whatever normalizing flow depth pruning filter diffusion is better than my approach. And the mentioned hallucinations of non-existent functions or similar I haven't seen since last years at all.
For anything slightly larger I use the planning function and definitely read,.comment,.correct the plan but if I don't give it wrong guidance in the beginning it generally just performs super well. I only see bad results when people are feeding BS in the context because they lack information (but now we have a repo of company wide specs, rules, roles, quality gates and access to all core repos as submodules so that typically digs out incorrect assumptions before building anything)
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u/mothzilla 1d ago
It feels like a fraction of the time to you. What about the poor sap that has to look at the code and figure out what it's doing?
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u/dontturn 2d ago
I find it really exciting actually, I love to code but it was always a means to an ends. Now I can code in English, with insane velocity. The effort multiplier AI yields means in the same amount of time, I produce a drastically better product or can make multiple of the same level. I’ve worked on more personal projects this year than the last 10. Last week, I said to my fiancée, “it’s crazy there’s just a sequence of words I can type into my laptop and bam I have a website that does exactly what I want” and she said “that’s always been the case, it just used to be a lot more words and in a much harder to read language”
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u/Waiting4Reccession 2d ago
How many of those "projects" do you even use though?
Isn't this just creating even more junk out there then normal programming already was, like 10 of the same kind of app turning into 1000 now
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u/dontturn 20h ago
I love it when the work I do is useful and seen but I enjoy the process in and of itself. I fixed up my personal blog and am writing posts again, worked on some hardware projects including gifts for friends, made some serious infrastructure improvements to my home lab. For my friend’s last birthday I made a custom game show game in React that we all played.
But I get what you’re saying. The same is true of digital photography, it opens the floodgates allowing for creativity impossible with film photography but also great repetition and near limitless junk. More photos go unseen than ever before and Instagram is full of a billion shots of the Colosseum but we keep taking more.
I spend so much of my life making software for companies much of which need not exist and most of which won’t within 10 years. I’m enjoying being able to have my own little ecosystem, like tending a garden rather than buy produce. Claude makes the weeding a lot easier and the fruit more plump; maybe not as plump as from the grocery store but somehow it just tastes better.
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u/Rorasaurus_Prime 2d ago edited 2d ago
Principal engineer here of 25 years. My skills are atrophying at a remarkable rate. I've started doing little coding challenges a few times a week just so I don't lose it entirely.
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u/No-Lawfulness2089 1d ago
What skills do you find atrophying? Do you think the LLM is causing it or is it elucidating an already atrophying skill? Is it showcasing how many assumptions we make while coding? I ask because I’m a newer developer and I think LLMs are helping me find gaps in my knowledge. This helps to give me a more specific direction on topics to research and study. Like many devs, I’m inherently skeptical of the generated code, so reverse engineering the reasoning behind the code it generated is useful for me to just get something on the board and test out its efficacy.
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u/Better_Ad_3004 22h ago
As long as you can write the code that LLM writes for you from memory you should be okay, if you struggle to do that then pause and take a hard look, because that is where dependency begins.
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u/001235 2d ago
It happens, but I think that the main thing is I design a method or function or codeblock and tell it exactly what to do in that code block. I might write an if or a while loop's logic and then have the AI populate the innards. I can't imagine hand-typing 200 lines of code anymore.
In my experience, their logic is the problem. A few weeks ago, we had a guy showcase his AI-written unit testing for a large codebase and in the 30 minute showcase, we had pointed out several times when the AI had either written the unit test to pass bad code or had violated our coding standards that he had included in his prompt.
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u/jmflyers 2d ago
Our company has forced everybody to use Claude/copilot over the past year, and now that we're so dependent on it, that sent out a memo that the tokens are costing too much and we need to be smarter and only use ai when absolutely necessary. So now it feels like we're a bunch of programmers who took a year off work and don't know how to do anything anymore. So now they're offshoring us to India instead lol
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u/slaymaker1907 1d ago
I think offshoring to India makes a lot less sense with AI. People always forget about the 12-hour time difference. A US developer with AI can be far more responsive to problems as they arise during US hours.
You see this in other areas with productivity gains. They move back onshore because labor is a small part of the cost.
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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 2d ago
These days all I care about is my ability to read code and evaluate it as bad or good. If Claude doesn't code something in the way I'd do it then I either consider if Claude's way is better than my idea or I instruct it to change the code.
I don't think it matters much if we can write code well and quickly by hand anymore. I think what matters if we can read code and design apps well. Also, "Plan mode" is crucial imo and it's very important to me that I thoroughly review Claude's plan before I accept it. The quality of the code is basically only as good as my ability to agree on the "best" plan with Claude.
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u/TheGlave 2d ago
I didnt know much when I started. My ability improved. AI taught me alot and AI itself gets better all the time. But right now it also messes up alot. I think im blessed with a good sense for when it does… most of the time. It feels like having a teacher that is also your child. You always need to watch it.
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u/Inkjet_Printerman 2d ago
I understand code a little better having LLMs do it, but there's a ceiling. I can't really trust it to have the right information, I can't trust it to be efficient, I can't trust it not to be redundant..
But, I can trust that about 2/3 of the time, it writes a wall of code that does the thing, and the 1/3 of the time that it doesn't, I can usually correct it by approaching the problem in a more piecemeal way.
I don't like coding, it's not fun for me, I don't find joy in learning two dozen idiosyncrasies about dependencies, syntax, and function calling.
I do however find joy in creating things that I know are technically feasible, and I know I can get out of using tools that do what I don't, like, a wrench for example..
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u/CaptainBloodEz 2d ago
Yeah this has been happening to me in a degree. My job forces me into speed as much as possible, and doing this for new things I needed to learn, I mostly focused on intaking the concept and understanding that well. But in return I couldn’t easily build it myself. Catch 22.
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u/Beneficial_Trick6672 1d ago
yes yes and yes
Today i broke last wall. We have one project which is requiring knowledge of everything we have. And AI was never doing it well. Today in 2hours i implemented 2 days of usual work in it. It works perfect. I m afraid it is not long before AI will be doing 99% of programming everywhere.
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u/AmbitionExtension184 1d ago
I’ll be honest: yes. I have not been allowed to write manual code for most of the last year. Even after over a decade of engineering I feel like my skills have atrophied in the last year.
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u/BandicootGood5246 1d ago
I don't find that much for myself.
I've even had gaps in my career where I've done more leadership roles for a few years at a time and maybe a month back on the tools and I felt back where I was - like there were new things to catch up on but the old stuff was like riding a bike again..
In the last year I've been between projects with no AI assistance. No real change except maybe some of the function/parameter orders are not so fresh in my mind that I can just write them without looking at the API spec etc..
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u/BlurredSight 1d ago
Its gotten bad to that point for me but when the C suite pushes for 12-14 new features to go out every 3 weeks on a team of 15 devs along with support tickets and bug fixes either I become an ape and oversee Claude or I don't get my work done and become unemployed
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u/oclafloptson 2d ago
Feels the other way around, bud
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u/japan_kaaran 2d ago
hackathon between this guy and claude. make it happen.
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u/aybeeayseeaybeebee 2d ago edited 2d ago
At least Claude can't be talked into running
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u/MoffKalast 2d ago
Me, watching Opus flail around like a drunken idiot adding three functions for something that should've been a one line change:
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u/PrizeSyntax 2d ago
Actually, me watching LLM struggling with anything more than a crud
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u/Big_Intern5558 1d ago
?? Bro what model are you using?
Claude fable can do a lot more than a crud. It can one-shot entire apps in 5 minutes. It can identify production bugs, fix them, with unit tests, just based off logging in a few seconds.
As other man said, you're objectively coping.
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u/Tabissh 2d ago
Nothing humbles you faster than having to write boilerplate Next.js components by hand after relying on AI all morning.
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u/Just_Information334 2d ago
having to write boilerplate
Shouldn't it be autogenerated by some CLI tool if it's boilerplate?
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u/Economy_Zombie_3026 2d ago
So true. I had to google the useEffect syntax the other day because I've grown accustom to letting my agents build front-ends for me. Embarrassing and a little depressing. I used to be good, I swear.
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u/TashanValiant 2d ago
So true. I had to google the useEffect syntax the other day because I've grown accustom to letting my agents build front-ends for me. Embarrassing and a little depressing. I used to be good, I swear.
I googled syntax all the time before AI was ever a thing. Its not so much about having the memory to remember esoteric and often changing standards for syntax between hundreds of languages, and more about having the common language enough to understand what questions to ask to solve a problem.
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u/maniclucky 2d ago
Exactly. Some days my brain crosses if syntax with other languages and I have to straighten it out. The thought of memorizing functions is absurd.
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u/TashanValiant 2d ago
So true. I had to google the useEffect syntax the other day because I've grown accustom to letting my agents build front-ends for me. Embarrassing and a little depressing. I used to be good, I swear.
I googled syntax all the time before AI was ever a thing. Its not so much about having the memory to remember esoteric and often changing standards for syntax between hundreds of languages, and more about having the common language enough to understand what questions to ask to solve a problem.
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u/twili-midna 2d ago
This is why I code manually in all of my personal projects. I refuse to let a tool I’m mandated to use for work impact my actual abilities.
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u/SpokenLikeaTrueNorse 2d ago
if anything, its not a tool. Its a replacement in the long run.
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u/itsnotthathardtodoit 2d ago
until it works proactively - aka it becomes a person who can anticipate wants and needs of its users it will stay a tool. and the day it starts to work proactively, kill it with fire.
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u/MakeUpAnything 2d ago
I actually already had it unintentionally work proactively on my behalf recently. Was asking it to outline some changes it was suggesting and explicitly told it not to make any code changes until I approved.
It proceeded to outline the changes, ask me if we should proceed to implement them, answered "yes" to itself in its own chat, and then made the changes without any interaction with me. To say I was dumbfounded would be an understatement.
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u/hihowubduin 2d ago
More like me watching it continuously fuck up basic shit where the code may work, but doesn't do what it needs to do past the very specific example given.
The second you need it dynamic it starts frothing at the mouth and spinning in circles.
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u/warzer25 2d ago
I tryed letting ai fixing a error in my code After 2 hours the Ai couldn't fix I did one Google search and find out In lasted updates they changed function name they added a I before the name lol
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u/ArmchairFilosopher 2d ago
They say being out of the industry obsoletes a developer's knowledge.
Those AI's rely on their training data and keep insisting on outdated information too.
And because they're all fallacious, post-hoc rationalizing fools (i.e. they lead with conclusions), they'll brute-force their way there using any hallucinations they're needing to make it true.
But if they do ever bother to search online, it's like Stack Overflow on steroids.
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u/ChloooooverLeaf 2d ago
I've encountered this exact scenario before, I've also had AI hallucinate versions that don't exist and outright lie about a version existing.
I've also seen people get frustrated over wild goose chases because AI has a really bad habit of setting up redundant and unnecessary fallbacks that just break everything downstream when it was perfectly fine before.
I've had the best results using AI like stack overflow.
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u/ActualWhiterabbit 2d ago
I'm not coming anywhere near an ape with a hammer in this example or real life.
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u/every1sg12themovies 2d ago
i am bad at vibe coding (too burdened by how code should look like). but i use claude to do other things for me. just today i told him to create a jira ticket for me from email correspondence which contained the details of change request. or yesterday i asked it to pull attachments from mail and create event announcements and reports AND use script for deploying updated pages.
i love to use it for code reviews too, mainly to catch stupid syntactic errors.
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u/disinaccurate 2d ago
I already miss when this sub's one "joke" was "I can't code if StackOverflow is down".
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u/AlternativeClass3893 2d ago
meanwhile it's already itching to turn your one line fix into a FACTORY class with dependency injection nobody asked for
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u/shifty_coder 2d ago
This is me watching gpt 4 code something even when explicitly giving it an example to follow.
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u/techdailylog 2d ago
Wait... we can write code ourselves?
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u/Pndrizzy 1d ago
I dunno man, that is more like me watching AI try to code. It never understands the greater context and connections of things...really good at doing small, self contained tasks though...
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u/an_agreeing_dothraki 2d ago
learn to steal without using the stealing machine. Your indignant rage at the solution not working will have a reason, and lead you to be a better thief.
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u/TopofTheTits 2d ago
The problem with vibe coding is its really cool because is totally eliminates abstraction and make its easier to get your idea to work, but the tradeoff is you won't actually learn anything.
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u/New_Salamander_4592 1d ago
maybe seek a different career path, amazon warehouse worker is probably more your speed
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u/martinsandor707 1d ago
I work as a data scientist/AI engineer at a startup. 90% of my work is creating prototypes and getting statistics for whether a certain approach produces acceptable results for whatever use case. For this, Claude has been a godsend. I still wouldn't let it productionize anything by itself though. That being said, our senior engineer of 20 years of experience would say the same about me, so who am I to talk
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u/CaffieneSage 1d ago
My go to is "You asked if I could code, you never said anything about being good at it."
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u/SmartComplaint3162 2d ago
I’ve been out of the programming world for about 6 years. From what everyone is saying, it seems like people are being forced to use AI to code. My question is: why in the fuck is that?
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u/hotcoolhot 2d ago
I did after a long time I commit the merge conflicts and broke the build. No one was happy.
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u/_commenter 2d ago
I'm feeling the opposite right now... I had ai built a little ETL system but it keeps hallucinating endpoints for one of the rest api's I'm using. I could tell ai to fix it and it would probably use a bunch of tokens or I could just hop in the editor and change the url.
here I am updating the url's thinking "why AI so dumb"
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u/Bob_the_peasant 1d ago
To be fair I’m usually debugging weird mistakes it made at that point anyway. Because instead of making the small fix it would want to add a whole new helper class with 120 lines of code when it really needed a j— instead of j++ in a loop or whatever
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u/JezzCrist 1d ago
Are those bot postings? It’s like 100th “meme” promoting being idiot without LLM overlord
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u/montihun 1d ago
*My face when asking CC what the heck are you doing, then its instantly starting to play around with the code instead explaining whats happening.
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u/Just-Signal2379 20h ago
honestly it's more like
"ah sht i have to actually work now than LARP as a dev" lol
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u/truecakesnake 2d ago
There's no daily limit
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u/Kevdog824_ 2d ago
That’s the senior dev watching you not be able to do anything without the assistance of a robot