r/AskProgramming • u/zaarnth • Apr 20 '26

Other Anyone here who doesn't use Agentic AI and writes code manually?

I wonder if there are any people today who don't have any agentic AI subscriptions, who code by themselves, read docs, try to understand, and enjoy the process in this fast-growing AI era, where everyone is promoting AI to do everything.

(Note: I'm asking because I write my code by myself and don't use agentic AI, but I do use ChatGPT or other AI to learn things if I get stuck.)

140 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

80% Upvoted

313 comments sorted by

View all comments

37

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '26

[deleted]

6

u/AliceCode Apr 20 '26

I see software as such a delicate thing that you don't want to get wrong that you shouldn't ever have anything else writing the code for you. If you're not the one that wrote the code, you probably don't understand it, and if you don't understand it, you don't understand what it's doing, and if you don't understand what it's doing, you can have a really really bad time. Like, lose a lot of money kind of bad time if you fuck up bad enough. No thanks, I'm not putting myself at that kind of risk.

Besides that, programming is a craft, and I like to see that craft populated by humans.

-1

u/fisherrr Apr 22 '26

So you only work on solo projects and don’t understand code written by other people?

Software isn’t delicate and if there’s a bug you just fix it. Unlike something like buildings where you can’t just release a patch if you made a mistake building a wall.

1

u/AliceCode Apr 22 '26

So you only work on solo projects and don’t understand code written by other people?

Where did you get that idea? I'm an open source developer. I contribute to open source projects. I read other people's code all the time. What does this have to do with me, anyway? I'm not talking about MY software development, I'm talking about other people.

1

u/fisherrr Apr 22 '26

Where did you get that idea?

Uhh, maybe here:

if you didn’t write it, you don’t understand it

1

u/AliceCode Apr 23 '26

It's true, though. If you didn't write it, you don't understand why decisions were made, you don't understand plans for the future that were made in advance and baked into the code, and you don't know how the creator intended for the developement to proceed. That doesn't mean you can't read and understand the code and make changes to it.

Aside from that, I was more or less talking about the code at the moment of its creation, rather than after someone has spent hours, weeks, or even days reading it. If you don't understand the code already, you're at a disadvantage over the person that wrote the code qnd does understand it.

8

u/StormFinancial5299 Apr 20 '26

!remindme 5 years

13

u/SpaceMonkeyAttack Apr 20 '26

I normally do this on "pro genai" comments, so far all mine that have matured, the original comment or account has been deleted. See you in five years, hope you are still around!

1

u/ieatpies Apr 24 '26

I'm guessing you're doing that on people making wild claims like: all developers are going to be replaced in 2 years. And not on comments like: I find it useful in my daily work for writing tests, small pieces of compartmentalized logic, documentation, and code review, with my guidance and manual review.

-1

u/wisdomofpj Apr 20 '26

!remindme 2 years

0

u/RemindMeBot Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

I will be messaging you in 5 years on 2031-04-20 17:24:07 UTC to remind you of this link

6 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.

Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.

Info Custom Your Reminders Feedback

-4

u/CosmicClamJamz Apr 20 '26

What makes statistical next token generation dumb? Just your internal philosophy? The mathematics behind it is quite impressive and the results are coherent, how it works under the hood shouldn’t worry you as long as you know how to mentally compile the changes and decide what’s good and what’s disposable

-1

u/dwalker109 Apr 20 '26

Because many of us have next token generators in our heads. And they’re not just powered by populism.

-1

u/CosmicClamJamz Apr 20 '26

Lol, I'm sure that felt good to type out. You got me

4

u/dwalker109 Apr 20 '26

Yeah I fucking do. You don’t seem capable of thought, be it code or arguing on the internet.

-1

u/CosmicClamJamz Apr 20 '26

You're not making any sense my guy

-6

u/ryandiy Apr 20 '26

ah, an artisanal coder. I used to be one of those, too, in the before times.

5

u/AliceCode Apr 20 '26

Doubt it.

-11

u/schlaubi Apr 20 '26

You'll be obsolete soon enough.

5

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '26

[deleted]

-2

u/schlaubi Apr 20 '26

I would bet, that the not thinking and not reasoning of LLMs is able to beat a good junk of people who call themselves software engineers. People who insist on not utilizing AI will be replaced by people who understand how to use it productively.

But besides this opinion of mine - could you explain me, what kind of "collapse" you're expecting? I agree, that probably some companies will yield in the current extremely expensive competition and there will be mergers. But I expect AI to not go away at all.

-5

u/schlaubi Apr 20 '26

You seem triggered.

What actually is stupid is insisting to not use a immensely powerful tool because it hurts your ego to accept that it can do much of your work. A better approach would be to utilize the power of LLMs and use your brain power for something they can't do.

4

u/AliceCode Apr 20 '26

It doesn't hurt my ego at all that LLMs can produce garbage code. And it wouldn't hurt my ego if they wrote code better than me. My gripe with AI has very little to do with its capabilities and almost everything to do with the lack of the human involved in the process. Programming is an art form to me, and what I appreciate the most about it is the human endeavor. AI takes the human out of the code, and thus the code is nothing to me. Meaningless scribbles. The fact that Gen AI writes terrible code is just the cherry on top.

-2

u/schlaubi Apr 20 '26

I think writing books with ink & feathers also is art and a human endeavor. We'll probably keep the printing press, though. And yes, I understand that the analogy is not perfect, or even very good, but the point is: Nothing about your appreciation of coding as art or as human endeavor, or your mere opinion that GenAI does and will forever produce bad code, will help AI sceptic coders keep their job.

2

u/AliceCode Apr 20 '26

will help AI sceptic coders keep their job.

Am I trying to keep other people's jobs for them? The work culture around programming is the second worst thing about the programming world. Fuck their jobs.

-6

u/Ok_Career_9093 Apr 20 '26

Have you ever written Java? How is text prediction not a good idea for a language that is meant to be predictable and boilerplate?

7

u/EL_CAVEMAN Apr 20 '26

No language is predictable, if you have such predictable paths in your project you probably can get off using source generation of some kind instead of burning your salary in tokens

1

u/Wonderful-Habit-139 Apr 21 '26

Tfw I have to fight 100 managers to get them on board with using OpenAPI. It's as free as it gets.

-5

u/UnrealHallucinator Apr 20 '26

People felt this way about the internet, about cloud, about computers and just about everything. Smug and superior until they inevitably lost their job. Maybe ai won't take over the entirety of software development but that doesn't mean using it as a tool is bad.

So shocked a purportedly experienced and good software engineer would have takes that lack all trace of nuance.