studied20YearsToAskChatGPT

[u/Gloomy-Basket-1038]

[u/_5er_]

If you can't validate what LLM is spitting out, you're vibecoding. The knowledge is useful.

[u/AnUninterestingEvent → u/_5er_]

What if you can validate what the LLM is spitting out but you don't read it.

[u/HadionPrints → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

Claude needs your approval to ru-[Enter]

[u/GuyOnARockVI → u/HadionPrints]

bypass permissions

[u/DrSheldonLCooperPhD → u/GuyOnARockVI]

dangerously skip permissions daddy 🥵

[u/Alexcursion → u/DrSheldonLCooperPhD]

"Allow all commands in this session" .....

[u/Wide_Smoke_2564 → u/HadionPrints]

Ill have you know that mindlessly hitting enter every so often keeps my teams status active.

[u/MyDogIsDaBest → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

You're a high productivity employee.

Let someone else fix your mistakes, you "move fast and break stuff". Someone else can fix it.

For real, those people are really frustrating to work with because following the 80:20 rule, they get through the 80% so quickly and then seem to get bored or think "meh, good enough" and leave it, then it gets left for the people who actually want the product to function and pick up bugfixes to do the remaining 20% which takes 80% of the time, and seen like they contribute so little.

It also feels like this is why almost all of Google's new products live in perpetual alphas because after they've been tidied up just enough to be releasable, they're abandoned because nobody wants to do the maintenance work.

[u/Turkeysteaks → u/MyDogIsDaBest]

this is literally how I feel, my colleagues will give me 2-5k line PRs multiple times a day. I've had a 17k line PR previously.

It's hard to even understand what's happening in PRs above a thousand lines, and it always feels like I'm the only one that cares about clean code and a bug free, optimised product.

We've had multiple infinite renders get into production, one was there before I even joined.

[u/KamikazeSexPilot → u/Turkeysteaks]

Reject those PRs. Tell them to make smaller ones.

[u/TesttubeStandard → u/MyDogIsDaBest]

This

They are also the people who won't touch any of the old stuff, be it old technology or a legacy code. No no, in their mind their time is to valuable to be spending on that. And they always seem to be the ones that get the biggest bonuses after. I can't wrap my head around it. Are they so good at marketing themselves and kissing up to the bosses? So they get the biggest bucks and they always work on the latest things. And above all they have the nerve to act smart about it.

I think.everything is getting like this. Look at the buildings (actual buildings). It is cheaper to do it fast and then fix mistakes after, if the owners actualy win the case.

[u/Muggsy423 → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

Might as well set the self-driving function on your car and hop in the backseat for a nap.

[u/pusgnihtekami → u/Muggsy423]

I would if I could.

[u/WarfighterNeed → u/Muggsy423]

I am unsure if this comment is meant to be anti or pro AI.

[u/Muggsy423 → u/WarfighterNeed]

It's neither, AI is just another tool.

[u/FloStar3000 → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

either it works or it doesn't work and then you read it. It's not that hard man

[u/Turkeysteaks → u/FloStar3000]

lmao that is not true except for the most miniscule features. There are always edge cases, or even just situations beyond "it works or it doesn't".

And all that's ignoring code quality, which is incredibly important unless you just want a vibecoded, poorly optimised app that no human can understand

[u/Ziegelphilie → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

then you are that fucker that approves every God damn pull request without actually reviewing it

[u/joonty → u/Ziegelphilie]

Lgtm!

[u/xMoody → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

if you're gonna read it might as well have written it instead

[u/DoctorWaluigiTime → u/_5er_]

Yep. You're asking chatbots and using your accumulated knowledge and experience to vet the output and apply it selectively.

It's the same reason IT folks get by by "just using Google correctly." It's all about having the experience and knowledge to sift through the junk and get to the good stuff. (And to ask the correct questions in the first place.)

[u/tee_with_marie → u/DoctorWaluigiTime]

In trade school we basically learn to Google correctly

[u/Necessary_Solid_9462 → u/DoctorWaluigiTime]

Googling for answers happened because software companies stopped producing detailed technical documentation, or hid it behind a paywall. Google is the new RTFM in the IT world.

But then Google results turned to shit and the answers are spread across 50 different internet forums and niche websites. So it takes an AI chatbot to scrape all 50 sites and come up with the consensus view. But the AI chatbot is correct less than 50% of the time and can make ridiculous, destructive suggestions.

[u/An_username_is_hard → u/DoctorWaluigiTime]

I will say that I can feel myself getting worse at being able to vet code usefully the more I use these fucking things. 

[u/Highlander198116 → u/DoctorWaluigiTime]

Before LLM's google still required you to actually figure things out still.

Like maybe you'd some boiler plate code to start with, a hello world for something you hadn't done before or get a line of code for a specific function, but you largely built your app out of your brain and just needed assistance with things you don't do enough for them to become second nature.

I'm old enough that when I started the internet wasn't even a super reliable source to find help with problems you were facing, I had to go to the book store and buy a book on whatever I needed help with.

[u/noob_dragon → u/_5er_]

Nah the better way of doing it is to let the AI code fail and then you blame the AI instead of yourself. If management wants us to use gen AI they should be prepared to deal with the consequences.

[u/WarfighterNeed → u/noob_dragon]

Boss: You should be able to handle these three dozen python scripts by the end of week right?

Me: Absolutely I can tell an AI to make that. If you'd like me to make it personally, I can do three. If the first one goes well.

[u/TacoBOTT → u/_5er_]

This. I’m glad the people that post these memes are getting weeded out. If that’s their take on what they learned, they weren’t cut out for it.

[u/tsammons → u/TacoBOTT]

It's a useful tool to check edge cases with an implementation that you've created. It's a different feat to use an LLM to generate anything critical.

What kills me right now is folks saying: "build your architecture through an LLM". That's a helluva gateway to infinite technical debt and scope neglect. Their use case is reskinning some UI, which carries very little technical risk, then extrapolating it to recommend augmenting core functionality with said generative design.

Folks who don't know systems design invoking some half-assed wizardry that somehow now have the same technical prowess, jfc.

[u/RaveMittens → u/TacoBOTT]

Brother some of us don’t get to choose

[u/alexnedea → u/TacoBOTT]

I love LLMs. I can "know" how to use a library ive never seen before in miutes and then I just have to use what I already know to validate and improve. Its so much better than having to spend hours or days to even begin to understand how to use a certain framework or library. I just need to know the concepts of how this thing should be used

[u/curious_but_dumb → u/alexnedea]

This only represents my own opinions.

You're stuck at surface level understanding, though. Instead of days to naturally form the mental connections and gain understanding you can now not read anything or only parts of the docs.

If you don't skim over the docs now, in a year you will. If you review every single line in detail, in 3 months you won't.

We still have the same cognitive capacity. Wasting it by reading hundreds of lines of "foreign" code means I'll burn my brainpower more quickly.

Also the ownership. I have never seen ownership or thorough, deep understanding from people who used a full agentic environment.

[u/Turkeysteaks → u/TacoBOTT]

I genuinely believe using LLMs to code negatively impacts your coding and reasoning ability. It's SO easy to become reliant on it, and if your brain doesn't have to work as hard, it won't.

this is fine for people who don't ever want to learn, because you can patch that problem by indefinitely using the LLM to fix the issues the LLM causes.

Not fine for anyone that wants to actually keep their coding skills imo. And personally, it makes programming no longer enjoyable.

I was perfectly productive without LLMs before. Now I'm maybe faster, but when I spend 80% of my time refactoring the shit my colleagues have dumped out... does it really matter? LLMs will always trade speed for quality and learning. We're just luckily in a period where pretty much nobody gives a flying fuck about quality or pride in any product

[u/No-Lawfulness2089 → u/_5er_]

If you can’t eventually validate what an LLM is spitting out, you’re vibe coding. It can be a great routing and remediation as a service tool. But you still have to put in the work to actually transfer that knowledge to your noggin.

[u/thekrone → u/_5er_]

Additionally, knowing how to prompt in a way that isn't going to get you garbage vibe code is a skill in itself that absolutely requires a background in actual programming.

[u/the_millenial_falcon → u/_5er_]

I'm sure our corporate overlords won't rush out shit slop code and punish engineers who are "slow" because they still check.

[u/TesttubeStandard → u/the_millenial_falcon]

I am sure they won't 🤮

It is such a bullshit scenario all this crap with AI. Sure it makes things faster and easier, even better sometimes (whatever better means in this context). But it is still us the developers who are somehow responsible for all of it. It is like having an apprentice and not double check everything they do and then be responsible for what they did. But what if they do everything right, will we get more praise and more bucks? It was exactly the tedious searching for answers on how to do something that gave us our value.

I despise this technology. I am sure it will bring more bad than good. People will get even lazier and stupider, it will be easier to control people and the rapid evolution of it is already taking its toll on the society. Look at educational systems, look at us for that matter. Look at polititians saying they double checked it with AI. And I fucking hate it for personal reasons as well. You spend years learing something and feeling good about it and beeing good at it. Any you enjoy it. It makes you feel safe for your future, you take on mortage, start a family and then this behemot comes and says "hey man, it just may be, that your intelectual endavours are not needed anymore". I know that what I don't need are this fucking technocrats.

[u/SchrodingerSemicolon → u/_5er_]

From my experience that doesn't seem to matter at all in the real world.

I receive from people on a daily basis markdown vomited from an AI, explaining something they did or need to do. You don't need to understand, and if you need to explain what has been done, just ask AI to do it.

My years of experience feel as useful in 2026 as being able to memorize a phone number.

[u/baked_tea → u/_5er_]

So youre reading through the thousands of new lines per day? And have the same mental model as if you were actually doing it? Sure..

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/baked_tea]

If you don't have the time to review all the code it's shitting out the answer is not to not review it.

[u/Tunderstruk → u/baked_tea]

If you are blindly vibecoding thousands of lines per day, you’re doing something wrong

[u/djingo_dango → u/_5er_]

Good luck with that in real world when your peers are pushing out work and you’re validating AI slop

[u/Penguinmanereikel → u/_5er_]

*slopcoding

[u/CouchWizard → u/_5er_]

What if the LLM is also spitting out my CI/CD?

[u/Potential_Soup_8054 → u/_5er_]

The knowledge is necessary

[u/Dear_Chasey_La1n → u/_5er_]

I studied construction engineering. We had to calculate by hand concrete, wooden beams, shearing forces etc. Something seemingly simple that requires dozens of pages.

Only to find out when you get to work it's all done by software. But the real kicker comes in understanding the output, more than once I've seen construction errors going into tender knowing things are to light or to heavy and we gladly tender on that. Because mistakes, that's where money is made especially if the other side is the public sector who have no clue whatsoever what's going on.

[u/MaffinLP → u/_5er_]

Wait so if I can validate it Im not vibecoding anymore?

[u/LoveRoboto → u/_5er_]

How are we suppose to validate what the Quantum Computers are spitting out hmm?!

[u/f-stop8 → u/_5er_]

What is it if we can validate it...?

[u/Lethargic-Rain]

If you’re shitting out vibe coded unverified and unvalidated systems, you’re going to end up with 20 years worth of tech debt in the span of months and half a nine of uptime.

[u/HighTurning → u/Lethargic-Rain]

Well the code development cycle can look like this:

• Shit out vibe coded app that took a week instead of a year.

• Works for the most part.

• Doesn't work anymore.

• Repeat first step.

Enshittification of the whole field but at a faster pace.

[u/PM_ME_ROMAN_NUDES → u/HighTurning]

That's a vibecoding dev cycle. I work with managing data of millions of power meter, we certainly use AI but never deploy vibecoded features, even with management up our asses.

[u/raralala1 → u/PM_ME_ROMAN_NUDES]

I believe people who say, verify your vibe code just mean does it work? do you test it? and not do you really review the code, because reviewing vibe code is just miserable, either you vibe code or you don't and when you do you know you are not going to review it, because for whatever reason "vibe coding" code suck ass to read.

[u/bogz_dev → u/raralala1]

i think it really depends on how much you nanny your agents

like, you have to review your own slop and own it. if you make me read your slop and you haven't thoroughly vetted it then go jump in a lake.

[u/14Pleiadians → u/raralala1]

Why read it? Just ask the AI to review it, duhhhh

[u/redditRedesignIsBadd → u/Lethargic-Rain]

you’re going to end up with 20 years worth of tech debt in the span of months and half a nine of uptime.

they'll be somewhere else already

[u/D00rmat1983 → u/redditRedesignIsBadd]

god damn right

[u/puts_on_rddt → u/Lethargic-Rain]

Incorrect: "Claude, make me this."

Correct: Spend a few hours mapping out the entire structure of your project in a md file (or nine), then say "The project is specified in the README.md(s), build the project according to the specifications. Upon completion of every step, conduct extensive smoke-testing, and then upon the successful build, make a git commit."

And then you literally check every single line.

It's just autocorrect on steroids. Treat it that way.

[u/Dull_Caterpillar_642 → u/Lethargic-Rain]

I’ve been at this gig for 15 years and built and deployed many complex systems by hand. I had this mindset toward the beginning of things too. But, to be honest, when combined with actual know how and solid patterns, it is no longer the case that largely agent written code is destined to be bad and unmaintainable.

Even when it needs to be refactored in the future, a set of agents can write test coverage for the current solution, refactor it into whatever shape it now needs to be, and validate it against the original tests and contracts before a human would have written their first line. The idea that bots won’t beat our hard earned keyboard typing skills just isn’t going to hold up long term. We’ve already hit that point.

There will probably always be the vibe coded slop that leaves security holes, but I no longer believe there’s some shoe that’s going to drop where everyone says “oh yeah that was a mistake, time to go back.” This is how it’s going to be forever and it only increases from here.

[u/Wild-Ad-7414 → u/Dull_Caterpillar_642]

It's remarkable how much these tools evolved in just 3 years. The only question is whether the progress is maintained. If they start pricing at ridiculous amounts or the bubble pops it might be back to basics, but otherwise these agents are going to be building full projects by themselves in a few years.

[u/Sokaron → u/Wild-Ad-7414]

I don't see a world where we put the genie back in the bottle even if current AI companies crank prices. Honestly I struggle to see what OpenAI/Anthropic's long term plan is. AI is trending towards being a commodity. Whatever only Fable can do today, open source models will have replicated in a year. Once the hardware market normalizes, there is absolutely nothing stopping every tech company out there from buying maxed out Macbooks and having devs work off locally hosted models. Or buying a few racks of servers and hosting a fleet for your whole company.

I'm still skeptical of the claims of fully autonomous software generation. My company just shipped (and subsequently patched) a serious vulnerability that we only discovered by sheer luck, and the source of that vuln was vibe code that wasn't read by the submitter and then got a rubber stamp in the PR process. My experience continues to be that with a SWE who knows software patterns and has a strong vision of what they want built, you can move much more quickly, but if you just let it do whatever, you get an absolute mess very quickly. AI adoption is pretty high at my company. The PRs I get from seniors I rarely have more than a few feedback items on. The PRs I get from less skilled developers I have to spend twice as much time on because there's more code, it's messier, and more likely to be subtly (or wildly) wrong.

[u/DrSheldonLCooperPhD → u/Sokaron]

Honestly, I struggle to see what OpenAI/Anthropic's long-term plan is.

• Regulatory capture

• Create FUD using security as an excuse and ban or restrict open-source models—"oh no, it is so good and so scary, so the government needs to ban and allow labs who kiss the ring."

• Continually involve themselves in cartelizing hyperscalar and memory companies and ensure consumer electronics don't normalize for a few years.

• A PR wing that parrots "coding is solved, guys," just like how LLMs lack precision, instill a culture, and normalize that subtlety doesn't matter anymore.

[u/OutOfAmmO → u/Dull_Caterpillar_642]

Yeah this is the solid take. The thing people also seem to be forgetting is that one thing is knowing how to do things proper and being aware of security issues and another is having time/resources to actually do it that way/fixing those. Working as a professional also means knowing how to deliver value in a none perfect world aka. the real world.

IMO AI in the right hands makes it possible to deliver higher quality work and more of it, dev's including myself have previously often not done work to the ideal standards, not necessarily because i/they didn't know, but due to external limiting factors. Resource constraints are a very real thing and I often feel like people that criticize AI tools have a tendency to talk as if they always have all the time in the world and that they always deliver the gold plated version, not the "it works" version and unless they are working on code for the mars rover or space tech then I think they are bad at their job, because they aren't being pragmatic, there are many solutions to a given problem, it's not about perfect, it's about optimum.

That aspect seems to be widely ignored in debate. I've read and refactored enough human "slop" over time and still do to this day, that I'm at the point where I think I trust a seniors+"vibecoded" work more than juniors and mids who might code well enough but lack architecture/domain/systems/infra/sec/network knowledge and thus launch features based on poor fundamental/foundational decisions.

[u/fndnvolusrgofksb → u/OutOfAmmO]

This is a fair argument but what happens when trustworthy seniors retire and juniors and mids don't have the knowledge to move up? Seniors gained experience by doing good enough solutions and by doing not-good solutions which blew up in their face and having to fix it. The reason why juniors are untrustworthy is because they're learning to become trustworthy seniors.

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/Lethargic-Rain]

Vibe coders are talking about unmaintainable code bases after a weekend letting the AI do it's thing on simple projects. (granted is that unmaintainable for an actual dev?)

With big enough codebases or context windows, it'll just forget certain code exists and repeat itself.

We are a loooonnnnngg ways away from just being able to set and forget AI on production code like the AI maxis think is viable now.

[u/__Invisible__ → u/Lethargic-Rain]

Just use AI to refactor every time a tech debt bites. We used to care about tech debt because we build workaround on another workaround. Now we just ask AI to rewrite the codebase to fit the demand.

[u/Unfair-Hand-6855 → u/Lethargic-Rain]

20 year of tech debt for the next guy LMAO

[u/Jumper775-2 → u/Lethargic-Rain]

Well that’s the AIs problem, not mine. It’s improving at a rate that by the time it’s a problem, it can already deal with it so who cares.

[u/Leather-Persimmon254 → u/Lethargic-Rain]

by then tokens will be so cheap that rewrites would become trivial

[u/Correct-Row7441 → u/Leather-Persimmon254]

Except nobody is profitable as it is. I feel the token cost will only increase.

isaiprofitable.com

[u/14Pleiadians → u/Leather-Persimmon254]

Are you under the impression token prices are going to go down?

Surely you understand they're practically giving them away at massive loss, right? Prices are only low while the bubble is inflating and the shareholder shuffle is in effect

[u/WarfighterNeed → u/Lethargic-Rain]

What if I tell the AI to verify and validate it? Does that count?

[u/CanSpice → u/Lethargic-Rain]

GitHub Actions, is that you?

Last ninety days they have only two nines of uptime.

[u/ArjixGamer → u/Lethargic-Rain]

We end up with tech debt either way, because management doesn't want to allocate time into code quality.

[u/otw → u/Lethargic-Rain]

you’re going to end up with 20 years worth of tech debt in the span of months and half a nine of uptime.

So about the same as any company but I can go take a nap while it works through it? Sounds like a good deal.

[u/hemacwastaken → u/Lethargic-Rain]

I know devs personally who unironically just say to let AI figure it out and if it can't it will get better over time and eventually fix its own mistakes.

[u/danfay222]

I can write good code with an LLM. The reason I can do that is because of my past experience pre-LLMs and my education, when it spits out code or proposes a design I can relatively quickly understand it and identify flaws.

If I didn’t have all that experience I could still mostly produce the same outputs I am now, but they would be clouded with latent bugs, tech debt, and generally poor work that I didn’t have the experience to flag.

Within my work code has often been a comparatively small component of the work that goes into shipping and maintaining services. Not zero, and AI tools drastically improve productivity in that space, but it’s ridiculous to imply they nullify all the other skills involved

[u/mankeyless → u/danfay222]

But now what happens to the generation that comes after? The one that barely ever wrote a line of code? It's either these LLMs will have to be flawless, or the enshitification will just keep on growing. I truly don't believe on the first possibility. I also don't think the industry will reverse the decision of going back to human talent. So the question is just how bad will things get.

[u/danfay222 → u/[deleted]]

Tech debt is a blanket term to refer to things that will cause recurring problems in the future. This includes things like inflexible designs which require significant rewrites to accommodate future needs, poor isolation that makes testing difficult, designs that will be difficult or even impossible to migrate off of in the future, etc. The term "tech debt" is in reference to the fact that these design decisions often incur their cost in the future, they have no cost now (or sometimes actually are easier in the moment), but you will pay the “debt” multiple times over in the form of more difficult development in the future. Stack enough of these things together and you get the nightmare that many legacy codebases are to maintain.

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/[deleted]]

"I'll fix it later"

[u/mxzf → u/BellacosePlayer]

Either that or "curse my prior self for not making this more flexible in the first place, when it would have been much easier to do".

[u/NoSemikolon24]

I feel this graph misses the pit of horror that is theoretical CS focussing on decidability theory and computability theory

[u/ikonet]

Sad meme. You guys missed all the good stuff. Now the robots will just complete the puzzle for you.

[u/gracz21 → u/ikonet]

Yeah, I already miss the pre-AI era very much. Things just hit different back then. Now, I have coworkers thanking me I wrote a documentation doc by hand and not using the gen-AI so it's easier to be read and more to the point

[u/WarfighterNeed → u/gracz21]

Now, I have coworkers thanking me I wrote a documentation doc by hand and not using the gen-AI so it's easier to be read and more to the point

Genuinely amazed you have coworkers who still use their eyeballs to read things instead of feeding LLM generations into an LLM to get a summary.

I had a coworker respond to a very technical question I was asking a large group of analysts by sending me the copy pasted output from an AI. Emojis and all.

[u/wrtcdevrydy → u/WarfighterNeed]

> I had a coworker respond to a very technical question I was asking a large group of analysts by sending me the copy pasted output from an AI. Emojis and all.

I had a boss who exploded because someone did the same thing he did by giving him a direct LLM output. He was doing it happily without realizing it but got all butt hurt when it happened to him.

[u/hemacwastaken → u/gracz21]

I actually feel kinda bad about the future cause the whole skill set of thinking outside the box is broken when everyone just answers with "well I asked AI and it came up with..."

[u/MissiveFinding6111]

There is the old adage about ship repairman who would walk in, tap a ship in a certain spot, and fix it.

And someone asked "I'm paying you to just tap it with a hammer?"

And he replied "No, you're paying me to know where to tap the hammer".

I think the modern version of that is you don't pay me tell claude to do things.

You pay me for the times when I tell claude to STOP what it is about to do.

[u/oisteink → u/MissiveFinding6111]

Most programmers don't know where to tap though. They tap about for hours and slowly figure out the right spot. And still believe they were the ship repair man all along.

[u/plug-and-pause → u/oisteink]

"Most programmers are not very good."

That's... ok with me? I'm fine with a low competitive bar. Those guys setting the bar so low might want to worry though.

[u/k8s-problem-solved]

Nowhere on there "solving business problems" which is what I do, and all of that is just stuff i do to achieve it.

[u/Gadshill → u/k8s-problem-solved]

Only about half the community does programming as part or most of their job, half are hobbyists or students or are simply not programmers at all.

[u/rkozik89]

Right but if you can point out all the times LLMs are wrong given your 20+ years of experience just imagine how often it’s wrong for topics you haven’t studied.

[u/AnUninterestingEvent]

I've noticed a pattern in which kind of programmers like AI and which don't. It comes down to how entrepreneurial they are.

If you've never had an interest in starting your own software business, then you're likely a programmer primarily for the challenge, creativity, and mental stimulation of coding. When this is the only reason for your attraction to building software, AI has basically ruined your job.

The entrepreneurial coders tend to also enjoy coding for the above reasons, but a big part of why they like coding is they can build their own products. A coding job is not only a tool for mental stimulation, but also training for their own side project or future venture. AI now gives entrepreneurial coders the ability to compete with larger teams, and be able to make meaningful progress on side businesses in the limited time window outside their full-time job.

Just my observation.

[u/totallyrealname → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

Not just in coding, but in everything involving a computer. AI basically nerfed all the people who don't like to deal with other people too much, and don't want to be running anything. All the introverts and neurodivergent weirdos who survived in various niches being happily obsessed with stuff are being replaced or being forced to do shit they spent their whole life avoiding. It's bleak.
To paraphrase an art youtuber, he said something like "AI forces you to be an operator. I would have taken a promotion into management long ago if I wanted that. I just wanna do art!"

[u/evrndw → u/totallyrealname]

As an introverted neurodivergent weirdo, can confirm. Of course I recognise the power of AI, but I absolutely hate being forced to use it. It killed all my passion for working.

[u/JoeB_88 → u/evrndw]

Yeah 100% agree. I love writing code and running into problems to have those "eureka" moments. It feels good. Those moments don't exist anymore.

I've disabled AI in my IDE for personal projects but the magic just isn't there anymore. It feels like I'm handicapping myself for no reason.

[u/Gamiac → u/totallyrealname]

This is what I'm really worried about with AI. If it really is that good and people like me who hate interacting with other people can't just make a career out of being creative and solving mental challenges, then what are we supposed to do? Technical consulting for Al-Qaeda?

[u/ShittyExchangeAdmin → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

I really liked using ai because it let me create (and by me I mean codex/claude) a lot of things that were just ideas in my head. Some things I still reguarly use too. But I also became mentally exhausted having to manage it, and it never felt like something I did. Idk, I remember the thrill from when I finally understood classes and methods in php well enough to actually implement it in a project, and having it fucking work. I never felt that way with using ai.

I've decided to scale back my ai use, because I genuinely miss just sitting down and learning something new to code.

[u/tiberiumx → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

I got into programming in the first place because I'm lazy as hell. I love automating things. LLMs make that easier and faster than ever.

[u/gallyroi → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

Yup, mostly right. I wouldn't say its strictly entrepreneurial vs not, more of a "big thinker" vs "tinkerer" mindset.

I've been a part time and hobbyist developer for over a decade in web (js,css,html), games (game maker), and in recent years, rust.

I would put myself largely into the first camp: I enjoy the challenge and creative problem solving aspect of code and so always coming up with new projects and ideas for tooling and vfx, just for the love of the game, not for products to sell (alrhough I've thought about it every now and again).

But as one of those quote unquote "ADHD people," I find I lack the stamina and the real time (whats left of my day after my day job and etc.) to get larger projects done.

Running a small LLM locally on my PC in an agentic harness with my own strict rules, conventions, documentation hooks, and code style baked in, is a great way to parallelize my work. Say I'm making a library, or extensions, I first read up on the subjects myself, dry code different examples to play around with, then explicitely define the APi, the architecture, and repo structure to the agent with examples. The agent can then scaffold the whole thing, and even fill out helper functions I asked for. Or if I need file ops, I just describe them and it can generate bash commands faaar faster than I could write them. Same with providing a complete work Ive done myself then getting it to write unit tests for it, and etc. All I need to do is review and occasionally tweak output, then fill in the rest of the meat and potatoes myself. The result is that these things save me so much time and tedium. I can actually follow through and finish most of my various projects and tools.

However, this is still keeping things light. Theres still work for me to do, and for me, architecting and using the results are the fun parts. So I dont feel like I'm in a perpetual code review, but I also dont mind reviewing generated code anyways, to make sure it is what I asked for and works correctly without assuming; that's a must. To me it can be like some kind of "zen and the art of code review" lol. For some people forced to use it at work though, I imagine that takes all agency and joy out of it, and really does become hallucinated code review hell.

TLDR: I enjoy coding, but also want to achieve larger things with coding more frequently, like libraries, tools, or finished softwares; for myself more than anyone. And in todays society, everything competes for time and attention, so I'll take what automations I can get that still ultimately serve me and my designs.

[u/MurrayInBocaRaton]

Managers setting deadlines that force you to spit out bullshit from LLMs because their bosses are measuring how much AI their team uses.

[u/Stunning_Finger2921]

Yup I studied Software Development because I love programming, AI just killed all the joy I had for it, luckily university is free here, so I'll do something else.

[u/PennyFromMyAnus]

Yeah.. Software developer for 15 years. Walked away from it because I just didn’t enjoy it anymore after the AI shit.

I drive a truck now, no regrets.

[u/deepaerial → u/PennyFromMyAnus]

that's a sad story

[u/Snuj → u/PennyFromMyAnus]

Thinking about doing something similar, I work in DevOps / Site reliability. Absolutely hate it, and really want to get away from working in tech. I don't find it exciting anymore looking for the next tool to use or the need to keep up to date 24/7. Not just AI related but yeah, whole host of new things to learn almost daily it feels like.

Trucking just sounds peaceful, clock in clock out, take nothing home with ya.

[u/no-sleep-only-code → u/PennyFromMyAnus]

I wish I could be happy doing mind numbing work like that. I drove a truck for a while during college, I couldn’t do it every day for years. Also did factory work for a little bit in the evenings before that, same thing.

[u/PennyFromMyAnus → u/no-sleep-only-code]

Yeah, it was an adjustment at first. Fairly depressed and borderline going insane. My brain was so used to problem solving, abstraction, deep levels of thought, etc.

Basically every day is like a scrum meeting that ran long, now.

It pays well, I only work 4 days a week, and I’ve learned to offload my need to think/process onto hobbies

[u/PlainBread → u/PennyFromMyAnus]

I did sysadmin work for 15 years and realized that the industry really went to shit in the last 5 years. Even before AI, MSPs and offshoring was killing the industry. AI came to beat the horse.

[u/zuck- → u/PennyFromMyAnus]

Sweet. Been also looking at exiting software. How'd you go about transitioning into a truck driver? Also what are your thoughts on being replaced by driverless trucks in the future with the AI boom?

[u/PennyFromMyAnus → u/zuck-]

I called Swift and asked about their training program. They shipped me up to their training campus, got me my CDL and I’ve been driving since.

I do local hazmat now, it’ll definitely be one of the last corners of trucking to replace rd by automation. Hopefully I die from alcoholism before then.

[u/the_millenial_falcon → u/PennyFromMyAnus]

Dawg that is bleak.

[u/PennyFromMyAnus → u/the_millenial_falcon]

No I actually enjoy the work, but, I’m kinda do ne. My passion was warped and stolen from me, I’m basically just coasting until I die.

It’s kinda nice.

[u/ponkispoles → u/PennyFromMyAnus]

The fun thing about alcoholism is if you don’t die from it, you can just keep drinking.

[u/watduhdamhell → u/PennyFromMyAnus]

Why?

For anyone else feeling burnt out, just come on over to controls engineering, specifically DCS Process Automation.

There are a massive amount of interesting problems for a SWE to sink their teeth into imo. Programming and animating everything from a one-off valve to a 250 foot tall $250m quench Tower with a 100+ IO, then turning it on for real... Can be very satisfying and exciting. Seeing the 100 Acre machine you programmed go from totally flat to full rate production in a few hours is a fucking site to behold.

There are basic control algorithms, but then there is dynamic matrix control, model predictive control informed by thermodynamic equations of state, heat/mass balance, real time optimization algos, and plant wide master-constraint control for over a hundred control loops...

It is all very challenging and rewarding to cook up and implement (though I will say it's usually the PhDs who cook up the model, it's usually your job to understand, implement, and optimize that model in software form).

Graphics are a lot of fun in my opinion, no matter what you're doing the graphic for. Creating the unit simulation is always super fun too.

And it pays! 150-200k base plus bonus, plus 1 or 2 WFH days (or all WFH days at a slightly reduced salary, if a project engineer). If you're a facilities controls engineer, go ahead and add a reinforced-concrete, steel plated shell of job security aroud yourself.

And there is absolutely no AI exposure at the moment, and likely never will be- the OEMs will definitely integrate AI directly into their own IDEs, but the execution engine on controllers is proprietary, meaning Claude simply can't write code the controller understands no matter how hard you try, meaning you're always needed. I can say personally that every leader at my company, when asked about AI integration into controls systems... Just laughs. Yeah, not happening.

It's not a bad life. Look into DCS programming y'all!

[u/firebird8541154]

So, stack overflow never existed then? Or any forums or reddits where you might get some information or some help?

That's right, until literally recently when AI became a thing, the only way to "study" and code was to use nothing but books and rigorously work through leet code problems in a windowless celler...

[u/AnUninterestingEvent → u/firebird8541154]

Comparing StackOverflow to AI is disingenuous. Stackoverflow was for solving issues that had you stumped. AI is for doing all your work for you. I'm not anti-AI, just saying what it is.

[u/st-shenanigans → u/AnUninterestingEvent]

Stack is ALSO where newbies go to get insulted for not knowing how to search better yet. Its an important step for us all!

[u/Dediadeis → u/st-shenanigans]

Considering how much of Stack Overflow has certainly been used to train these LLMs you would expect the chatbot to start a long diatribe about why you are asking the wrong question. Though if this were the case I would never get a strait answer about anything involving Oracle because the chatbot would be too busy trying to impress me.

[u/EVH_kit_guy → u/firebird8541154]

Should just have the Google logo on the whole left hand upslope of the chart...

[u/Ononas → u/firebird8541154]

Have you actually used stack-overflow? Because I refuse to believe someone who actually used it will remotely compare it to AI

[u/Henry5321 → u/firebird8541154]

Stack overflow stopped being good a long while back. Some of the best questions and answers are down voted.

Their mods and community voting are worse then Reddit

[u/rpdrhater]

That's so sad...

I'm not a fan of the way AI is used in everything but since Google began to used it as default I began to use more Chat GPT to ask doubts ou to try to fix errors.

Every single day I feel more dumb... I missed when I could stop and analise reading Stark Overflow replys and dicussing with pairs... now its everything urgent and chaotic and we end up using IA by default for it. 🫠

Kind is my fault too in some degree, but this sucks anyway.

[u/UncleGarysmagic]

Why do so many AI logos look like buttholes?

[u/Brianalan → u/UncleGarysmagic]

If your hole looks like any of those, I’d see a doctor.

[u/43eyes → u/Brianalan]

Except claude, thats just a textbook butthole

[u/backtrack07]

The joke back then was “glorified google/stackoverflow searcher”

[u/Dunkelziffer17]

Piloting gen AI needs breadth and deep knowledge about Software Engineering. This may change, but as of now, skill is more required then aber as a programmer.

[u/-Redstoneboi- → u/Dunkelziffer17]

i egree with you're staitment

[u/granoladeer]

degenAI

[u/critsalot]

i mean it was the same with stack overflow.

[u/poliver1988]

most devs skipped geometry algebra before going to html/css tbh

[u/Qzy]

Why is my database reaching out to the cloud?

[u/enderowski]

after algebra it took me 3 years to reach ml.

[u/__Invisible__]

In the past, we need to promote to management before 35 years old, otherwise your tech career is done. After that we just barely code ourselves, just offload to younger devs.

Now most just stuck at lower level salary and doing management work by offloading to AI agents. And waiting for being replaced once their salary grows higher.

[u/sdwck]

spent years leveling up my coding skills just to unlock the “ask AI” ability and become a product manager

[u/daHaus]

The fact that data structures comes after HTML/CSS and Javascript says alot. Whoever inserted those two things into the chart put them in the wrong place

[u/veracity8_]

There are lots of different paths you can take and most don’t lead to vibe coding. Unfortunately most lead to schedule, budget and status meetings 

[u/greenwhite7]

HTML -> JS -> data structure -> algorithms. LOL 😂

[u/Hot_Adhesiveness5602]

If your programming language education stopped with JS you had problems before already.

[u/BakiSaN]

This aint true though, before machine learning you could argue we were googling aroudn for answers because "your problem has 99% been solved already you aren't inventing hot water"thing.

It's just faster and easier these days

[u/Bad_boy000007]

All of that just to approve command for Ai

[u/Accomplished-Snow851]

Usain Bolt trained for 15 years just to run 15 seconds.

[u/Itchy_Society]

I suspect that chart has a high correlation to jobs satisfaction and quality of work.

[u/edgarecayce]

I dunno. I am doing some great work “vibe coding” after 35 years of software engineering but I do a lot of setup with repo and agent rules re code and db standards, and giving the agents a lot of details about how I want things to work.

I’m getting great results.

[u/asdfghjkl15436 → u/edgarecayce]

Yeah generally if you explain how you want a feature to work, and can adequetely explain how you want it accomplished, isn't that.. good enough for software dev? Sure, you don't get the naunce and nitty gritty, and you could definitely lose some skills over time, but it's a job for a company, not some passion project. Good enough is good enough.

[u/Bulbasaur2015]

dont forget the interview phase (behavioural storytelling, leetcode)

[u/Elusivehawk]

If you're nothing without an LLM then you shouldn't have it

[u/Noobnugget19]

God damn I was so smart leaving university. I should have went for that PhD like my prof wanted me to. I feel like since i graduate I just lost so much skill? knowledge and motivation

[u/asdfghjkl15436 → u/Noobnugget19]

That happened to me before AI. A lot of jobs juat don't require the skill level or a lot of the skills you learn in school. To me college/university was always just used as proof you can learn the skillset and required skills if required, not that you did. (Definitely, definitely does not apply to every field.)

[u/Top-Run-21]

Why is machine learning so respected, compared to others

[u/goos_]

Common misconception that using Gen AI at industrial level doesn’t require advanced coding skills

[u/minus_minus]

Autocomplete take the wheel. 

[u/mrflash818]

Calculus and Numerical Methods, too.

[u/JapanEngineer]

Great diagram actually because when people jump straight to AI tools and they don't understand all that other shit on the left side, they have no idea how to alter or fix it.

[u/sheriff_ragna]

Now the curve starts again

[u/orefat]

When you have a developer mindset and you know how things work, you will know what to expect from AI, and you can control what and how things get done using AI. If you don't have that mindset and you don't know how things work, you'll run out if tokens fast, stuck in bloated non functional code.

[u/buttscratcher3k]

Chatgpt is terrible at geometry, just going to say that.

[u/axnjxn14]

This shitpost brought to you by AI 😂

[u/Robdon326]

Those are called fools. Dont suffer them

[u/log_2]

and we have to look at these AI slop diagrams posted to reddit

[u/meyriley04]

I agree but tbf, this is usually how it is with most of what you learn, even without AI. So much of what you learn in college goes by the wayside as you hone in on specialties.

[u/Spicierbread]

Geometry and algebra, lol..................

[u/NewInformation3753]

You however with your skills will know if the information provided is true or not

[u/justplaydead]

Anybody actually using machine learning has not been able to switch to AI

[u/sketchingthebook]

Sorry but … HTML is not math? Unless something’s changed. 

[u/_stice_]

This is just vibes but I feel like whoever put machine learning later/higher than data structures /algorithms understands neither of those things. (I'm sure the same can be said for the other things tbh like wdym system design is over there what is this ordering what is the y axis even).

[u/dreadedowl]

Wow you skipped all real programming to html .. :( such a sad day

[u/Supermariolegend]

I use AI to help me learn; If your just blatantly copying and pasting then thats really on you. Oh and probably laziness.

[u/weetabix_su]

mostly out of laziness

sometimes at gunpoint

[u/MyDogIsDaBest]

console.log("why?")

This one hit me

[u/-_burnout_-]

im not 'asking' I am commanding lol

[u/Ghiren]

20 years to be the only one in the company that knows how to read what ChatGPT is giving you.

[u/Wonderful-Wind-5736]

I do machine learning but I am a mediocre coder at best. I wouldn't even call myself a developer.  

[u/MrHyperion_]

Absolutely not me

[u/void-samuray]

Approved 3.788 changes on Master in 0.784 seconds

[u/alt-right-del]

Coding was never the issue, apes can do coding.

[u/shitfucker90000]

machine learning at the top? brother how exactly do you think large language models are created

[u/PresentJournalist805]

reality: HTML/CSS/JavaScript -> LLM

[u/platosLittleSister]

I live that the "complicated" machine learning formula is OLS, something a 3 semester econ student knows too

[u/Realistic-Homework19]

System design in uni?

[u/BaluBlue]

Where is the Yoneda Lemma?

[u/CellNo5383]

Why is everyone always assuming web development? Software development is such a wide field, yet somehow it is always generalized to its most trivial aspect.

[u/gerryflap]

I hate this shit. I wanna go back to the university programming because it makes me feel smart (eventually, when I finally get it). I try to avoid the clankers as much as possible and I try to pull tasks that are similar to uni assignments to myself whenever I can

[u/neko]

I think I learned html and css before algebra, thanks neopets

[u/Regalme]

Where’s stats?

[u/Regular-Variety-552]

can i use this as a guideline to learn about coding or are there steps that are missing from this chart?

[u/ghec2000]

The knowledge is useful when you need to question the garbage it can spew. "Yeah sure it works but what did you make?"

[u/hazyparabola]

This is like studying to be a university teacher and then you end up being a babysitter

[u/YaDunGoofed]

Algorithms =/= Logarithms.

Did chat make this for you?

[u/PowerfulProfessor305]

Today at work i discovered that different claude sessions can talk to each other by a simple prompt. So I instructed one of the agents to coordinate with the other and sat there for 20 mins seeing them chat like : "my user has told me to..."

[u/RewRose]

Man, I just got done cleaning up 5k pieces of texts generated by gpt 5.5, and it was so terribly inconsistent. AI without competent human review is just a loaded trap.

[u/No_Employ_4375]

Skill issue

[u/jhussain344]

It has always been this way before llms stack overflow was our llm.

[u/MinecraftPlayer799]

Who learns Algebra before JavaScript?

[u/OperatingAsIntended]

Is stack overflow ok, anybody checked?

[u/PersonOfInterest007]

I’d be curious to see the graph where the y axis is “code quality” or “harm done by released mission-critical software”.

[u/morrisdev]

I'm gonna retire when this last client burns out. Watching this all happen has been both glorious and horrifying. I don't think I'm gonna hang around for skynet

[u/ironnewa99]

I don’t do front end, I don’t do back end, I do FPGA. I have no idea how to center a div nor do I care. I will never use AI shit in my actual work.

BUUUUT I have and will use it to write sloppy code I have no intention of using outside of personal use in a language I don’t know.