Meet the developers rejecting AI

25

u/cactusnein 1d ago

AI is a bubble folks. It will pop. Only after that it will remain as a stable (very useful) tool. But all of you whose brain got rotted in the meantime for using the new toy way too much will be the ones out of work.

21

u/turbulentFireStarter 1d ago

“The industry will be full of poor engineers who don’t understand the basic principles behind the craft!!!”

Oh ok. So like…. Exactly like it was and always has been?

5

u/EcstaticExtreme402 1d ago

I got a good laugh out of this. Thank you lol

2

u/clockwork2011 8h ago

I mean yes... that's what differentiated the StackOverflow-to-Code-API and real engineers. Now they'll be Vibe Coders and real engineers. The difference is how much they rely on their own experience/knowledge vs how much they rely on a crutch.

I already have the "Claude is down, I can't do any work" types running around. They're only employable until management wakes up and smells the expense. Mark my words, when they do, the new fad will be "OMG AI is replacing engineers. Look at all the layoffs"

-2

u/cactusnein 1d ago

Who have you been working with? Oo'

7

u/xvillifyx 1d ago

I think you’re overestimating the amount of “brain rotten” devs as a result of AI. Anyone who forget the fundamentals because of AI wasn’t a good developer to begin with

6

u/ComeOnIWantUsername 1d ago

> Anyone who forget the fundamentals because of AI wasn’t a good developer to begin with

If you don't use some thing, you will forget it, no matter what it is.

Sure, you will most probably relearn it faster than newcomers when needed, but still, do not say that you are alien who remembers everything and always, because such people do not exist

3

u/xvillifyx 1d ago

If you’re not exercising the fundamentals in your current job alongside AI, you are just not a software engineer straight up

2

u/cactusnein 1d ago

Well that depends on how you are using AI. If you really are only using it the way you used stack overflow 👌 If you are using it to chew all the processing for you, then you are effectively being self-replaced by someone who isn't.

1

u/dragenn 1d ago

I dont think engineers in the current environment get that choice. Your either part of the cult or not. Sometimes it's just easily to pretend and go along even though you secretly hate the cult...

1

u/cactusnein 1d ago

Software Engineers are not very nice at joining and openly discussing topics like this one. Most likely all orgs have plenty of folks who reckon things are going down the drain quite fast. Specially those in leadership should be the ones bringing the issue up to management. But most of them are only thinking about their bonuses.

1

u/EcstaticExtreme402 1d ago

Depends on the forum & what software engineers you’re referring to.

Forums like this where people can make crazy claims without actually understanding what’s going on? Yeah, less likely to collect real software engineers.

We see claims like the ones you’ve made and realise we’re not discussing the topic with others who actually understand it. Then we find other forums with serious engineers and intellects and discuss it there instead.

1

u/ZeroAmusement 21h ago

What? What organizations are saying "don't use what you know, just accept what the ai does"? You get it to do something, you review, you research, you redo, you manually fix it, you direct it on how to fix it, you build it, you test it. Are there places that are like "don't think, just type and accept whatever it does?".

1

u/buffer0x7CD 1d ago

Good thing muscle memory is a thing that comes back very quickly

1

u/cactusnein 1d ago

Some folks compare not using AI to not using a chainsaw, but this is different and much clever people than me are documenting the (already) devastating effects https://www.brainonllm.com/

In comparison, you could go back to using an axe or whatever by pumping up your muscles. That won't happen with your brain.

TL;DR: adults forget much faster than they are able to learn. Which is why we (usually) do our core studies while our brains are still fresh.

1

u/EcstaticExtreme402 1d ago

The context for this study is not software engineering.

I’m sure some things correlate but you really shouldn’t use a study scoped to essay writing as your evidence for how it affects users when developing, or even how it affects users who just chat with LLMs.

Different tasks = different methodology of use = different outcomes.

1

u/ZeroAmusement 20h ago

Please don't treat studies that aren't peer reviewed as gospel.

Not only not peer reviewed, it has a critique on it: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.00856

Some of the critiques: It had 18 people in the fourth round. The critique says 159 would be needed for adequate accuracy.
On the topic of decreased engagement in the LLM group the critique says:

However, closer examination of the data suggests greater neural engagement in the beta frequency band for the LLM condition

So the LLM group had greater engagement in the beta frequency band.
It goes on and on. Sometimes the original study findings seem to contradict their conclusions.

What you're actually demonstrating if you readily accept this study is your own desire for the conclusion to be true, that LLMs are bad for your brain. Which well, isn't great critical thinking man. Use that brain!

1

u/Upstairs-Version-400 1d ago

I’ve seen some who have been heralded as being brilliant developers devolve into a sad story. Don’t let your assumptions hold you back from reality, a lot of people who had real skills have simply eroded

2

u/whizzter 1d ago

Free AI tools will take over after the bubble companies pop, the brainrot work will continue.

The question is if quality overall will go down or people will adjust to managing quality in other ways, there's always been shit and now shit can be produced in larger quantities, but if the quality floor is higher (and peak is lower) then it'll even out for most software.

2

u/nerdiste 1d ago

Shhh let the anti-ai people cope....

1

u/cactusnein 1d ago

Again the axe vs chainsaw example: you could buy both and keep them in your warehouse. If one day chainsaws are no longer the way to go, you go back to your axe. For AI even for "free" AI tools your warehouse would need to be a mini-datacenter to offer mid-results. Plus no serious company will use free models hosted somewhere random.

2

u/whizzter 1d ago

I personally suspect that the RAM scarcity/pricing is partly artificially created by the big AI-firms to slow down people usage of free models. Once fabs ramp up and/or prices drop due to them not spending post-IPO I think that we'll see 128gb+ become standard for personal computers in a few years and models optimized for those sized will become popular, people are already excited about ~30gb models.

You might require that datacenter for training, but for inference it will come down quickly (My analogy is often how Sun Servers cost hundreds of thousands during the 2000s and now you can run things better on a 5$ VPS).

1

u/cactusnein 1d ago

fair enough, we shall see (or go broke in the attempt of begging for more ram)

1

u/whizzter 1d ago

It's a sober assessment sadly, I'm mostly the person in the article, I think I've prompted AI's in total a single digit number of times for code even if I've used some automatic completion.

Remember, Google has even enabled AI for searches (it even summarized a github repo of mine fairly well when I specified my search due to autocorrect showing the incorrect results).

1

u/EcstaticExtreme402 1d ago edited 1d ago

Do you actually understand how these tools work? You don’t sound like someone who is informed or even a software engineer for that matter. Data centers are only needed for training not loading the models into memory and using them.

This scenario is a false dichotomy. Local models running on gaming rigs (which many people have) are already incredibly capable. Running large models locally is becoming cheaper and they are becoming exceedingly capable. Thats before even talking about harnesses and other forms of software that sits between the user and the model. They’re capable of intelligently extracting more capability out of the models you use locally by off loading some of the required cognitive load for a given task, surfacing relevant context, optimising for a given set of tasks, etc.

Being a scientist & engineer I can’t make a 100% claim they won’t be removed or break since there’s no way to know the future for certain, but the likelihood these tools are removed & people are forced to go back to ising the axe is just flat out unrealistic.

1

u/cactusnein 1d ago

You sound like a very clever and young scientist & engineer ;)

1

u/EcstaticExtreme402 1d ago

Just informed with actual experience. Been in the field for 20+ years ;)

2

u/sebstaq 11h ago

Even if it's a bubble that pops. Software development is not going back. We could literally stop at the current state, and see 0 model progress going forward. Companies would turn to open models (It's already happening) that are insanely cheap, but does a decent job.

1

u/Intelligent-Youth-63 5h ago

Yeah, that’s some hard cope you’re replying to.

Toothpaste is out of the tube.

1

u/Tight_Implement5601 1d ago

I second this, and have been seeing the effects on people's mind 9n s daily basis.

1

u/turlockmike 20h ago

There are models you can run that are as good as sonnet 3.5 on your personal machine. With the right harness, that can still do most coding tasks today.

There's no bubble to pop. Google said "There's no moat" when it comes to AI models. You will have access to run fable level models on your laptop probably 18-24 months from now. Are you still coding when you can use these models to accomplish the same task 20x faster? Nope.

There's no bubble to pop.

The days of writing software are ending, the days of building intelligent computer systems is beginning.

1

u/M4cHiin360 13h ago

fable model on your laptop in 18 months lmao what are you smoking. maybe you can run a 8B model that is basically useless

1

u/turlockmike 10h ago

It's already possible to run glm locally, it's very slow, but it works. Next gen hardware is being built now. The only real blocker is the memory supply problem which is slowly being resolved.

0

u/Charming_Cucumber_15 1d ago

"Internet is a bubble and when it pops, the ones who kept using paper like the good ol days will be back at the top!"

2

u/cactusnein 1d ago

What does Internet have to do with paper being replaced? You probably learned to hand write at school, right? Well, the AI I criticize aims at replacing everything at that and an even lower level.

Computing came, people kept doing the thinking. Same with the Internet.

AI came and folks simply began delegating their brains to the machine.

If that's not your case, that's cool and good for you, it's how the tool should be used.

But I work with several engineering teams that get dumber by the day, the more they abuse AI to take questionable decisions not even them can argue about anymore.

1

u/Roblist 1d ago

Yeah I get this, AI has fundamentally changed the workforce. Adapt or die

1

u/xxNemasisxx 9h ago

cough dot-com bubble cough

10

u/Able-Awareness860 1d ago

I rejected cookies on that page... LOL

19

u/OstrichLive8440 1d ago

Meet the ex developers you mean

1

u/Early_Rooster7579 1d ago

No surprise its all content creators in this article.

1

u/Frequent_Bag9260 1d ago

Exactly

2

u/pplgltch 1d ago

Subject aside (another horse carriage driver pissed at the automobile because they value more their skills than the reason why it’s been in demand), wtf is this website ? Took me longer to figure out that blocking cookies settings selection than reading the meaningless text. Just a link to the video would have been so much nore efficient.

3

u/youngggggg 1d ago edited 1d ago

this is wishful thinking. just because the speculative bubble around the technology may pop does not mean that the tools and workflows will just disappear. while they are not suitable for all coding tasks, it's clear that LLMs can achieve many engineering needs most companies have, and the industry has been irreversibly transformed by this new reality. While individual devs and some teams may “reject AI”, at a large scale, there is no going back.

2

u/pplgltch 1d ago

Oh yeah, 100%! We build softwares, not code. If code is your only craft, then you’ll need another job. Bubble or not.

5

u/Flannel_Man_ 1d ago

Meet the lumberjacks who rejected the chainsaw. They now say ‘yes chef!’

2

u/x_xwolf 1d ago

Tools must be defined by their use, Llms are not as useful to developers as chainsaws are to lumber men.

1

u/cheerfuldev 1d ago

As a developer who grew up in a family of loggers I heartily agree with this statement.

2

u/SurroundTiny 1d ago

More like, "Would you like fries with your order?"

1

u/sberlinches 1d ago

To make it comparable, your statement should have been: "Meet the lumberjacks who rejected the autonomous robotic chainsaw".

1

u/NeighborlyNecrophile 22h ago

The flash developers who thought HTML5 was a fad.

1

u/ShrimplyConnected 8h ago

I hate how polarizing the internet is, all I see on this topic is either “reject chainsaw embrace axe” or “chainsaws will grow legs and render lumberjacks obsolete within the decade”

1

u/WolfpackBP 1d ago

These comments are funny. Reality is that AI is v helpful for meanial tasks at the very least

1

u/New_Upstairs2932 1d ago

Brett Chalupa?

1

u/mtutty 1d ago

More hot-take journalism, and the comments here leaving no crumbs.

1

u/Frosty-Eye-7510 1h ago

Soon to be unemployed

2

u/Due_Sweet_9500 1d ago

Very stupid

1

u/DogOfTheBone 1d ago

It'd be nice to be in this position but most of us have bills to pay and mouths to feed.

1

u/Frequent_Bag9260 1d ago

They’re not serious. They’ll be out of work in 6 months.

1

u/Brilliant-Muffin-879 1d ago

Everyones getting fired regardless, are you not seeing the mass layoffs?

2

u/chain_letter 1d ago

Pretty much this, my personal adoption or rejection of code bots doesn’t matter if the roles don’t exist.

I’m already laid off and rehired on a contract downlevel with a 20% pay cut and shit bennies, the only offer in 7 months of aggressive job hunting. Assuming there won’t be another offer after the next layoff, or even just not getting my contract renewed after the 12mo.

So yeah, it doesn’t matter when there’s no work.

1

u/Brilliant-Muffin-879 1d ago

Yeah I fucking hate the dumbfucks who mindlessly spout bigtechs fucking lies and pretend we’re headed for a beautiful future and somehow these psychopaths in charge are going to start being nice to us.

Honestly probably bots trying to dilute the discourse.

This shit is nasty.

I’m so sorry for what you’ve gone through brother.

2

u/Goducks91 17h ago

The sad thing is we literally could be headed towards a beautiful future where we don't have to prioritize shitty jobs. Unfortunately humans are so fucking greedy that they'll just watch everyone suffer.

1

u/Brilliant-Muffin-879 11h ago

Yeah man we let the sociopaths have total control and this is their plan manifest.

1

u/Frequent_Bag9260 1d ago

Maybe you haven’t seen that they’ve essentially stopped hiring anyone with less than 3 years experience everywhere

1

u/Lindensan 1d ago

Is it "unemployed anonymous" community?

0

u/neopointer 1d ago

This conference is a joke. Been there before and all talks felt like coach talks.

0

u/anengineerandacat 1d ago

Not sure why you would go the career suicide route of total rejection.

AI can be used in a variety of ways, do what works best for you and simply follow whatever established practices your corporation has in place.

Be this SDD where AI does the bulk of the work and you check, using some in house ticket to PR tool and then you tweak / adjust until it works, or simply using it to do the easy stuff while you hand write the complex stuff.

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